New York State School Board financial and governance practices in school districts that have failed and passed budgets

The purpose of this study was to compare the financial and governance practices of New York State School Boards whose school districts had failed budgets in two of three years between 2006 and 2009, to those school districts that had passed budgets in each of these years. The matching of failed budget school districts to passed budget school districts was determined by the New York State Education Department's definition of a similar school.;The financial practices examined were financial planning, financial management responsibilities, and financial forecasting. The governance practices examined were policy orientation, leadership, and board development.;Surveys developed by Grucci (2003), Eisenberg (2004), Burak (2006) and Chen (2007) were adapted and served as the main instrument for gathering data from school board members in those school districts that were identified as passed and failed budget school districts. The survey instrument consisted of six demographic items used to correlate and compare data. The survey instrument also contained 44 items to which respondents responded using a five-point Likert Scale.;The results indicated significant differences between the passed and failed budget school districts in their school board members' financial practices. In all cases, the averages in the financial practices factors of the passed budget school districts were higher than the failed budget school districts. Regarding passed and failed budget school districts school board members' governance practices, the average for policy orientation was significantly higher in passed budget school districts than in failed budget school districts. There were no significant differences between the passed and failed budget school districts in the factors of leadership, and board development.;The study indicated the only relationship between the demographic characteristics of school board members to the school district's budget passing or failing was the years of service on the school board. Passed budget school districts tend to have school board members with greater years of service on the school board and failed budget school districts tend to have school board members with less years of service on the school board.;The study concluded that the only budget passing or failing predictors were the school board members' financial management responsibilities practices and the number of years of service of the school board member on the school board.