Variation Of Budgets Within School Districts

Parekh, G., Flessa, J., & Smaller, H. (2016). The Toronto District School Board: A global city school system's structures, processes, and student outcomes. London Review Of Education, 14(3), 65-83. doi:10.18546/LRE.14.3.06

School funding is a mix of different funding sources like federal, state, and local. About ninety percent of funding for education comes from state and local community. K-12 education has failed to keep up with high enrollment. Schools must spend to counter effects of poverty while many European countries alleviate these conditions through government spending. Currently more than forty percent of low income school get an extremely unfair share of state and local funds. Low income school are receiving inadequate funds for their school, whereas other schools in the United States are unfairly distributing their state and local funds. That is unfair to the low income schools because those schools really need the money for school books, field trips, etc. Funding for public schools has been quite unequal for years, but even though Americans are fully aware of this issue no one does anything to solve it. Researchers are trying to show them both sides of this unequal funding issue in public schools in order to help balance the distribution of educational funding.

The resources available to an urban, lower income school are to be equal to those available to a suburban, higher income school. Two schools in New York, one from a wealthy school district and one from a poor district, were given computers. The State provided the same number of computers to each school, therefore claiming to evenly supporting each school. However, the school with the poorer children had a larger number of students; the nicer school had twice the number of computers in proportion to the number of their students (Kozol 84). It seems that the biggest factor keeping the children of lower income homes behind is the school funding available. The poorer school district does not have the money to spend on the things a wealthier district may, but there is no real evidence that spending money makes much difference in the outcome of a child's education. In many cases, family and background have a greater influence on how well a child does in school (Kozol 176-77). Richard Kahlenberg, a member of the Century Foundation, says, "Research findings and common sense tell us that the people who make up a school—the students, parents, and teachers—matter more (Lewis 648)

Capital budgeting is a precise substantial process that the (FLDOE) integrates in their financial management measures that the agency uses in determining investment and current expenditures. It is the development which includes the determination and the evaluation of the investments and the possible outlays by an organization. Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) is motivated on attaining the preeminent outcomes that an educational structure has in relationship with high quality services. The agency, hence from end to end integrates various activities that is focused on improving public education issues while reducing educational total cost. The agency relies on capital budgeting as a tool to ensure that all capital and resources are being well utilized. The process of capital budgeting entails the emphasis on key aspects that includes determining debt capacity, funding and other activities that may include refunding and the restructuring of the existing debt obligations.

The budget is a plan of how to spend available funds wisely, and entails a list of all expected revenues and expenses. The budget is compiled annually and marks the beginning and end of the fiscal year. While the primary burden of the budget lies with the finance department, it is the responsibility of all faculty affected by budgetary practices to provide insight into the projected financial future of the school. The goal and evidence of a successful budget is to have the actual numbers of the financial year equal or come close to the estimated

The heightened focus on education equity and adequacy has garnered substantial attention from both policy makers and media outlets. As a result of the spotlight, school finance litigation has forced states to not only change the way they fund schools but to improve and update their states’ assessment and accountability systems. (Griffith, 2005).

Education is the foundation of a person’s success and way of life. Graduating from school is important not only for an individual, but it helps the local and national economy. A study by the Alliance for Excellent Education shows that with higher graduation rates among high school students, the economies of cities, states, and of the country would increase (Rollins). Compared to the rest of the world, the United States spends a large amount of money on education (U.S. Education). While many may think this sufficient, Professor Bruce Baker discusses the correlation between supporting schools with federal funding and the success of students, “When schools have more money, they have greater opportunity to spend productively. When they don’t, they can’t” (ii, Baker). If students are to graduate and contribute to the boost of economies, education must be the forefront of federal funding.

The school finance reform is focused on the distribution of funds across rich and poor district schools. The reform was based on the thought that rich neighborhoods and households were better in spending on education. These scholars would access better programs and their family backgrounds could put them in the most precious and advanced institutions. Poorer neighborhoods on the other hand struggled to raise fees and sometimes students were forced to drop-out due to financial challenges. The historical development of the school finance reform has always sought to fund schools differently based on students’ family backgrounds (White, 2014). Poorer schools are given priority, low income districts also enjoy more federal aid that high-income district schools. The significance of school finance reforms was poised on previous researches. Studies indicate that a student educated in a school that received 20% higher funding than that of his peer, the scholar was likely to perform 20% better and his chances for adult poverty were 20% lower (White, 2014). Low-income government schools, either at district or state level, will perform better if given adequate financial assistance.

