Nolberto Delgadillo, CFO, Tulsa Public Schools
On this episode of The 3rd Question we talk with Nolberto Delgadillo, CFO, Tulsa Public Schools, as he discusses changing the conversation on budgets and the extensive community engagement effort he took to redesign the budget for his district.
Video Transcript
Ryan:
Welcome to The 3rd Question, an interview series with public sector thought leaders from around the country. And today I am lucky enough to be joined by Nolberto Delgadillo. He is the CFO of Tulsa Public Schools, and we're really happy to have you today. Nice to see you.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Likewise, Ryan. Thanks for having me on, and you got the pronunciation spot on, so yeah.
Ryan:
Right. Well, I practiced about 15 times before we started, I guess. So thanks.
Ryan:
So before we get started into the three questions, I'd love if you could just introduce yourself to our audience, maybe a little bit about the school district and some of the details there.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Sure thing. So, Nolberto Delgadillo, Chief Financial Officer. I'm originally from LA, and I've been in Tulsa, Oklahoma now for three years, three awesome years. And Tulsa Public Schools is an amazing school district. When you think about Oklahoma, you think about all the wonderful things here, and then you think about the diversity. We're about a 35% Latinx district with about 25% African American, 25% White, and the rest with Native American, Asian, so it's a fairly diverse district, about 35,000 students, 75 schools. We manage about $635 million budget, so it's a good size. And when we think about what we do in our district of about 173 square miles, so there's a lot of land out here, so we're fairly spread out, but yeah, so that's some of the aspects of the district.
Ryan:
Awesome. Well, let's get into the questions then.
Ryan:
So, my first question for you, Nolberto, is budgets, as we know in the public sector space, are always a challenge to manage, control, and balance for a lot of different reasons. And I'm sure that the current COVID-19 pandemic has made that even more of a challenge from everyone I've talked to. But I also know that your district just in the last year or so went through a pretty extensive community engagement effort to redesign the budget for the current fiscal year and going forward. And that brought about changes for the schools, the staff, and your students.
Ryan:
So with all of that, maybe you can go into a little bit of it, but throughout that process, which I'm guessing is kind of a continual evolution...
Nolberto Delgadillo:
You're right.
Ryan:
... what were you... or how did you identify what things to prioritize, and what were the criteria you used in prioritizing one thing over another?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
No, it was a very involved process and something that we wanted to really take it beyond just a budget exercise. And so in education, like in many organizations, there's always several initiatives, best practices. And so we just needed to ground in a few fundamental principles that we felt were strong components to education.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So specifically, we're thinking about the whole child, academic excellence, strong schools, and you think about, really, how that can translate into any sector when you're just thinking about core principles. So you're thinking about core principles and within there, then there's several strategies in order to achieve that. And some of those strategies that we had were based on data, best practices, so we took that information and wanted to get feedback from the community. So wanted to get feedback from students, business leaders, faith leaders, the community to really start that alignment process.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
And yeah, those are some difficult, critical conversations, but we have an amazing team. We have an amazing team across the organization, but because we had to balance our budget, it became less of a cutting exercise and more of an investment exercise. And really through the lens of we have an amazing team, we can do anything, but we can't do everything. So how do we work with the community to really figure out this is where we stand. So now let's align with where the community stands, and what are some things we can stop doing or do less of but still maintain its integrity.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So that community engagement was critical to really uncover some blind spots. As we started thinking about how are we prioritizing, it's almost like this big giant focus group with the community, and it gets testy, right, because we're not talking about a couch or an iPhone. We're talking about education.
Ryan:
Education for all those kids.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Right. Exactly. Likelihoods and future, so as we thought about the strategies and initiatives and work with the community to align and uncover blind spots. Did they consider it important, yes or no? What value did they receive or perceive from it? So were there opportunities to reassess or repurpose investments to sync up with that community sentiment? Or if not, then in what areas were we not aligned? What areas was there a better job of explaining, "Hey, we're investing a million dollars in said initiative," and people are looking at us like, "Why?" So, how do we then have those conversations and discover that? So as we continued those conversations, it was also muddled up with the fundamental mechanics of a budget, right? So, and when we think about education in public sector and private sector, there's fixed costs, there's variable costs, there's all these different components.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
And one big thing we talk about is transparency about the budget, but you can be as transparent as you want about a budget, but if no one understands it-
Ryan:
[inaudible 00:06:12].
Nolberto Delgadillo:
... Or gets irrelevant implications. So it's like, "Well, what is this?" So, as we ground it in strategy to help align priorities with what the community felt was also important, there's also building this level of understanding with how the budget works. So bringing all that together ultimately helped creating a sense of urgency because there's these budget mechanics, right? A deficit or state cuts or declining enrollment, right? Revenue is going down, but then it's that level of urgency to reach also strategic alignment. So district feels this way, community feels this way. How do we close that gap? Where are we aligned? And try to fill as much of that as possible, and it's never 100%. It's never 100%, but that's really how we work through that process to try to prioritize where we felt like this is critical. How does the community feel about it? And if we're not aligned, then why? How do we unpack that and have those conversations so [inaudible 00:07:28]. And as you can probably sense, I can keep talking about this, but in a nutshell, that was a way we worked to prioritize.
Ryan:
You said a couple of words there. You said alignment, transparency, and I'm sure what hopefully is built because you're making it such a collaborative process is trust to a certain degree, right? Like you said, you'll never get 100% of the adoption or buy-in, not from every... I mean, it's just near impossible.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
It's impossible.
Ryan:
But, to get to the level at where you're getting the majority of people trusting that these are the right decisions, and when they're getting involved in those, they're at least getting a voice which is important. So that's...
