http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bs-ci-school-budget-20100414,0,7361987.story
This seems to finally be what looks like good news, in term of the much talked about Baltimore City Public School Systems budget. The Baltimore City school board voted recently to adopt a $1.23 billion budget for the next academic year that will increase the amount of funding for students and continue shifting control over spending from the central office to principals. In its adoption of the 2011 budget, proposed by schools CEO Andres Alonso, the system will spend about $200 more per student next year. However, that extra money will come from a decrease in the amount of additional funds the district provides in extra educational services for students who have disabilities, fall behind in achievement, are advanced or are at risk for dropping out. For example, students with disabilities this year received an additional $1,282 per student; next year, those students will receive an additional $641. The board will also eliminate 15 vacant positions in the school system's central office and put the $637,000 saved back into the pot for city principals to use. Wow! The per student funding will increase; does this mean that achievement will increase for the students? Money in the hands of principals, will this be misappropriated like it was at the central office or are principals now budget specialist as well as educators? This makes me question if the principals are qualified to control their budgets, do they get any training or are they just going from their gut? The increased money sounds great in the news, I guess only time will tell if the students benefit from the increased spending.
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I am interested to learn more about this "shift" in budgeting--it seems like we are taking money from one group of students and distributing it to others. Which begs the question--how does the system decide which students deserve what funding? I guess I'm also confused by this shift. The categories for students that receive extra funding--disabilities, are behind, are advanced, or at risk--seem to encompass many if not most students. So, how is this a shift in the budget?
And to your later thought about putting this money into the hands of principals...it worries me to think of some of the people that are receiving power over budgets. I think that while centrally controlled money is very mismanaged, it could be devastating to a school if the entire budget is transferred into unprepared hands. For example, what if a school spends lots of its budget on well-intentioned instructional tools but fails to budget for the less sexy things like repairs or supplies or substitutes?
I often wonder what the accountability measures are on school spending and how strictly they are overseen? Does oversight by the system help or hurt schools overall? I find myself hoping that this increase helps students in city schools next year, but wondering if added funding in this case would be like giving a plant sunlight but no water and expecting it to grow.
It is good that students are getting more money but it is also bad that some students will be getting less. I think that principals for the most part don't know how to manage the schools money. So some of it will most likely be misappropriated. I think that at schools right now it is not that the school does not have money, it is that the principal does not know how to spend the money they do have properly. It is a lot to ask of principals to manage a budget as well as run a school. Like you said money was being misappropriated at central offices. Maybe they wanted to shift the blame for poor use of financial resources onto the individual schools and they say that they are doing it to give the principals, and schools more power in decision making.
Couple of interesting things in this post that I want to comment on: I guess I'm confused at how the whole funding thing works. My school is currently in the middle of budget cutting positions for next year because our proposed budget is around $4,000,000 and we are already $500K over for this year. Cutting quality teachers and staff from a school sucks so it's great to hear that Alonso is going to increase the budget.
Because a school's budget is directly related to student enrollment, I wonder what each school will do in order to 'tweek' the system and receive more funding. I heard through the grapevine that instead of revisiting the budget in Sept. and Oct only, they are goin to revisit it every month (or something like that)...it will be interested to see what happens during the upcoming school year.
Another point I wanted to make was the while putting more of the budget in a principal's hands is a good idea on paper, if a school has an irresponsible principal, this could spell 'doom' for the school and their budget.
It is wonderful that the per student funding in Baltimore will increase for the 2010-2011 school year. However, since the funding a school receives is still in the form of fair student funding, I'm not sure how much it will affect the achievement levels in the city. As a teacher in the Baltimore City Schools I have come to believe that equal, is not always fair. Some schools need more money and more staff in order to put into place and execute the instructional, climate, and behavioral structures a well functioning school needs. I am worried that the extra money each student gets, will end up being wasted, when it could be much more effectively and fairly spent on schools that really need it, no matter what their enrollment may be.
I am excited to hear that we are getting more money for most students next year, after reading the last article about cutting health services and other services at City schools. While I am not happy about the cuts for the students who have disabilities (the students who may need it the most), I am interested to see how principals use their budgeting powers. I feel like appropriating funds for a school is a task that some principals are going to do well, and that some are not. But to give only some principals the power to control the budget while others cannot would create a huge problem. Therefore, I am eager to see how the majority of principals will do with this task, and if it is beneficial to the students and their achievement in the long run. Different schools have different needs, and the principal should be the one to assess and analyze these needs to guide the appropriation of funds. Fingers crossed for our students!
I worry about the cuts to special ed student funding. It can be a hard sell to argue that inclusion benefits a school, even though I truely believe it does. Having a kid bring along a chunk of money can make an environment more welcoming.
