By Jim Westrum

April Greetings!

Each year when I flip my calendar to April, I get excited not because taxes are due but because I know it will be just a few short weeks until MASBO’s Annual Spring Conference!

I have always viewed the MASBO Annual Spring Conference as the highlight of our association’s activities. Not only does this conference provide members with quality professional development opportunities and time to enjoy the camaraderie of colleagues, but the Spring conference is when MASBO dedicates time to formally recognize the wonderful accomplishments and milestones of our colleagues.

Member Milestones and Accomplishments
At the general meeting on Thursday, MASBO will take the time to formally recognize members for milestones in service – including the years of service awards, retirement recognition award, and the life service award. (See Executive Director message for list of members.)

In addition to these milestones, one outstanding MASBO member will receive the School Business Official of the Year recognition award. The winner is selected by an independent panel of educational leaders (there are 5 panelists including a superintendent, school board member, MDE, associate member and the immediate past winner.)

It is certainly appropriate to provide formal recognition to our colleagues in MASBO and sure to be an exciting time as we recognize members who have contributed so much to our profession!

Professional development and networking
Breezy Point provides a wonderful setting that allows us to concentrate on improving our skills …and to reset our inner compass and refresh our enthusiasm for the work we do in serving our local school district’s students, families, and communities.

As leaders, occasionally we may find the increasing complexity and expanding responsibilities of our roles both exhilarating… and exhausting. This year’s conference “Striving for Balance” should provide us with a practical perspective and skill-set to ensure our success in the challenging environments in which we work.

It is my hope that spending three days together with colleagues will re-ignite your passion and enthusiasm for your important work. There is a great deal of synergy that occurs when we are surrounded by others who understand and attribute the same value to the work that we do.

Celebrate our successes
As you attend the Annual Spring Conference this year, I would encourage you to take a few minutes to greet a new member, to re-connect with your MASBO colleagues, to congratulate members who are formally recognized, and to celebrate our successes!

I look forward to seeing you at Breezy Point!

By Sue Crockett

MASBO’s membership is the key to its success and its growth. At the May annual conference we will recognize the members that have been in the organization for 10+ years. On Thursday, May 1, 2008 at the awards luncheon the following people will be awarded a certificate and a pin with the representative year. Please join me in congratulating these members for their commitment to school business and to MASBO!

MASBO members retiring this year will be honored at the awards luncheon at the Annual Conference on May 1, 2008. Please join me in congratulating our 2008 retirees and thanking them for their service to the school business profession! (The years noted in parentheses are for membership in MASBO.)

Ron Bratlie, Elk River (15 years)
Dave Buck, Anoka-Hennepin (29 years)
John Fredericksen, Osseo (15 years)
Roger Heiden, Region V (27 years)
Alan Hopeman, Wayzata (11 years)
Shirley Klein, Elk River (6 years)
Linda Kuisle, Fairmont (11 years)
Dan Mehleis, Prior Lake-Savage (34 years)

New Members

Meet & Greet MASBO’s New Members
By: Liz Olson, MASBO Membership Committee

A listing of new members is always included in each MASBO Newsletter. The Membership Committee is pleased to further introduce our new members in this special “Meet & Greet New MASBO Members” section. We plan to make this a regular feature of the newsletter. We encourage you to greet and introduce yourself when you see our new members at MASBO events.

Meet Stephanie Danielson
My name is Stephanie Danielson and I am the secretary for the Operations and Finance and Buildings and Grounds Departments at Owatonna Public Schools. I have been in this position since the end of August 2007. My education is in social work and prior to joining the staff in the District, I worked in a position with people experiencing poverty. Although my current position is in a whole new field for me, my past experiences are proving to be quite transferable. Additionally, I have been fortunate to have opportunities for training, such as the MASBO Institute in February 2008, and many positive mentors/trainers within my work building. I am amazed by the complexities of the “behind the scenes” work involved in running a school. Some tasks that I have enjoyed being involved in since I began working in the District are the preparation of documents and presentations relating to school finance, implementation of the District’s Instant Alert parent and staff notification system, working with the District electronic door locking system and staff ID badges/key cards, and assisting with training custodial and maintenance staff on OSHA related topics. I am married to Duane, who works at Federated Insurance in Owatonna, and we have one son, Nicholas, who was born in December 2006.

