Specialist, Monitoring and Program Support

Position Overview

The Office of Fiscal Strategy (OFS) is a catalyst for ensuring excellence, equity, and efficiency to ensure DCPS achieves our goals for our students. We want employees who recognize and embrace the importance of a strong partnership between schools and Central Services. When Central Services runs efficiently, and provides high-quality customer service, our school-based employees can concentrate on educating our children and leading our schools. By combining financial planning with strategic planning, this office supports DCPS with actively identifying resources, costs and budget and aligning them with our mission and goals. 

 

Divisions/Teams: The Office of Fiscal Strategy is organized into four divisions 

• Finance: Ensures school and central services finances are allocated and expended in alignment with the agency’s strategic plan, in a manner that fosters transparency, maximizes funds, promotes equity, and ensures compliance with requirements. 

• Contracts and Acquisitions: Provides procurement services to schools and Central Services programs through contract and purchase order processes in alignment with District and Federal procurement laws and regulations. Manages and facilitates the procurement of goods and services for all DCPS schools and central services, that fosters transparency, maximizes buying power, promotes equity of spending with local vendors, and ensures compliance with contractual requirements. 

• Operational Finance (Core): Works to improve organizational effectiveness and to ensure daily fiscal operations are managed efficiently across DCPS. The Operational Finance Team advocates for DCPS programs and schools by shepherding collaboration with procurement, budget, and HR teams. Operational Finance provides oversight to ensure equitable, transparent, and compliant personnel and non-personnel spending through quality customer service.  

• Fiscal Operations Systems: Supports schools and central services by leading OFS’s efforts to design efficient and effective operational finance structures and processes. Promotes agency financial data literacy by leading finance data visualization initiatives that equip DCPS stakeholders with comprehensive information.  

The Finance Division within the Office of Fiscal Strategy includes four teams: 

• School Finance: Oversees the annual budget formulation process for DCPS schools, including the allocation of resources, engaging and collaborating with internal and external budget stakeholders, and publishing school budget reports and information. The team ensures that the allocation of resources is aligned to the agency's vision and strategic priorities.  

• Budget Strategy: Oversees annual development and implementation of agency budget, including coordination of new policies and programs as directed by DCPS leadership.  Budget Strategy works to solve long-term budget challenges, improve budget processes across the agency, and serves as key relationship holder with OCFO. 

• Grant Administration: Oversees and manages all direct federal, intradistrict, and private grants. The team ensures that DCPS is following all relevant federal grant regulations, and that all grants are expended in accordance with the approved grant application. 

• Monitoring and Program Support: Exists to ensure implementation, guidance, and compliance of federal government mandates that Local Education Agencies (LEAs) must provide to schools. The team works with school leaders and service providers to understand best practices for operating a successful federal program in public and private schools, and oversees fiduciary responsibilities as outlined in ESSA, Titles I-IV. 

The Monitoring and Program Support (MPS) team administers federally funded programs and services for DCPS public schools and eligible private school students. A critical component of this work is strong fiscal stewardship: ensuring that federal resources are budgeted, obligated, purchased, invoiced, tracked, reconciled, and closed out accurately and on time, and that schools and program partners receive the goods and services supported by those funds.

The Specialist, Monitoring and Program Support is responsible for ensuring that MPS fiscal work is completed accurately, timely, and completely, including purchasing and procurement, requisitions and purchase orders, invoice processing and reconciliation, contract and vendor administration, allocation and expenditure tracking, P-Card and other fiscal transactions, accruals, carryover, and fiscal closeout. The Specialist directly supervises the Analyst, Monitoring and Program Support and is accountable for organizing, assigning, reviewing, and driving that work to completion.

This position has been designated as Protection Sensitive. Pursuant to section 410 of Chapter 4 of the D.C. Personnel Regulations; in addition to the general suitability screening, individuals applying for or occupying protection sensitive positions are subject to the following checks and tests: Criminal background check; Sex Offender Registry check; Traffic record check (as applicable).

The Specialist, Monitoring and Program Support will report to the Director, Monitoring and Program Support.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

The below statements are intended to describe the general nature and scope of work being performed by this position. This is not a complete listing of all responsibilities, duties, and/or skills required. Other duties may be assigned.

