Local Education Funding Archives - Page 4 of 10

Trends in the News

Local Education Funding

All Posts

Marketplace, 10/23/18

Millennials believe more money is the way to improve public education

University of Chicago political science professor Cathy Cohen’s ongoing GenForward survey examines millennial perceptions of major societal and political issues across race and gender, aiming specifically to shed light on underrepresented voices. Recently, the survey tackled millennial views on how best to improve public education. “When we ask young people any number of questions about the best way to improve public education they always circle back to increasing funding for public education. They want to pay teachers more, they want to invest in neighborhood schools and overall, they want to give more funding to public education.”

Education Week, 10/19/18

Hurricanes deal deep blow to schools’ finances

In Florida’s Panhandle, education leaders have started the strenuous work of cleaning up and repairing schools ravaged by Hurricane Michael earlier this month, but they are also running into a longer-term problem: steep cost estimates that could lead to mounting piles of bills. In New Hanover County, N.C., Superintendent Tim Markley dipped into the district’s estimated $15 million surplus to allocate up to $9 million to pay for schools to be cleaned up and readied for students to return. The saving grace for many districts could be whether they have cash on hand to hire contractors and prevent small problems from morphing into bigger, more expensive ones, said David Stephens, the executive director of risk management for the Florida School Boards Insurance Trust.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance State Education Funding

The Inquirer, 10/10/18

As Pa. special-education costs rise, school districts pick up more of the tab

Increases in special-education costs in Pennsylvania are far outpacing increases in the state’s contributions to those expenses, leaving local school districts to pick up bigger shares of the tabs, according to a report released Tuesday. The report said the widening divide between special-education costs and state funding “forces local school boards to choose between raising additional revenue to meet funding gaps, spreading limited resources across a range of programs, and/or reducing needed services and supports for students with disabilities.” Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials, said some school districts have reduced resources for regular education programs in order to pay for required special-education expenses.

Local Education Funding School Enrollment and Student Population

The 74 Million, 10/10/18

With L.A. schools facing threats of fiscal oversight, district to cut 15 percent of local & office staff in emergency cost-cutting plan

L.A. Unified will eliminate $43 million in administrative salaries as part of an emergency cost-cutting plan to stave off its fiscal overseers. The cuts won’t be at school sites this year, but rather at the central and local district offices. The number of jobs that will be lost will be left up to each department, but they represent an overall 15 percent reduction. The job cuts are one half of a two-part strategy to right-size the district’s budget, which is projected to be on the verge of bankruptcy in two and a half years. They also come as the district is negotiating raises for teachers under the threat of a strike, and after it has approved salary increases of about 6 percent for two-thirds of its workforce.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance

The 74 Million, 9/25/18

A school budget showdown in California: Why the state and county have warned Los Angeles Unified to get its financial house in order — or they’re taking over

The Los Angeles Unified School District board was jolted last month when a top county official showed up unannounced to say, You’re spending more money than you make and the savings you’ve been living off of are about to run out. L.A. Unified has to act now, and it has three choices, the officials said: Make more money, cut spending, or do both. Candi Clark, chief financial officer of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, who is legally required to act if a school district will run out of money within three years, has given L.A. Unified until Oct. 8 to adjust its budget, including detailing exactly how the district expects to make the $73 million in cuts it has vowed to carve out of the next two years’ budgets. If the county isn’t satisfied, it will “disapprove” the district’s budget. The next step is assigning a financial expert to assist the district, then imposing a fiscal adviser. The final step would be a state takeover, which happened in neighboring Compton in 1993 and in Inglewood in 2012.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance

Education Week, 10/1/18

Tax hikes to fund schools? Once taboo, the idea is gaining momentum

Politicians on the state campaign trail this year are making some eye-popping promises for parents and educators: billions more dollars for schools, double-digit pay raises for teachers, and hundreds of millions more to replace dilapidated schoolhouses. And in some states, Democrats are going so far as to broach a topic often seen as off-limits in election season: tax increases. Drawing confidence from poll data, an uptick in successful local referendum measures, and the swell of support for thousands of teachers who went on strike this spring for increased pay, Democrats in states such as Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma are gambling that voters are so alarmed at the financial disrepair of their local school systems that they’re willing to tax states’ corporations and wealthiest citizens to bail them out.

Local Education Funding State Education Funding

Education Dive, 9/5/18

What did a New Mexico district learn after one year operating on a four-day week?

Cobre Consolidated School District Superintendent Robert Mendoza told PBS that a shorter week has lowered absenteeism rates. On top of that, New Mexico — which continues to struggle recruiting and retaining teachers —did not have any trouble hiring teachers for this past school year after the week was shortened, Mendoza said. But officials looked to make the change because of budgets, and the average savings from the switch is miniscule — it ranges from 0.4% to 2.5%, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It’s also less time for learning. To make up for fewer days in class, students spend more time in school the four days they’re there and have shorter breaks. But in CCSD, that’s still 22 fewer days in the classroom each year.

Local Education Funding School Money and Performance

Education Week, 8/24/18

District spending is about to get a lot more transparent. Are you ready?

ESSA requires districts to publish per-pupil allocations for actual personnel and non-personnel expenditures by each funding source (federal, state, and local funds), for each district, and school on their annual report cards. In the short term, superintendents and principals will need to get on the same page about current district allocation policies and practices, why some schools appear to get more resources than others, and how this all aligns with the stated vision and mission of the district. Over the long term, the new expenditure reporting requirements will push superintendents to be more strategic about managing productivity. This new transparency will make it easier for the public to investigate the relationship between academic and financial data.

Funding Equity Local Education Funding School Money and Performance

WTTW, 8/8/18

CPS spending $10M on Sustainable Schools Pilot Program

Twenty Chicago public elementary and high schools will split $10 million in a new pilot program aimed at connecting school communities with local after-school, health and family engagement services. These schools, which are mainly located on the South and West sides of the city, will each receive $500,000 in district funding for the upcoming school year. CPS said that money will be used to help build supportive classroom environments that work with social support services to strengthen student achievement. Jaribu Lee, a coordinator with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, said the sustainable community schools model is built on six tenets: engaging curriculum, high-quality teaching, wrap-around supports, restorative justice discipline, parent engagement and inclusive school leadership.

Local Education Funding

New York Times, 8/11/18

Back-to-school shopping for districts: Armed guards, cameras and metal detectors

Fortified by fences and patrolled by more armed personnel, schools will open their doors to students for the start of the new year with a heightened focus on security intended to ease fears about deadly campus shootings… In Florida, armed guards will be posted on almost every campus. In Indiana, some schools will be getting hand-held metal detectors. In Western New York, some schools plan to upgrade their surveillance cameras to include facial recognition… Six months after the rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, public schools have embraced expensive and sometimes controversial safety measures. For more detail on how Districts in Florida are working to fund the additional security resources, see ‘Florida schools struggle to meet security rule’.

Local Education Funding State Education Funding