This seminar will provide participants with an opportunity to acquire hands-on, practical implementation of GFOA’s best practices in school budgeting. The program is structured around the new best practices in school budgeting, which include guidelines to develop a comprehensive budget process that fosters collaboration between academic and finance staff to develop strategic goals and allocate scarce resources accordingly. The end goal of the new budget process focuses on aligning these scarce resources to focus on optimizing student achievement. In addition to the best practices, tools from GFOA’s Smarter School Spending initiative will be highlighted and used as examples for participants to better understand and apply to their own budgets.