• Leads day-to-day MPS fiscal operations and ensures accurate, timely completion of purchasing, procurement, invoicing, payment, allocation tracking, contract, and closeout activities.
• Directly supervises the Analyst, Monitoring and Program Support; establishes priorities, assigns work, reviews deliverables, provides coaching, and ensures fiscal deadlines are met.
• Maintains oversight of the fiscal workload; tracks pending actions, aging items, discrepancies, and deadlines and intervenes to prevent delays or missed actions.
• Personally performs fiscal work to ensure completion, including requisitions, purchase orders, purchasing documentation, invoice reconciliation, tracker updates, and vendor follow-up.
• Leads purchasing and procurement activities; obtains quotes, prepares required documentation, coordinates requisitions and purchase orders, and supports P-Card and indirect service request processes.
• Oversees invoice processing and reconciliation; verifies charges and documentation, resolves discrepancies, and ensures invoices are accurately tracked through payment.
• Oversees assigned contract administration and vendor fiscal management; monitors funding, purchase orders, invoicing, deliverables, spending, documentation, performance, and closeout.
• Maintains and reviews allocation, commitment, expenditure, and available-balance tracking; reconciles MPS records with applicable financial systems and resolves variances.
• Leads fiscal planning and year-end closeout; monitors spending, prepares accruals, tracks outstanding obligations, supports carryover planning, and ensures deadlines are met.
• Establishes fiscal procedures, internal controls, calendars, trackers, and documentation standards that support accurate transactions and audit-ready fiscal records.
• Serves as the primary MPS fiscal liaison with OFS, procurement, contracts, budget, vendors, and schools; resolves fiscal issues and escalates barriers when necessary.
• Analyzes fiscal data and improves systems, dashboards, workflows, and reporting tools to strengthen accuracy, efficiency, transparency, and stewardship of MPS funds.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and three to five years of related work experience.
• Master's degree preferred.
• Substantial experience in fiscal operations, accounting or bookkeeping, procurement, purchasing, contract administration, budget execution, financial administration, or related public-sector operations.
• Demonstrated experience supervising, directing, or leading the work of others and holding a fiscal workstream accountable for deadlines, accuracy, and completion.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, including the ability to reconcile allocations, commitments, expenditures, invoices, payments, and available balances and identify discrepancies or risks.
• Strong written communication skills, including the ability to communicate clearly and professionally with vendors, maintain accurate and comprehensive records, and establish and uphold clear standards and consistent practices.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Office; experience with financial systems, databases, workflow automation, dashboards, Microsoft Power Platform, Quickbase, ServiceNow, or similar tools strongly preferred.
• Knowledge of public-sector fiscal controls, federal grant fiscal administration, procurement and contracting requirements, or comparable financial-control environments preferred.
• Exceptional organizational skills, attention to detail, judgment, and ability to manage a high-volume fiscal portfolio with multiple simultaneous deadlines and dependencies.
• Strong written and oral communication skills and demonstrated ability to work effectively with vendors, procurement and finance partners, school staff, program staff, and senior leaders.
• Proactive, responsive, and solutions-oriented, with a strong sense of ownership and accountability for ensuring fiscal work is completed accurately and on time.

DCPS Values

• STUDENTS FIRST: We recognize students as whole children and put their needs first in everything we do.
• COURAGE: We have the audacity to learn from our successes and failures, to try new things, and to lead the nation as a proof point of PK-12 success.
• EQUITY: We work proactively to eliminate opportunity gaps by interrupting institutional bias and investing in effective strategies to ensure every student succeeds.
• EXCELLENCE: We work with integrity and hold ourselves accountable for exemplary outcomes, service, and interactions.
• TEAMWORK: We recognize that our greatest asset is our collective vision and ability to work collaboratively and authentically.
• JOY: We enjoy our collective work and will enthusiastically celebrate our success and each other.

We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to creating an inclusive, accessible workplace. We welcome and encourage applications from individuals with disabilities. Accommodation and/or application assistance is available upon request at all stages of the application and employment process. To request accommodation, please contact [email protected].