Meet Peggy Ingison
Peggy Ingison was appointed Chief Financial Officer for Minneapolis Public Schools in January 2007, where she oversees a budget of $650 million.
She has assembled a public service career in the state of Minnesota spanning the last three decades. From 1976-82, she worked for the Minnesota Department of Transportation as the transit office financial manager and as an auditor before moving on to the Minnesota State Senate Finance Committee. She was a fiscal analyst from 1982-90 and chief fiscal analyst from 1990-96. Peggy then moved to the Minnesota Department of Finance, where she was assistant commissioner and state budget director from 1996-2004 and commissioner of the department from 2004-06. Peggy graduated from Bemidji State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting.

ASBO Bridges to the Future Program – Are You Eligible?

Take advantage of the opportunity to share the value of the annual meeting experience-face-to-face networking with other school business officials, new ideas to bring back to work, contacts with vendors, and more-with your colleagues.

If you or if someone you know has been working in school business for five years or less, you are eligible to apply for a $2,000 scholarship, through ASBO's Bridges to the Future Program, to help cover the costs of attending ASBO's 2008 Annual Meeting and 2009 Leadership Conference. Questions? Contact Vee Boehringer at 703/708-7069.

Wrap Yourself in the Unique Fabric of Your Leadership
By: Kathleen Macy

If you are a seasoned leader or an especially astute new leader, you have discovered that there is no perfect recipe or fail-safe design for leading others. Leadership is a complex fabric of work with many strands that influence its design. First, there is the influence of who you are as a person. This influence is shaped by your purpose in life, mission, values, characteristics, perspectives, communication style and technical skills. Second, your attitudes and beliefs about colleagues influence the design of your leadership work. Finally, the complexities of the organization you serve also shape its leadership requirements. The person you are; the attitudes you hold of others; and the characteristics of the organization you serve, interact in ways that are invigorating, electrifying, frustrating, challenging and full of opportunity. When you assumed a leadership role, you began to wrap yourself in the fabric of its complexity while making it uniquely your own. Let’s look at three strands of influence that help design your unique leadership fabric.

Understanding Your Strengths And Building Upon Them: Honest answers to the following questions will help bring your unconscious self to mind.
What do you do? Why do you do what you do?
What is your mission as a person and leader?
Are you best at drawing an exciting picture of the future; or are you best at helping people understand the impact of a vision; or are you best at helping others see how to get to the desired future? How do you know?
Describe a time when you experienced your greatest satisfaction as a leader?
How do you receive information and process it (i.e., story, spreadsheet, trying something out or reading directions)? Not everyone does it the same way and this can be a source of conflict if people are unaware of the differences.

Look at the pattern of your responses and find your strengths. Focusing on strengths is a way to maximize your success. In our culture, we frequently focus on our weaknesses as we try to become the “complete” package. Think about that for a moment. We have greater potential to achieve success through working in and developing our areas of strengths than we do in focusing on areas of weakness. We will always be incomplete as individuals and approach completeness only through working with and having relationships with others.

Another way to learn your strengths is to schedule an individual time with several people that know you well and whom you trust. Ask them: What do you see as my strengths? When have you seen them in action? If you are courageous, ask: “Where am I an incomplete leader?” Revel in your strengths and think about engaging others with strengths in the areas of your incompleteness. The concept of an incomplete leader is supported by an article titled “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” that was published in the Harvard Business Review in February 2007.

Your Attitudes About The Development of Others: The research of organizations that specialize in personnel selection i.e., Gallup and Ventures for Excellence, and the experience of leaders of enormously successful businesses like Miller Furniture is clear and consistent. The best leaders choose the best people and then have specific ways in which to grow and develop them. They believe in the capacity of others, trust them and hold them accountable to do the right thing. These leaders build teams of talented and multidimensional people that know and celebrate their strengths while augmenting the incompleteness of one another. These teams produce products and deliver services that are of higher quality than could be provided by any individual working alone.

Are you a leader that believes in the capacity of others and is compelled to help them grow and develop? Ask yourself these questions:
How and when have I encouraged the creative ideas of others to improve even the most standard of operating procedures?
Where do my best ideas come from?
How do I apply what I know about the student-centered schools we strive for, to the work environment I help create?
What are the strengths of all of my direct reports? How do they learn? What excites them and triggers their enthusiasm?
Do I delegate projects based on what I know to be the strengths of others on my team? How do I demonstrate my trust in them while holding them accountable for their work? Have I set the standard for measuring, analyzing, and reporting significant results in my performance and that of others?
How do I help others understand the context of our current reality? Do I model, and do I help others make intelligent decisions that are informed by data and driven by the mission?

