Education Is Affected By Budget Cuts

The United States has many conflicts, one of them is funding on public education. Despite the fact that funding on public education will not help students succeed academically with the money provided to the schools, every school deserves to get as much money because students will receive more proper education and will be more successful students in the future.

Our political leaders struggle to understand the impact they have on the policies they put into place to improve public education. We see mandates that are unfunded and have a significant impact on a school district’s budget. Special education continues to be an area rich with policy and yet additional dollars are not included in the decisions made for implementation. Title one funding is an area that falls into a blurry area of policy for school districts. In our district, we have policies for fiscal responsibility in our spending procedures and yearly audits to be sure we are spending our money in a proper way.

Since last spring, Philadelphia school district leaders have been sounding the alarm about this year’s fiscal budget. Even after months of discussions and headlines, schools have opened with fewer resources than last year. On March 28th the School Reform Commission approved a lump sum budget which showed a need for an additional $220 million in revenue in order to provide schools with same resources as the “wholly insufficient” 2013-14 school year (McCorry). There will be many inadequate funding impacts on the quality of the education. Classroom resources would be stripped to untenable levels. The district would reduce as much as $2.2 million funding to the districts’ multiple pathways to graduation program which affects estimated 300 students. Another $1.5 million could be reduced from the elimination of preparation and professional development time for teachers at the district’s high needs promise academies. The district’s building maintenance budget could have reduction in amount of $9.6 million. Schools will be cleaned less frequently as a result. Building maintenance will also be curtailed as a result. District’s school police budget could also have reduction in amount of $2.4 million. School police officer vacancies will be unfilled, leaving an additional 27 elementary schools to share an officer.

Funding for Oklahoma schools has fallen dramatically in recent years, with Oklahoma spending $706 less per student in inflation-adjusted dollars that it did in 2008, and Oklahomans are worried about it, and rightly so (Gene, 1). In looking toward a quick-fix, many have argued that Oklahoma need only reduce its administrative costs, thus

The federal government has attempted to slice into the Department of Education’s budget since it was established in 1979. The department was originally founded in 1867, but soon became demoted since the government was afraid it would have too much power. “In the 1860s, a budget of $15,000 and four employees handled education fact-finding. By 1965, the Office of Education had more than 2,100 employees and a budget of $1.5 billion. As of mid-2010, the Department has nearly 4,300 employees and a budget of about $60 billion” (An overview of the U.S. Department of Education, 2010). To provide some comparable insight, in 2013 the Department of Defense’s budget of $663.8 billion (U.S. Department of Defense, 2009).

The topic of this paper is the states’ decreasing financial support of higher education, the reaction and response from institutions who have lost funding, and the creative ways public institutions are locating additional streams of revenue. States have been the primary backer of public institutions, but since the recession states have shown less commitment financially while still heavily regulating higher education. As a result some institutions have had to change their practices while others have challenged their state’s regulations all together. Many have speculated that state funding may never return to its former highs. Rather than make an enemy of the state, some schools have discovered new and unconvential ways of raising funds for their institution.

The National Conference of State Legislatures said, “School budget crunches have been a trend over the past couple years and span the entire nation” (qtd. in Van

Since the 2008 economic recession, public schools have experienced drastic cuts to funding, Paw Paw High School included. With my high school being forced to make curriculum adjustments in order to accommodate its depleted budget, I suffered great shortfalls. Due to the elimination of teachers, I had increased class sizes and no longer received the one-on-one attention in the classroom. Also, the electives that I had looked so forward to taking in middle school were no longer provided once I made it to high school. I am grateful, however that unlike other schools, Paw Paw has not had to implement a four-day school week as a means to stretch budgets as far as possible. I have read that rising costs, depleted emergency federal aid, and

One of the important drawbacks of the budget was the cuts and delays in education funding. As published in the article “California lawmakers pass long-overdue budget” (2010), by Fox News “Under the deal, nearly $2 billion in payments to K-12 schools and California's community colleges would be delayed until the next fiscal year”. This was one of the consequences of the late deficit budget, which lawmakers agreed upon. Stopping payments to educational institutions was not seen as a positive feature of the budget. The delay in funding kept the educational programs on hold, which affected many educational

Oklahoma as of today is ranked 49th nationally in per-pupil expenditures and ranked 48th in teacher pay (Klein 2). Putting Oklahoma as one of the worst states to be educated in the United States. “Oklahoma is consistently ranked near the bottom for education funding and teacher pay” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth And Job Creation” 3). When there are state cuts that need to be made, the departments of education are one of the first that usually tend to suffer. Since the 2008 economic crisis, Oklahoma has continued to cut the budget for education; even though the economy has since then gotten better (Perry). Budget cuts in education affect all parts of the education process for the students. “Some school districts have ordered teacher layoffs and shorter sessions” (“Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer” par 4).Schools are now struggling to keep their heads above water. Each year from the budget cutting, schools have had to lay off teachers, cut entire programs, and have limited resources used to educate the students. Even the teachers’ retirement system is suffering, being one of the top poorly funded pension programs nationally (Ash par 3). Seeing as that the schools have to cut down classes and programs, administration has had no other choice than to increase class size, overwhelming teachers tremendously. “Oklahoma has 1,500 fewer classroom teachers and 40,000 more students since 2008-2009” (“Investing In Education Is Key For Growth

But then again funds on schools are not the same from state to state. This can be explained by the different educational input costs like real estate and teachers salaries. But that’s a whole other story. Funding for schools is not the issue obviously it just needs more of a balancing. The balancing can help out drastically because there will not be a huge gap in the financing of schools. In other words, many Americans will not have to worry about their child attending a school with overcrowded classrooms.

Everyone at the table did research into the issue of state funding for higher education by looking at state budget numbers as well as looking at studies published by education-focused think tanks such as the National Education Policy Center and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. When we debated the issue, many of us noticed a horrible trend of decreasing

“States’ new budgets are providing less per-pupil funding for kindergarten through 12th grade than they did six years ago — often far less” (Leachman, 2014, para. 1). Budget cuts in school districts ultimately root from states trying to overall save money. It is happening everywhere across the nation. Schools feel the heat to provide all the educational opportunities to their students while staying under budget at the same time. However, when funding is reduced, schools cannot afford everything they once did. By definition, electives are considered to be, “…courses that fall outside of the main core academic subject areas (english, math, history, science and foreign language). These courses are not required, but a student chooses to take them”

Budget cuts in schools cause turmoil and stress among the students and faculty. Drastic changes in the budgets have caused schools to negatively impact the people around them. With the lack of funding, schools are facing difficult decisions on what to do to stay within their budget. Supervision is facing much scrutiny on how to handle the lack of funding in their school districts. A solution needs to be made to improve the distribution of funding to our schools in order to keep them operating and thriving for our children to obtain their education. Budget cuts in schools have shown negative effects on employee positions, supplies, extracurricular activities.

Leachman, M., Albares, N., Masterson, K., & Wallace, M. (2015). Most states have cut school funding, and some continue cutting. Center on Budget Policy Priorities. Retrieved from