Dear District Superintendant: The Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD) is one of those districts that have seen fallen property values in Marin, dysfunctional, and fiscal chaos in Sacramento. As a result of the severe economic downturn and the devastating cuts to education from the state of California, the TUHSD needs to reduce operating cost by 20% within five years to have a balanced budget for the 2014-2015 school year. THUSD annual budget is $55 million dollars. Operations is half that, or $27.5 million. The cost reduction goal is 20% within the operating budget lower than that provided in 2009-2010, which equates to a $5.5 million dollar reduction to balance the budget for 2014-2015 school year. The following recommendations are responsible and conservative actions that will allow us to be in a better financial position to maintain the primary goal of our district and to offer our students an excellent education guided by our mission. 1) Privatize Janitorial and Food Services: The Eau Claire School District has decided to privatize janitorial services in a way to reduce their operational expenses over the next year. The board members approved a contract with Genuine Janitorial Service, which will save the district an estimated $50,000 to $75,000 in the first year and likely more in future years. This is not the only districts to looking at hiring a private firm to ruin its janitorial and food services, which provides a good alternative to cutting teachers in the district. THUSD can implement the area of privatizing the janitorial and food services as a way of saving money. The district can monitor the success by implementing a monthly plan status reporting to monitor the area of service and cost savings by p... ... middle of paper ... ... monthly plan status reporting from the factuality and students. An important part of the budget-balancing process is to analyze each potential cuts and evaluate them against the district's mission before implementing them into the strategic plan. These suggestions of privatizing the janitorial and food services, improving transpiration efficiency, maintaining and improving green efficiencies, renting out unused facilities and implementing a four-day work week are good suggestions that facilitates a long-term expenditure savings. These suggestions previously have allowed other school districts to meet their budget needs and find themselves in a better financial position. This concludes our findings and provides the final report of cost reduction recommendations. My staff and I are available to assist immediately in implementation planning and execution.
Municipal control or an alternative delivery method? This is the question that has intrigued all levels of local government and created intense debates between taxpayers across municipalities. The services that municipalities provide are often vital to the existence of a local area. The issues of accountability, cost savings, quality of service and democracy often arise when choosing the best options to deliver services to a municipal area. In recent years the concepts of privatization, alternative service delivery and public-private partnerships are often promoted as ways cut down on overburdened annual city budgets and promote a higher quality of service to citizens. Municipalities have historically always provided basic services such as fire protection, water purification/treatment and recreational facilities. However, would private companies or another municipality be able to better deliver the same services more efficiently or at a lower cost? The city or town often provides a political grass roots approach to most local problems. Municipalities are better positioned and have a wider scope to provide services to their constituents in order to ensure quality of service that does not erode accountability and transparency, or drive the municipality deeper into debt.
Connecting people to the success of the district is one matter, but asking them to support it financially is another. The district is growing in size and is in need of new facilities and internal academic structures to support the growth. As the district continues to grow she is challenged with ensuring that the schools continue to interact with each other and do not return to the independent silos they were when she arrived. Ms. Hall realizes that she is the internal and external face of the district. She takes that very seriously and therefore, tires to view challenges as opportunities and successes as building blocks and
School funding is a recurring issue in the modern era. Debates ranging from give schools more money, to get rid of the system in place and reform a new idea have been plaguing the world over the years. “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed in 2009, provided more than $100 billion in education aid to offset budget cuts..” (School Finance). Later, “Congress provided an additional $10 billion in 2010 to avert mass teacher layoffs (Education Week, "Total Recovery Act")” (School Funding). These numbers are just a sample of the struggles in school funding, that is costing a ton of money to keep afloat. “There are many ways schools fund varying from state to state and even school to school. Income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes, and other fees provide 48 percent of the elementary and secondary school funds. 44 percent of local districts draw money from local property taxes. The federal government makes up approximately 8 percent of state education budgets. These funds are a dealt out on a per-student basis, and categorically to ensure enough resources for each special program or facility” (School Funding). These funds play a huge role in every student's education, either positive or negative. The three main areas that need to be addressed in the school budget are extracurricular funding, building and equipment maintenance, and last but not least staff funding.
