A district CFO says a $75,000 dashboard that only two people used was part of how South Bend found $20 million. Hiring platforms deserve the same look.
Ahnaf Tahmid, chief financial officer of South Bend Community School Corp. in Indiana, told the Association of School Business Officials International’s 2026 conference that his district found about $20 million in annual savings. K-12 Dive reported his presentation on October 19. The headline numbers were big: about $10 million from switching health insurance providers, about $5 million a year from bringing facilities management in-house, and about $5 million from administrative efficiencies.
One detail was small and memorable. The district canceled a $75,000 a year financial dashboard that only two employees had logged into in the past year. It is the kind of line item that exists because no one ever questioned it. Every district has a version of it, and one of the most likely places to find it is the recruiting budget.
Most districts can tell you what they pay for hiring tools. Few can tell you how many hires each one produced.
The Recruiting Stack Nobody Audits
Over the years, many districts have collected hiring tools the way a garage collects boxes. A platform for postings, another for applicant tracking, one more for a regional job board, and a bundled module that came with a software contract. Names like Frontline Education, SchoolSpring, EDJOIN, K12JobSpot, HigherEdJobs, and PowerSchool are common in these stacks, through subscriptions, per-posting fees, or bundled software.
None of these is a bad product. The question is whether a district is paying for several tools that do the same job, and whether each one earns its cost. In many places, no one has checked.
A One-Hour Audit
A district can answer the question in about an hour. List every recruiting platform and fee. For each one, pull the number of hires made in the past year that began with that channel. Divide cost by hires to see the cost per hire, and flag any tool with no hires attributed to it.
The results are often revealing. A platform with a large annual fee and few hires is a candidate for cancellation. Two platforms that reach the same candidates are a candidate for consolidation. A free option that produces hires at least as well as a paid one is a candidate for a bigger role.
Where the Savings Can Go
South Bend put $12 million of its savings toward a one-time $9,000 raise for all teachers. Before the raise, the district ranked 203rd of 340 Indiana districts in average teacher pay. Tahmid said teacher vacancies fell to zero at the start of the 2026-27 school year.
A caution is needed. The figures come from a conference presentation, the article does not independently verify them, and some savings are measured against projected costs. The raise is one-time, and the article gives no baseline for vacancies or data on retention. But the method travels even if the specific numbers need more evidence.
A recruiting budget is not just a cost. It is a menu of choices about what a candidate will see first.
Spend on What Candidates Notice
Savings from the recruiting stack are rarely large enough to fund a raise on their own, but they can fund things candidates notice. A stipend for a hard to staff position. A mentor for every first-year teacher. Protected planning time. Each is a direct signal about how the district treats its people, and each supports retention. Learning Policy Institute research estimates that replacing a single teacher costs between $12,000 and $25,000, so even modest retention gains can offset the cost.
Make the Posting Do the Work
The posting itself is a hiring tool, and many districts underuse it. State the pay and schedule in plain terms. Name the grade level, the subject, and the start date. Describe the mentoring and the planning time. A candidate comparing offers on a phone will not read a long document, and the district that answers the questions first often gets the call.
Bring Finance and HR to the Same Table
Tahmid contrasted an accountant’s mindset, focused on bookkeeping and compliance, with a strategist’s approach that considers students, teachers, and taxpayers. The recruiting version of that idea is a monthly conversation between the business office and human resources. Finance brings the cost data and HR brings the hiring data. Together they can see which spending moves vacancies and which does not.
For a fuller look at South Bend’s savings, the raise, and the caveats, read K12 Talent’s analysis of the South Bend savings and teacher raise. Districts that want to post teacher jobs free can start here.
About the Author: Charlie Isham is the Founder and CEO of K12 Data, Inc., which operates K12 Data, College Leads, and K12 Talent. He has spent more than 15 years building education data infrastructure and has watched how schools, colleges, and the companies that serve them buy for over a decade. He is based in Encinitas, California.