LAST MONTH my fellow school directors and I presented our proposed school budget to the three-man finance committee composed of the members of the board of trustees of the Archdiocese of San Fernando Education System (ASFES). The number of people who reviewed our documents and grilled us for more than an hour was nowhere near the number of lawmakers in the plenary budget hearing in Congress that our Department of Education Secretary faced. Nonetheless it was just as grueling, if not even tougher.
As it has been the practice since 2018, we were not allowed to bring along our finance officer or any staff for that matter. Unlike the education chief who had a coterie of lawyers, advisers, and consultants during the hearing, we did not have the luxury of a staff who could always come to our rescue when we find ourselves grappling for the right answer to the questions thrown our way. It was not only a test of how we know every nitty-gritty detail in our proposed budget; it was also a measure of how we have fostered a culture of transparency, accountability and sense of ownership in the preparation, monitoring and evaluation of the budget in our respective school communities. From the bottoms-up approach that saw the participation of every school stakeholder, to the periodic monitoring and review of collections and disbursements, and to the presentation of the monthly budget performance report to the school community, that is good school governance in motion.
The members of the three-man committee, headed by a CPA-judge no less, have been with the ASFES since 2017. But mind you, they did not mince any word in scrutinizing our proposed budget. We have had our share of being questioned by people in the same caliber as the Hontiveros, Manuel, Castro and Lagman of the Senate; and fortunately for us we did not have to rely on the likes of Quimbo, Zamora or a Sandro to defend us against the tough, unrelenting inquiry of the panel.
During the more than an hour of presentation that stretched for almost like an eternity, we took down notes of every recommendation and then sought the assistance of our fellow directors how to go about the revisions. No, we did not spend the days that followed by holding a press conference to gain public sympathy or by meeting and telling our stakeholders that the ASFES finance committee disapproved our proposed budget, blocked our school improvement plans and are therefore the new enemies of the school. Never!
To say that the three-man committee made the budget hearing process arduous and backbreaking for the school heads would be an understatement. But we are not at all complaining. When they ask us to explain how we have come up with our projections on the electric bill or the canteen income for the year, when they question us how the approved increase in tuition would redound to the employees’ salaries and benefits, or when they criticize us for our poor collection efforts due to the huge amount of back accounts from the previous year, we do not cry howls of protest. Neither do we raise hell and object to their lines of questioning nor resort to argumentum ad passions, spew melodramatic lines how we have worked so hard for the past years and should therefore be spared from the barrage of questions.
Their message, instructions and comments serve as the compass by which we navigate another school year to ensure the sound management of our school’s financial resources. We answer their questions and present pieces of evidence; we simply comply with what we are asked to do. We never go into a tantrum, display arrogance and spew a mouthful against them for simply doing their job. We respect the process. After all, we are talking about the annual budget collected from the hard-earned money of our students’ parents. The money is not ours for the taking and spending at every whim and caprice; it is simply entrusted to us so we can continue providing quality Catholic education to our learners. Nothing more, nothing less.