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Absolutely. That was a key factor, and even from during that time, we revamped our budget website. We added all sorts of FAQs really to demystify misconceptions and really help add some additional meaning to certain aspects of budgeting. And so, it's a big component and to your point, right, where it's never going to be 100%, but we know we're putting that information out there and engaging.
Ryan:
Right, right. Well, you did also talk about bringing in a lot of business leaders, faith leaders, and other community leaders besides the leadership there at the district itself. And as I go into kind of this next question, you have a background that I always find so interesting when somebody has come from the private sector into the public sector. There are some amazing public sector leadership across the country, thought leaders across the country who've done it their whole career. They started out of college, and they stayed in a city or county, or they've gone from city to county or school district.
Ryan:
But when you get this mix of I've done some private sector and public sector, it seems like it brings a lot of innovative thought, maybe more quickly. So my question, I guess, is having both of those worlds experienced, what do you think you've been able to bring into your school district side? And I know you worked for a school out here in California prior to Tulsa that might, maybe, I wouldn't say normally have happened, but might not have happened as quickly from a financial management perspective. And how would you describe maybe the difference between those two worlds or the two verticals, both good and bad.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
I think-
Ryan:
Or you can stick with good if you want.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
I'm just trying to keep it real.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
It is an interesting dynamic, but similar to what I mentioned before, we're not talking about building widgets or iPhones, right? It's critical, important aspects of the life of our youths and the children and the community, the subsequent impact to that. So there is this different twist and expectations to it, and it's a positive twist, right? And that was just, why did I leave the private sector? I wanted to do something a little bit more fulfilling that aligned to my personal goals, and what better than take my private sector experience and bring it to the public sector.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
And one of the things that has been... I think I've brought to the table over the few years is really thinking about the budget as an investment plan and changing the conversation from, "Well, our expenses or how much are we spending" to really think about it not expenses, so how to resource use and managing our resources. So, people, time, and money as an investment to support our students.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So, in the private sector there's key performance indicators. I think about all the benchmarks and variety of different metrics that drive how are we investing? How are we using resources to achieve the best outcome which is profit, right? Fundamentally it comes down to profit, and then all of that happens within a framework of planning and achieving certain milestones, and there's a specific cadence to achieve an alignment of conversations and goals between people, time, and money.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
And in the public sector, in my situation, in many school districts, right, we also have key performance indicators. There's reading and math proficiency. There's benchmarks for areas as employee turnover, teacher engagement. And you can think about a variety of different components of like school performance frameworks, so graduation rates, absenteeism, and all that to say is I think... I feel that I've helped bring from the private sectors more deliberate conversation and planning to design some of the financial resource strategies to align and support outcomes and within the context of that intentional annual planning process that we've built is... I think to where we were a few years ago to where we are now in that cadence, that intentionality with how we're planning and building out a thoughtful consideration and collaboration to have discussions around resources to support our outcomes, right, which for us is not about profit, but instead, how are we graduating lifelong learners that can make that positive contributions to the community?
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So really going beyond the budget, being this accounting, traditional finance tool which tends to happen a lot in the public sector, and it's like use as ability to report for compliance reasons. We have our object codes are aligned and the chart of accounts looks neat which is important, but then how do we help shift that conversation and the budget to reflect this investment road map. And so that, I think that's that framework or mindset that I've been able to bring to the table.
Ryan:
Thanks. Well, we're already at the third question. And for today, over my shoulder, I have a few objects that are time travel devices, and I'm going to choose for you the Tardis from Doctor Who.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Nice, Doctor Who.
Ryan:
And so, Nolberto, if I gave you the Tardis and said, "You could travel back to a point in your career, both private or public, but basically maybe change something or maybe not even change something, but were telling yourself something, give yourself some advice, what would that be and why?"
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Travel more.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
I think I would tell myself... I think of where I was in my career 20 years ago and now where I am and really, I grew up in LA. I grew up in Compton, California. So you think about what that meant in the 80s and growing up and working in the private sector and coming out to the public sector and thinking about my career early on, I tell myself, lean into the uncomfortable. Be willing to speak up a little more. I've always been a little kind of reserved and would not necessarily speak the loudest. But I think I would tell myself to ask myself, "Who's not in the room? What would they be thinking of wanting to say? What would their contribution to this proposal be?" Or... and so thinking about that, I would ask myself to... or I would tell myself to ask myself. This time travel stuff is so confusing.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
And as I think about this point in my career, in the public sector work, right? Now I ask those questions, and I think about it, and what does it mean from an equity lens. And, then when we think about who's not at the table, how we're making these decisions. So, that can be very powerful and enlightening, and it can carry over into the private sector as well, and you just think about market share. Who are you engaging from a client perspective in the public sector? Like I said, it could be really enlightening.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
So I would travel back in time and tell myself, "Hey Nolberto, nudge. It's okay. Step into it. Just step into it."
Ryan:
Well, it sounds like even from what you're sharing about what you guys have been doing with your budget and the engagement with the community, you're already asking who are the people that should be at the table through some of these processes. So maybe you did trip travel back in time and gave yourself that advice, so you're using it now today at Tulsa.
Ryan:
So anyway, well, I really appreciate you joining me for these few minutes and sharing a little bit of thought. It's always great to have such a diverse group of people from both the municipal side and the K-12 and higher ed side on 3rd Question.
Ryan:
For any of our viewers who want to hear more interviews like this, they can go to the3rdquestion.com and subscribe. You can listen back to this interview there as well.
Ryan:
So Nolberto, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. And good luck with the rest of the... well, now there's a school year started up. Hopefully things continue to slowly get back to normal as this year continues.
Nolberto Delgadillo:
Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me.
Ryan:
Have a great day.
