District Budgeting Processes

The current district I work in has an extensive budgeting process focused on site-based budgeting. As each school has a variety of programs and support services for the learners they serve, schools can be given increased autonomies through SBB to make decisions about the services and programs they offer to best meet the needs of their learners.
(SBB). "The key to a successful SBB process is to let staff closest to the instructional setting set priorities and allocate funds" (Shilling & Tomal, 2013, p.49). Leveraging SBB in the district allows school leaders to determine how their specific sites need to use the funds to provide necessary services for their learners. The SBB designations to each school are based on student enrollment numbers for each school and a preset amount is provided for each student attending a school.

Shifting The Pedagogical Focus

In a recent article published on The Guardian "In an age of robots, schools are teaching our children to be redundant" by George Monbiot, I was especially impacted by the statement, "At present we are stuck with the social engineering of an industrial workforce in a post-industrial era." The significant impact on me here is the accuracy with which this statement is characterized in our schools on a daily basis. As technology and innovation continues to grow at unprecedented rates, I am consistently experiencing students being taught through 19th century methods and structures. Students continue to sit in rows, working on paper worksheets (or digital worksheets), all completing the exact same assignments, and turning them in for a teacher to grade/give feedback to prepare for testing of rote memorization and recall skills.