Interviewing the person primarily responsible for the budget in the school where I'm doing my internship as a leader provided interesting insights into the challenges faced on an annual basis. The budget is often provided to the school in the early spring and consists of pre-determined amounts by the district. The school is then responsible for itemizing out the budget by making decisions around where the funds will be allocated to have the greatest impacts.
The primary factors guiding the allocation of funds to each school in the district center around student enrollment. The district designates specific funds to schools each year based on the number of students enrolled. This allocation provides schools equal funding however, it doesn't always take into account the needs of the schools and the students they serve. One of the biggest challenges faced by persons managing the budgets at the schools is to determine the equitable distribution within the school based on the equality distribution by the district. The person in charge of the budget says they always try to focus on what has the greatest impacts across all learners in the school.
"Considering that the primary reason schools exist is the education of young people, the majority of the financial resources should go toward the instructional process, namely the teachers and tools for teaching" (Shilling & Tomal, 2013, p.102). This is the mindset of the person in charge of the budget and the school has set a precedence of running as much on instructional resources impacting all learners as possible. As a result, decisions about cutting programs or positions aren't taken lightly as each cut directly impacts all learners in big ways. A challenge has been dealing with district cuts and ignoring autonomies the school has been given in past years. As a result, the person in charge of the budget has had to advocate for more funding based on prior contractual agreements with the district or be faced with eliminating valuable instructional resources and supports.
"Simply dispersing funds based on the number of students in each school does not serve the best interests of anyone. The method of dispersing funds should depend on the make-up of the student body and the challenges instructing them pose" (Shilling & Tomal, 2013, p.107-108). As the school serves an English Language Learner population above sixty percent and a free-and-reduced lunch population above forty five percent, additional considerations need to be made when allocating funds to the school. The school has had high levels of success in recent years with low level funding and at least deserves the right to be allocated amounts equivalent to past years. Making financial decisions by any person responsible for a school/district budget becomes incredibly challenging when faced with resource allocations lower than projected or provided in the past.
Reference:
Shilling, C., & Tomal, D. (2013). Resource Management For School Administrators:
Optimizing Fiscal, Facility, and Human Resources. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.
Shilling, C., & Tomal, D. (2013). Resource Management For School Administrators:
Optimizing Fiscal, Facility, and Human Resources. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield.
Your district sounds very much like mine with regards to how they do their budget. I would think that most larger districts likely do it this way. Thanks for your blog! :)
ReplyDeleteHI Nick,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that dispersing funds on a student population basis alone is faulty. On a topical level, it does seem fair: we have a lot of students, we need a lot of money. However, there is so much more beneath that surface to take into account when deciphering where the budget is and where the fund could be spent to make an actual impact at the school. How do you propose to approach this as a principal?