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Finance Manager Interview

Student’s Name

Institutional affiliation

Course

Instructor

Date
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Finance Manager Interview

Response

My respondent for this interview was the finance manager from the Townsend Harris

High School. Unfortunately, it was difficult for me to secure an appointment with him since he

was a very busy man. However, finally, I had the opportunity to interview Mr Lucas

Graham(pseudonym) on Friday 23rd 2021, at 9 AM central time, through a face-to-face

interview conducted in his office. The main purpose of the interview was to discuss the school

budgeting process of an ongoing lecture rooms construction within the university. In addition to

that, we discussed the role of the school's various stakeholders, including the teachers, principal,

central office personnel, and their contribution to the budgeting process. We also discussed the

major problems that faced the school district concerning budgeting and finance.

I first sought information about him and especially about the academic qualification that

fitted him to know how competent he was for his job. “My name is Lucas Graham, a qualified

Procurement Officer from the University of Michigan. I secured my degree from this university

in the year 2010 and later decided to further my education where I secured my masters in

procurement in 2013. I later enrolled for a short course in finance management.” he said. He

also clearly defined his roles as the finance manager, which included preparing financial

statements, business activity reports and forecasts, supervise employees that do financial

reporting and budgeting, analyze market trends to find expansion opportunities and most

importantly to aid the management in making financial decisions.

I inquired about the timeframe for the budgeting process, and he explained that there

were several types of budgets: operating budget, capital budget, and cash budget, which he did
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not give detailed information about due to time constraints. However, he said that the budgeting

process usually ran for 12 months since the budget had to represent a statement of allocation of

resources, estimation of revenues and expenditures, provision of accountability to stakeholders

and allow for the prioritization of resources and allow allocation of resources in a way that

helped achieve the goals and objectives of the university and usually ran from April whereby by

this time the Alabama State Department of Education usually have released the federal funding.

Concerning the roles of the principal, teachers, central office personnel and the board, he

listed each when building a school district budget. He said that the major role of the school

principal was to prepare the school budget while projecting the revenue and expenditure,

accounting for the school’s revenue and how it was spent, ensuring that teacher’s salaries were

within the set levels by the department of education. On the other hand, the roles of the teachers

were mainly to make operational decisions which included making lists of what the classroom

needed. Furthermore, we discussed the role of the board, which included the adoption of a

budget that was supposed to be based on a draft prepared by the superintendent, adoption of tax

rates which were supposed to be sufficient to fund the budget, monitoring the district's finances

on an ongoing basis, ensuring accounts were audited each year by an external auditor and

publishing of an end-year financial report.

To come up with a solid decision, each stakeholder, including the board, teachers and

other superintendents, all have a setting where each person is allowed to air their opinions and

the other members either agree or disagree. Precisely, the decision-making process is communal

and not based on one individual's opinion. Continuing the conversation, Graham wished that the

university focused on the practical part of the course as they focused on the theoretical part. He

said that I had the responsibility of formulating the budget, doing costing of goods sold, booking
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of assets and understanding how the research and development fitted in the financing and

accounting of the school and understanding of the cash flow and valuation, this part becomes

difficult, especially because it is not taught practically in the finance course. Therefore the

universities should focus on the decision making part apart from extensive knowledge taught in

the course.

He disclosed that the school district's greatest challenges concerning budget and finance

were that the amount of money allocated to the school by the state-federal funding was little, and

they were expected to do much with the less money allocated to them. Tax property rates were

low, and the parents of Alabama were not willing to invest much in their children's education.

Regarding the new charter bill, he said that the implications would be negative because

numerous schools would be closed, and many students would be displaced. This would be

challenging to the parents and students because “non-classroom based” programs come with

many disadvantages, such as many distractions. In addition, it becomes difficult for charter

schools to fund these virtual programs because most of the students enrolled in the schools are

just from the adjacent counties. He also said that the Alabama Accountability Act would result in

these schools closing down due to poor performance since no efforts would be put to improve the

performance since the parents would opt to transfer their children from these schools.

Reaction

The interview with Lucas Graham was successful, and I am confident that I now know

and understand the major roles that a finance manager and other stakeholders played in the

formulation of the budget and what the budgeting process entailed from a very competent

person. However, there were so many distractions, such as noises from the ongoing construction,
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which was next to his office. Nonetheless, I managed to secure the needed information, although

some were not satisfied since he claimed that some of the information was confidential. What

surprised me the most was that Graham took a degree in procurement, but he could perform the

financial management functions so perfectly without even the help of an assistant. This indicates

that you do not need to get trained for a certain course in the university for you to be competent

enough. The budgeting time frame took 12 months, and it was surprising how long it took for it

to be finalized and submitted to the department of education. Moreover, it was surprising how

the schools managed to cater to their expenses and operations with so few funds being released

by the state-federal government.

The most interesting part was that the formulation of the budget involved so many

stakeholders. I wondered how much input was needed from the different stakeholders to come up

with the budget and ensure perfect coordination. The part I would like to know more about is

more content on the New Charter School Bill and why the education department decided to come

up with the bill while it seemed to disadvantage most of the students. In addition to that, I would

like to know about how much and the techniques it used to allocate different funds to different

schools. I would also like to know why the Alabama Accountability Act gives the parents a

chance to transfer their children from the school, whereas they can improve the school's

performance. In my opinion, the governments should put more focus on education systems since

they are very important.