Making Sense Of Your Organizational System: In school districts, making decisions is complicated by the overlay of expectations of broad public engagement, legislative mandates, political influences and the requirement of open and public processes that can limit candid exploration of ideas. The greatest success is only possible if every person brings their best skills to their role, and holds themselves to the highest standards of performance.
How do you help your colleagues understand their role in the complex open, public system of your school district?
How do your subordinates build an awareness of the system and its interdependencies?
Do you and your team members understand the different lenses through which one must view and lead in a system?
Learning from the work of authors like Bolman and Deal helps leaders understand the lenses or frames through which to work effectively in an organization. The human resource, political, structural and symbolic frames all provide important lenses through which to view an organization as complex as a school district.

Leading is the invigorating mission of unleashing the capacity of self and others to shape the future of an organization to make a positive difference in the lives of those it serves. Your success as a leader is influenced by knowing your strengths and building upon those and those of others; setting the clear context of reality; drawing a picture of the possibilities; and, trusting the work of others to achieve more than any one person could achieve alone in such a multifaceted system.

Your leadership is a complex fabric of unique design with the potential of great value for your students, your colleagues and the communities you serve.

Recommended Resources:
“In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” Ancona, Malone, Orlikowski and Senge, Harvard Business Review, February, 2007
Leadership is an Art by Max DePree
Reframing Organizations by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal

Kathleen Macy, PhD
Macy Leadership Group
www.macyleadershipgroup.com

MASBO Communication Committee News

Submitted by Kristin Hanson and Jodie Zesbaugh, MASBO Communications and Engagement Committee

Reminder: Nominations/Applications Due May 1, 2008 for ASBO’s Pinnacle Awards

Please submit an application for or nominate a school business official for the 2008 Pinnacle Awards. The Pinnacle Awards Program recognizes outstanding practices and new ideas that result in significant contributions to school entities and the profession of school business management.
The recipient honored with the Pinnacle of Excellence Award receives a $5,000 check, $5,000 of Virco school furniture for their school entity, an all-expenses-paid trip for them and their guest to the ASBO International Annual Meeting, recognition in news and trade media, and a crystal Pinnacle of Excellence Award.
The three recipients honored with the Pinnacle of Achievement Awards each receive a check for $1,000, recognition in news and trade media, and a crystal Pinnacle of Achievement Award.
For additional information regarding ASBO’s Pinnacle Awards Program, including eligibility, application and nomination forms, and information regarding the 2007 Pinnacle Award winners, please go to the following webpage: http://asbointl.org/index.asp?bid=75
Reminder: Applications Due June 2, 2008 for ASBO’s Eagle Awards
It’s also time to think about submitting an application for ASBO’s Eagle Awards for Outstanding School Business Official. The awards are not just a measure of extraordinary deeds or a lengthy career, they are recognition of school business officials who are models in the school business management profession and demonstrate outstanding leadership.
The International Eagle Award recipient receives a $5,000 scholarship to be presented to a high school student, recognition in the news and trade media, an invitation to attend ASBO’s Eagle Institute, and a magnificent crystal eagle statue.
The Distinguished Professional Eagle Award honors three other individuals who receive a $2,500 scholarship to be presented to a high school student, recognition in the news and trade media, an invitation to attend ASBO’s Eagle Institute, and a crystal eagle mantelpiece.
For additional information regarding ASBO’s Eagle Awards Program, including eligibility, application form, and information regarding the 2007 Eagle Award winners, please go to the following webpage: http://asbointl.org/index.asp?bid=74

ASBO’s Bridges to the Future Scholarship Program – Applications Due July 1, 2008

The Bridges to the Future Scholarship Program is a wonderful opportunity for new and aspiring school business officials to network with colleagues, participate in professional development, and explore the variety of school business management resources ASBO International offers.
ASBO International and MetLife award 20 scholarships of $2,000 for attendance to the association’s Annual Meeting and Exhibits and Leadership Conference, which will be held in Denver, Colorado on November 7th – 10th, 2008.

For additional information regarding ASBO’s Bridges to the Future Scholarship Program, including requirements, application form, brochure and a list of the recent Bridges to the Future Scholarship recipients, please go to the following webpage: http://asbointl.org/index.asp?bid=7850.