Public education is under funded, especially in the state of Alabama. I attended public school in the state of Alabama and I experienced this first hand in my elementary and high school classrooms. Low funds for the arts department and many basic school necessities are just some of the areas that are affected by the low funding. In the 2012-2013 school years, Alabama had over 744,637 students enrolled in a total of 1,637 schools. Alabama’s school funding has gone down 14% since 2008. Many school systems have to spend additional money from local revenue on top of what the state provides because it is not enough. Alabama public schools are under funded and it is a problem that is affecting classrooms across the

As another example, the National Center for Education Statistics reported for fiscal year 2012 that state and local governments in 24 states were spending less per pupil in their poorest school districts than they were in their most affluent school districts. Pennsylvania had the highest differential in the country with state and local per-pupil spending in its poorest school districts 33% lower than per-pupil spending in the state’s most affluent school districts (Brown, 2015).

Greek philosopher Aristotle defines the arts ¨as the realization in external form of a true idea, and is traced back to that natural love of imitation which characterizes humans, and to the pleasure which we feel in recognizing likenesses.¨(IEP). The fine arts which have been a part of human history for 30,000 years have played an essential role in the development and advancement of our societies. As of today, the fine arts are facing the danger of vanishing in the education system of the United States Schools in places like Minnesota, Michigan and Philadelphia struggle to obtain arts programs within their schools. Districts like the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district, have been struggling with raising student’s academic scores in courses

Since this study is strictly quantitative, it faces the limitations of not being suited to answer how and why questions. The data analyzed may not be robust enough to explain complex issues, and makes it difficult to understand the context of a phenomenon (Mills and Gay, 2016). The data in this study indicate the number of opportunities at a given school, but gives little information of the quality about these opportunities. For example, multiple schools may offer Advanced Placement (AP) courses, but the quality of the instruction and implementation of these courses could vary significantly across schools. Additionally, the data do not take into account local school policies and practices that differ between cities, districts, and schools. Moreover, accessing secondary data may be difficult – although the data are readily available online on the school level, it may not be possible to gather all the data into one comprehensive file. Also, since the datasets vary in the types of schools included (e.g. some datasets may exclude some charter schools), the process of merging the files may not result in a one hundred

Are teachers satisfied with their salary? Do we lose opportunities in hiring new people to educate our students because of district cuts? District Budget cuts are ruining our future and causing many problems for the younger generations. Thanks to budget cuts many of the students today rely on auto correct for their spelling, many depend on calculators and other tools to keep up with curve because there wasn't competent teachers there to help them and due to budget cuts we have serious problems to look forward to in our future. People do not want to work at places that pay so low amount of money. Finding the right people to apply to schools in Philadelphia is really hard. “At the same time, the percentage of teachers who said they were likely

Results taken from the executive summary of the Education Law Center in New Jersey show that a small percentage of states who have funding systems put in place and provide greater funding to high poverty districts remain the most progressive states yearly. Whereas a larger percentage of states have funding systems where districts with higher poverty rates receive less funding, these states remain the most regressive. (School funding disparities persist, analysis shows).

With Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) the budget starts at 0 (Financial Web, 2015). The department needs to justify their expenditures for the current year, and the allocation of funds is determined by the merits of their policy rather than the budget that was allotted the previous year (Financial Web, 2015). There are pros and cons with ZBB. ZBB assures effective allocation of funds, avoids unnecessary expenditures, utilizes cost effective methods, and removes ineffective and counterproductive activities (Financial Web, 2015). However, it takes longer to prepare, the expense of the budget is increased, many decision packages may be needed depending on the size of the organization, it requires commitment, everything must be justified, and all those involved must be educated in how to use ZBB (Financial Web, 2015).