School District Budget Presentation Achieves Permanent PowerPoint Enlightenment

LONG ISLAND — A school district budget presentation achieved permanent PowerPoint enlightenment Tuesday, which people in the room compared to a fire drill that never rang the bell. The deck opened with a title slide, a second title slide in case anyone had blinked, and a pie chart labeled Other that contained the rest of the pie.

Every number is a journey. If we showed the number by itself, someone might read it, and then we would have to have a second journey about the reading.

By slide 80 the room had agreed not to ask what the colors meant. By slide 200 a board member had achieved a resting expression the clerk recorded as present. The file size of the presentation now exceeds the file size of the budget it describes, which the business office called a teaching moment and the server called a cry for help.

I arrived with a question and left as a stakeholder. I am still not sure what the pie was. I clapped because the lights came up, and the lights were the most concrete item in the deck.

A parent who came with one question about class size left with a tote bag and a deeper understanding of gradients. The district later clarified that the tote bag was not part of the budget. The gradient was. The final slide read Questions and then advanced itself to a slide that read Thank you, which the district described as the interactive portion.

At press time, the deck had been saved as final final version seven and scheduled to open next year's presentation, which will explain this one.