Sharon Brown, a member of the UFT’s Administrative Education Officers and Analysts Chapter, supports the principals of 32 Bronx high schools with budget compliance.

Which division of the Department of Education do you work for?

I work for the school finance department in the DOE’s Office of School Leadership as a budget director. There are 12 of us in the Bronx.

How do you spend your workday?

Mostly, I’m meeting with principals via video chat to review their budgets and prepare for deadlines. When I’m not doing that, I’m approving the modifications they’ve entered into Galaxy, the budget software our schools use, or I’m tying up loose ends in Galaxy based on decisions made in our meetings.

How does your work change over the course of the school year?

May and June are what we call budget season, when the new school budgets come out. It’s our busiest time. We update Galaxy with staffing changes, including new hires, retirements and transfers. We make sure we have enough personnel in each category — for example, the mandated number of special education teachers, English as a new language teachers and paraprofessionals. And we go through the budget line by line to identify and fix deficits.

In October and November, we check to see whether the previous year’s budget projection was accurate. School budgets are based on student enrollment, so we’re checking the accuracy of last year’s projections. If a school has fewer students, it might need to return money, and if it has more students, it might receive more funding.

December and January are quieter months. I check in with the principals to see how the school year is going. Maybe they don’t have enough money and need to make cuts or seek out other funding sources. Maybe they have too much money and need to spend it faster.

In January and February, we prepare for procurement deadlines. These are deadlines for when schools can make any nonpersonnel purchases, including supplies, professional development, trips, equipment or furniture. If principals miss the procurement deadlines, they might lose money from the school budget, or they might need to wait until the following year to spend it.

February and March are when these deadlines start to come up. In April, we start preparing the budget for the new school year.

How do you balance working with 32 different schools?

Things that are subject to a deadline are a higher priority. When there are new principals, more of my focus is on helping them. If there’s a school facing financial issues, I spend more time trying to help that principal relieve the financial pressures.

Where does school funding come from?

There are different pots of money: the city, the state and the federal government. Each has different restrictions. Money from the city is very flexible, but state and federal funds have stricter guidelines dictating what schools can use them for and when. It all has to be carefully documented.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

It makes me happy when a principal doesn’t think there are enough funds to hire a staff member or run a program, and I’m able to move things around so they can. I remember one year when a school needed an after-school program for students to earn credits to graduate and the principal didn’t think there was enough money in the budget. I had to make modifications that required a lot of know-how of the different funding streams — what you can use them for and what you can’t — to release more money for that principal. In the end, I found a way to make sure the teachers would be paid and the students would get the help they needed. That was a big win for me. — As told to Hannah Brown