In this Technical Note, we document the unique experience of the state of Pernambuco in restructuring its School Management Training Program (Progepe), adopting the Certificate in Education Finance (CFE) from Georgetown University as its methodological framework. For the first time, the course included educational finance modules, and the study aimed to analyze the profile of the future school managers participating in the program, as well as their perceptions and prior and post-training knowledge regarding education funding at national, local, and school levels. The methodology consisted of administering questionnaires at two different points in the Progepe course: before the program began (Wave I) and at the end of the training (Wave II). The analysis of responses (N5,586) allowed us to identify changes in participants‘ perceptions regarding various aspects of financial management in education. The key findings from the longitudinal analysis revealed important progress, particularly in the understanding of the concept of efficiency in education funding, as well as improvements in participants‘ comprehension of the expenditure structure of a Department of Education, with an increase in the recognition of teachers‘ salaries as the main spending component. The pseudo difference-in-differences analysis did not identify statistically significant patterns of heterogeneous learning among different participant profiles. In conclusion, the Progepe experience demonstrates the relevance and potential of continuing education programs focused on education finance for school managers. However, the study also highlights the need for continuous improvement in such training programs and for more structural changes in the initial training of teachers to strengthen financial management in schools more comprehensively. The lessons learned from Progepe may serve as a reference for other training initiatives in education management, both in Brazil and in other Latin American contexts.