School board problems: The need for meaningful Interim financial reporting;

              SCHOOL BOARD PROBLEMS:
The Need for Meaningful
Interim Financial Reporting
by Milton H. Kuyers
School Board members have always been committed
to the principle of providing the best possible educational
opportunities for their communities with the least expend­iture
of money. At each Board meeting, the decisions
made are aimed at conforming as closely as possible to
this principle. Accordingly, consideration is given at each
decision-making point to the two facets of this principle:
(1) the necessity of determining what the educational
program is to be, as well as the guidance thereof; (2) the
need to determine and control the costs of such a pro­gram.
For a number of years, School Board members have
felt that most of their responsibility for the finances of
the school district has been taken care of by their careful
reviewing and approving of the annual budget. Accord­ingly,
financial control and the reporting of operating-results
for the period did not become very important to
the Board until the last few months of the budget year.
The Board members turned their attention at this time
to the operating results so that they might exercise what­ever
control they could to make sure that actual expend­itures
would not exceed the annual budgeted amounts.
In recent years, however, Board members have become
more and more concerned with operating results through­out
the year. This concern has arisen primarily because
of the steadily rising cost of education, which is passed
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