Budget Playground™ allows school and community leaders, citizens, and other interested and knowledgeable parties to create multi-year budget scenarios for New York State school districts (excluding New York City). Save and modify those scenarios in real-time to enhance local understanding and real-time discussion of budget development and longer-term planning incorporating projected costs and revenues into the future.
Budget Playground™ is designed specifically to explore various budget scenarios by fostering quick and easy scenario building. Once you input the most recent year or two of data, a “slider bar” allows the user to select a revenue or expense item and slide the bar to the assumed percent (%) increase or decrease.
The first step in budget forecasting and scenario development is understanding trends. Budget Playground™ makes this effortless for the user. Fed by a REST web service, the app delivers up to 16 years of audited historical financial trend data for 676 school districts in NYS (does not include New York City data).
Budget Playground™ displays budget history or projections one year per screen, though mini-trend lines for all years are always visible. To navigate from year to year, the user swipes the year at the bottom of the screen to flick back and forward through each year’s details.