The board is being asked to approve the Tech Plan before it sets out the district’s annual budget later in the year, which Cheatham said will allow district administration “to move confidently toward implementation planning.”
“We’re confident we can fund major priorities of our district, as outlined in our strategic plan, through our zero-based budgeting process while also funding the Tech Plan, which undergirds those priorities,” she said. “We don’t believe we will be having to make major trade-offs.”
The zero-based budget process – new for MMSD – starts from scratch, allowing evaluation of all spending. “We will need to make tough decisions about work we will no longer fund that is not tightly aligned with those priorities,” Cheatham said.
What those might be, Cheatham said she can’t yet say.