End of the Year Cheer!

On The Front Lines

positive. We need to be prepared for keeping our departments afloat when a crisis like COVID hits. This includes being able to speak to our district superintendents and chief business officials clearly and concisely if we won’t be able to cover costs due to circumstances outside our control. A great resource for you, and your managers, is SNA’s Dollars & Cents of Financial Management training . I recently led this training with my staff, and it was a HIT. Knowledge is power and our managers knowing how various decisions and data impacts our bottom line is critical.

organization – ASBO – the Association of School Business Officials International – also has state organizations. One of the very first pieces of advice that was offered to me by my predecessor was to immediately join Indiana’s ASBO organization, and I am so glad that I did. The way that SNA and ISNA have helped me to be a better and more-informed child nutrition director, IASBO has helped me to better understand the financial side of my job. IASBO has a calendar of professional development that covers everything that I need to know about school business – from HR issues to school referendums. I no longer feel like I need to go back to school for an MBA,

BUSINESS The of

Like it or not – we are all responsible for keeping our departments “in the black.” “

I can get all the specialized training I need – not to mention INCREDIBLE networking - through my state’s ASBO.

Director of Food and Nutrition, School City of Hammond (IN) Christine Clarahan, RD, SNS

Additionally, Indiana’s ASBO has an unbelievable 2-year Leadership Academy that I was recently accepted into. This is training that will make me a better business professional and a better person.

COVID has likely had an extreme impact on your department’s budget (whether good or bad). My district remained in virtual learning for almost the entire 2020-2021 school year which had a detrimental effect on our bottom line. Looking at all the data that has an impact on our revenue and costs is becoming an almost daily task and making smart business decisions is rising higher and higher on my priority list. COVID brought the importance of school nutrition to the forefront. We have had more positive community support in the last two years than anytime in recent memory. This is the time for us, child nutrition professionals, to “pull up a seat to the table” and be recognized as school business officials just as your district’s business office and other administrators are. To feel comfortable doing this, I recommend immediately joining your state’s ASBO chapters and making your presence known and felt in their meetings/events. I recently attended Indiana’s 75th annual conference (I might have been the only child nutrition director there as a full-conference attendee) and that can be a scary and lonely

I have been a Child Nutrition Director for almost exactly 5 years. Sometimes I think back to that completely naive person I was just before accepting the position to lead a department of over 140 people and a roughly $9 million budget. Undoubtedly the thing I was least prepared for (and I think 97% of directors would agree) is that the hardest part of the job that you receive next to no training on – is human resources/managing people. However, a close second for me has been learning and growing my business brain and acumen. Within the last 1-2 years, as I’ve settled into feeling more comfortable with the day-to-day operations of our department – I’m finally turning more attention to the business side of the job. I’m finding that if you want to speak about child nutrition programs to anyone outside our child nutrition bubble, it’s the dollars and cents talk that reaches them. We know what we mean when we say AR, ASSP, FFVP, HHFKA, SFSP, SSO, PLE, and so on – but the second you start talking to non-child nutrition K12 administrators their eyes glaze over.

Like it or not – we are all responsible for keeping our departments “in the black.” We need to understand our revenues and expenditures so that we can adjust our spending accordingly. I’m not sure about your district – but mine is not in the position to help cover any budget shortfall we might have. Part of my success as a director is ensuring that we stay budget

The same as SNA has their own state affiliate/

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