The question of student funding is a sticky one. Theoretically, more money means better resources, more staff, and increased achievement, but realistically if you don't have qualified and experienced teachers and administrators, who know exactly what they need to help their students achieve, all the money in the world won't help the fundamental problem of lagging achievement. I could point out dozens of different 'intervention' programs in our library and school closets--all quite pricey and promising--that are gathering dust because the people in place aren't sure how to incorporate them. I'm hopeful that my doubts are unfounded, and more money will flow directly where it needs to go, but I have my doubts.
I think it's interesting that you ask if principals are (in theory) supposed to be budget specialist or educators. Is it Alonso's intention to get more business-minded people into the principals seats? Or does he want to get professional educators in those spots so as to improve the quality of education at schools? And I think it's interesting that you ask if principals get any training on how to spend money appropriately. I am interested in the answers to these questions because it seems that me that many BCPSS principals are acting more as CEOs of schools than the master educators that they are supposed to be. And it makes me anxious that principals have so much control over money because I think it's really easy for them (whether intentionally or not) to play favorites. For example, my principal really prioritizes technology, so he spent a lot of money on computer carts and projectors and Smart Boards. However, he does not prioritize substitute teachers, so often there are days when a teacher has no coverage whatsoever when a he or she is out. And it's really frustrating for everyone in the building. If the principal have budgeted differently, there could be more money available for substitutes. So I am extremely curious if there is some sort of "crash course" in budget appropriations for principals (I would love to observe that class..).
This shift to running schools more like businesses is yet to be proven effective. Hopefully Alonso and the rest of the North Ave. bunch will not be kicking themselves in a couple of years for poor decisions about allocating money to schools.
A lot of these comments seem to center around the idea that if you've got a poor principal who has bad management skills or messed up priorities you're in trouble. I'll I've got to say in response to that is - it's been that way for least 11 years (as long as I've had kids in Baltimore City Schools). If you're a student or a teacher in a school with poor leadership you've got problems. The only solution I've figured out (as a parent) is transfer to another school. I always figured that was why so many teachers transfered between schools.
So I guess my point is - how is this different power to principals any more scary than all the power that they've always had?
What worries me most about this budgeting shift is the removal of the proverbial "checks and balances" type of system that (at least on paper) existed before in regards to funding for things like special education and credit recovery.
The stories of schools where funds are regularly misappropriated and numbers are fudged to hide all kinds of "discretionary" spending, I am nervous that simply lumping extra money into per pupil funding and scaling back the specified budget allocations for special cases will give principles even more leeway to spend frivolously.
The budgeting process is already cloaked in secrecy, but at least before we had well defined categories of funds. I think we are putting too much faith in our administrators is we truly believe that the money will still (or all of a sudden as is often the case) go to the right priorities!
I usually don’t get too outspoken on blogs and if I do than I use an alias, but this article and the new funding landscape are fundamentally unsound and complete out of touch with the reality of our schools. As a teacher, let me try and do a mini-lesson on why this doesn’t make ANY sense:
1. Please write down the 4 areas where funding should be allocated to address improving our students’ academic success.
2. Now- if hopefully my question was well-constructed for the desired response- place a check to your response if you had funding supporting the following: students with disabilities, students behind grade-level, enrichment for advanced students, student dropout prevention.
3. Add up your score. To save time and space, if you got more than one correct, you at least can understand the issue. If you got a zero, you perhaps are either the author of this Sun article or the proponents of this budgeting debacle.
My reasoning is simple: how can this be billed as a increase in student funding when the money is being reallocated from funding that not only seems to encompass the majority of our students’ profiles but also in my opinion the most pressing impediments to our students’ success? As a teacher at a school where nearly 80% of our per student funding will be decreased as a result of this plan because our population aligns with 3 of the 4 areas targeted (not the advanced area if that wasn’t clear) we stand to lose at least $500k in addition to now having to cut staff positions- only further challenging our opportunities to succeed. Ironically, now the “schools of last resort” for the “bottom of the barrel” students now have something in common with the “elite and advanced” students at Poly, City, and Western because they’re getting their enrichment budget cut too. So who does this “increase student funding” really serve?
I dearly like to hope that I am wrong in assuming that the targeted areas of the funding reallocation are negatively impacting the majority of our students and that, like a bell-curve, somehow these funds serve the “majority” of students leaving the basic and advances at either end. Ok, I am done commenting because I can’t really stand to think about this more for now, perhaps because I know that some of my colleagues who have served our high-risk students will now be looking for somewhere in that bell-curve majority schools for placements next year. END.
While increased autonomy to the Principals could be great, a large percentage of involvement should go into ensuring that this funding is spent properly and in the right areas. I find that since principals are not in the classrooms, they don’t really hear the needs of the teachers and students, and the funding ends up going to things like receptions for guests of the school.
It is imperative that this increase funding address the basic needs that are lacking, things such as up-to-date textbooks, facilities upgrades, and materials order to ensure that we are least attempting to reach the needs of the students.
Principal control is great, but only if the principal’s exercise their democratic nature as it relates to leadership position.
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