« Back to All News

You Can Do Anything, You Just Can’t Do Everything

Karen Hawley Miles Joins XQ Expert Series Podcast on Design-Driven School Budgeting

You Can Do Anything, You Just Can't Do Everything

You can create great schools at all funding levels. It’s just harder to do at lower spending levels where tradeoffs and creativity with funding and partnering must become a greater part of the equation.– Karen Hawley Miles

What does it mean to be creative about school budgeting? How much room is there for creativity in what seems like such a technical area?

Karen Hawley Miles, ERS president and executive director, joined the latest XQ Expert Series podcast to answer these questions and explore the possibilities within the world ofDesign-Driven School Budgeting.

The Expert Series is a weekly production by theXQ Institute, a multi-faceted effort to bring together diverse stakeholders to rethink America’s schools. XQ positions itself to combine and disseminate the latest research, information on student needs, and expertise to all participants in the American education system. The Expert Series brings together a different expert panel every week to share their experience and insights on school transformation.

Moderated by Michele Cahill on behalf of XQ America, the panel featured:

  • Karen Hawley Miles, executive director and president of ERS
  • Jean-Claude Brizard, partner and vice president of Cross & Joftus (previously the CEO of Chicago Public Schools and superintendent of schools in Rochester, NY, where he partnered with ERS)
  • Alex Hernandez, partner at the Charter School Growth Fund (former area superintendent with Aspire Public Schools in California)

Listen below as the experts discuss how to create a budget by beginnig with the vision you want to realize and how to make the dollars work (and how School Budget Hold’em can help you make it all happen).

As a follow-up to the podcast, the panelists participated in an unique live Twitter Q&A where they answered questions from the education community. We used the app “Storify” to curate a summary of the question and answer session, underscoring the enthusiasm for creative school budgeting.