Understanding School Budget

This post is a continuation from the last post; click here if you haven’t seen it yet,

After the Q&A session ended, the groups were treated to 2 expenditure scenarios because Mr. Stanki wanted to give the students a chance to see what he and his staff work on a regular basis. In these scenarios, we were given ‘points’ instead of money to demonstrate the budgets.

In the 1^st expenditure scenario, the students were given the authority to reduce the School District’s budget points by 20 points in a chart. The 2^nd expenditure scenario gave we the students the power the to increase the budget with 115 points at our disposal. In addition, we were given 25 minutes for each scenario. The points in the 2 scenarios are to show the value of a certain group, activity, or program that is in the School District.

In Rise of the Expenditure Scenario or the 1^st expenditure the protagonists (me and my team) had to reduce the school district’s budget points with our 20 points. In both scenarios the total school budget amount of points is 1,002. When 25 minutes began, we reduced:

• 5 points from nurse practitioner/technician – cuts all nurse practitioners
• 3 points from music teachers – reduces 50% of music teachers
• 4 points from school police – cuts 50 school police
• 6 points from classroom assistant/ssa – cuts all classroom assistants
• 2 points from custodians/cleaners – reduces frequency of cleaning, building maintenance, landscaping, and pest control by 20%
• 1 point from athletics/health – reduce one season of athletics
• 1 point from in-school suspension – cuts all in school suspensions
• 4 points from teachers – increasing class sizes by 1 student each in 1 grade

At the end of the first 25 minutes we had reduced 9.5 points from our starting amount of 20. My team was the only team that did not get rid of all our points. The major reason why we didn’t finish is because we debated for a long time with one of the reductions. That one was the reduction of school police. When they told me that they wanted to reduce the school police I began to plead my case of why we should keep them. My main point was that we should not touch anything that would keep the staff and students unsafe. Then one of my team members said that their school was a safe school and they did not need school police. My rebuttal to that comment was “your school is safe because of your school police and if you get rid of them your safe school won’t be so safe anymore.” We killed a lot of time discussing that reduction but they still overrule me and we chose to reduce it.

In Dawn of the Expenditure Scenario, or the 2^nd expenditure, the protagonists have to increase 1,002 points from the School District. In this scenario we would go on to use 114.7 of our points in the 25 minutes. We increased:

• 6 points to teachers – reduces all grade classes of 2 students
• 1 points to secretaries – reduces allocation to minimum of 1 secretary per school and additional secretary for every 400 students
• 5 points to supplies/books/materials/etc. – additional $150 per student
• 2 points to special education – 2 special edu. Liaison per school
• 1 points to counselors – reduces allocation ratio to 1 counselor per 250 students
• 7 points to nurses – reduces allocation to 1 nurse per school
• 5 points to promise academies – each new school designated as a promise academies
• 4 points to English Language Learners – additional 50 teachers to support ELL
• 0 points to Per Diem Substitute Service – requires substitutes for every teacher absences/vacancies
• 6 points to librarians – 1 librarian per school

We had increased the school district’s budget points by 114.7 points. In this case, I had 2 areas I wanted to increase. First, I was very adamant about giving points to promise academies. I wanted to focus on that because I attended University City High School Promise Academy before it closed down. This school may have not been the best school to send your child, but the learning was amazing and the classroom sizes were not that big. That made getting help with work easier than it would be with a class of about 20 or 30 students. My second expenditure I really wanted to give points to was the Per Diem Substitute Service, the organization that sends substitutes. I was just as adamant about this because of my old experience. In my old school I saw teachers trying to get work done during class session because they would have to cover for other teachers. I’m sure that was hard for teachers to do, so why not make it a mandatory thing for the Per Diem Substitute Service to have a substitute for every teacher’s absence.

Overall I enjoyed the whole meeting it was not only fun, but informative as well. I like feeling that I received a lot. I really enjoyed the 2 scenarios mainly because I love the debate and intellectual discussion.

I believe that there will be another this month, so if you’re reading this please come out and participate!

-Jacob Simmons