Built, Not Downloaded: The Value of Productive Struggle

My View

Like many superintendents, I spent the past year wrestling with a budget that simply would not balance.

I inherited the FY ’26 budget for my school district as an interim superintendent. The spreadsheets, formulas and reports were all there. In an age when artificial intelligence can summarize documents, identify trends and suggest solutions in seconds, it would have been easy to believe the answer could be generated instantly.

Instead, our leadership team printed the line-by-line budget. We spread the pages across a conference room table, taped them together and began highlighting areas needing a second look. Yellow for places where costs had risen unexpectedly. Red for accounts that seemed out of alignment. Green for possibilities, however small.

Standing there, I realized no technology could replace the thinking this moment required. There was no shortcut.