If you have any comments or questions for the MASBO Communications and Engagement Committee, please feel free to contact our Chairperson, Tina Burkholder at tburkholder@buffalo.k12.mn.us.

School Business Officials Scholarship Fund Golf Tournament

The School Business Officials Scholarship Fund (SBOSF) board members look forward to your attendance at the Stillwater Country Club event the afternoon of May 19, 2008. There will be multiple contests and prizes awarded. This is a great way to support an organization giving back to children of these Business Officials. Plan today which business managers you will bring!

The brochure can be found at http://www.sbosf.org/files/GolfBrochure08.pdf

If you have any questions please contact any of the SBOSF board members listed in the golf brochure.
We look forward to seeing you in May!
Nancy McKay
SBOSF Scholarship Fund Committee
nancy.a.mckay@healthpartners.com

MDE Federal Compliance Training Sessions

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) has sponsored training sessions on federal compliance with the Washington D.C. law firm of Brustein and Manasevit. On January 17th and 18th, the firm presented at the TIES building in Roseville. On May 19th and 20th, they will again present at the Mulligan’s Event Center in Sartell.

As a follow-up to those trainings, the Program Finance Division of MDE will be training throughout the state on various topics related to federal compliance in Minnesota. These trainings will specifically address major changes to the Uniform Financial Reporting and Accounting Standards (UFARS) reporting of federal funds, time and effort reporting, audit requirements, and will address criteria for future fiscal monitoring of special education programs.

We recommend this training to district or charter school officials, special education cooperative staff, special education directors and school auditors. With the exception of the May 6th training, the training is a full-day session beginning at 8:30 a.m. and ending at 3:15 p.m. Lunch will be provided. There is no registration fee, but attendance will be limited to 150 people per site. Please send in your registration form immediately if you are interested in attending. Your registration will be confirmed by e-mail only. There will be no walk-ins on the day of the training.

The May 6th training in St. Cloud is an abbreviated session that will not discuss time and effort reporting and other topics that are discussed at the full day sessions. This day will focus on critical reporting and monitoring changes specific to Minnesota schools. The session will begin at 8:30 a.m. and end at 12:00 p.m.

The training locations are as follows:

• Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 St. Cloud Civic Center – St. Cloud, MN (1/2 day)
• Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 Bigwood Event Center – Fergus Falls, MN
• Thursday, May 15th, 2008 Coates Plaza Hotel – Virginia, MN
• Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 Ramada Inn – Rochester, MN
• Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 Best Western – Marshall, MN
• Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 TIES – Roseville, MN

For more information on the sessions, please contact the presenters: Janna Duffy, Financial Management Supervisor (janna.duffy@state.mn.us; 651-582-8788); Audrey Bomstad, Program Finance Supervisor (Audrey.bomstad@state.mn.us: 651-582-8793); or Jack Reed, Special Education Fiscal Monitor (jack.reed@state.mn.us; 651-582-8864). For questions related to registration, please contact: Keri Lewis (keri.lewis@state.mn.us; 651-582-8480).

Minnesota Department of Education Reference Information

A listing of MDE dates and deadlines is available on the MDE website: http://education.state.mn.us/mde/index.html
Click on the Data Submissions under the Data tab at the top of the home page.

MDE Contact Information
EDRS questions: Mike Matlock at mike.matlcok@stte.mn.us or (651) 582-8379 or
Mona Regan at mona.regan@state.mn.us or (651) 582-8638.
Tuition Invoice questions: George Holt at george.holt@state.mn.us or (651) 582-8889 or Jeanne Krile at jeanne.krile@state.mn.us or (651) 582-8637.
Aid Adjustment Calculation questions: Mike Landers at mike.landers@state.mn.us or (651)582-8810.
Q Comp application process questions: Kristie Anderson at (651) 582-8860 or kristie.anderson@state.mn.us .
ADM estimates for charters in their first three years, accessing EDRS, getting an EDRS account and/or obtaining your ADM and LEP Projections password can be addressed to Jeanne Krile at 651-582-8637 or Jeanne.krile@state.mn.us.
EDRS access, getting an EDRS account, updating an EDRS account and/or obtaining your ADM and LEP Projections password can be addressed to Lisa Stoffel at 651-582-8713 or Lisa.stoffel@state.mn.us.
ADM projections and/or entering data to EDRS can be addressed to Sharon Peck at 651-582-8811 or Sharon.peck@state.mn.us.