In order to develop a better job with school finances the administrator had to dedicate time, and consider many factors not just the monetary aspect, but also, an administrator has to have are where to allocate the funds, the amount available, and resources provided. Also, the importance that the financial system sees public education as an important source for the future of the children and their investments are guide tours the education (Rose, 2013). Finances at schools allows them to obtain programs to enhance the education and encourage to keep a good attendance. All schools and districts need to be somewhat strong financially in order to provide students with a higher quality education as well the technology advantages.
Budget cuts are a menace to schools and children it limits potential and closes the gate around the arts not allowing our children to experience everything they can. School should be place where our children can learn be creative and have fun, they should be enjoying their stay. Just like Barry it should be a sanctuary that allows them to forget all the problems at home and have fun in
I went to the school board meeting on March 21, 2016 in Kanawha. The following people were at the council: Wayne Kronneman, Leah Deutsch, Ryan Hiscocks, Ryan Johnson, Jay Burgardt, Mona Buns, Gary Chizek, Todd Hammer, and Jon Harle. The others were mainly community member which included teachers, principals, parents and supporters. Some of the West Hancock staff included Mr. Peterson, Mrs. DeHart, Mrs. Bruns, Mr. Francis, Mrs. Gast and others. The other people who were there were parents and other community members. The first part of the meeting was the revision of the budget and presentation of the budget. This was given by Wayne Kronneman. He explained the budget of this year and how it compared to last years. Also he also talked about the budget for next year. After that they had a discussion with the
School funding for public schools has collectively been cut by $7.6 billion since 2002, forcing schools districts in Georgia to a tipping point. The 2001 recession had a major effect on Georgia’s fiscal condition, which consequently had a major effect on the financing of K-12 education in Georgia. School budgets are used to describe a district’s plan for the upcoming year as pertaining to anticipated revenues and expenditures. Each district’s budget heavily relies on the amount of money they receive from the state’s general fund and since that number has significantly dropped in recent years schools are not able to provide the best education for our students. The budget for public schools in Georgia should be increased because teachers are losing their jobs and schools are being forced to eliminate valuable programs that are instrumental in the education of our youth.
California is one of the largest states in the country and has one of the biggest state budgets, but in the past several years, its school system has become one of the worst in the nation because of enormous budget cuts in efforts to balance the state’s enormous deficit. The economic downturn at the end of the 2000s resulted in even more cuts to education. It is in environments like this one in which students from poor backgrounds become most vulnerable because of their lack of access to support in their homes as well as other programs outside of schools. Their already financially restricted school districts have no choice but to cut supplementary programs and increase class sizes, among other negative changes to public schools. The lack of financial support from the state level as well as demands for schools to meet certain testing benchmarks by the state results in a system in which the schools are no longer able to focus on students as individuals; they are forced to treat students as numbers rather than on an individual case by case basis.
...g the school is discussed. LPS often get choose other reform options they require less changes, allow teachers to keep their jobs, and they do not require that the entire school has to change. Although there is more than one reform option that looks good on paper, there is only one option that has any proof that it could possibly work in favor of the students and the option is charter schools. They address all the problems in public schools and they incorporate all reform options, except school shutdowns, in their reform plan. Charter schools are the reform option that shows the most improvement in areas that LPS slack in. Including other reform options in their reform plan is a way that can almost insure progression. All public schools across the nation that are declining to low performing schools should look into taking up charter schools as their reform option.
...ricts, I can’t ignore the fact that districts such as mine, which has already lost so much of its funding, are in need of inexpensive ways to increase efficiency. Another technique implemented in Japan is the use of students as janitors: each day a group of students is assigned to clean their classroom. I believe that if the number of janitors in our schools must be reduced the students should play a part in keeping their environment tidy, be it out of goodwill or punishment. I see this as a great, economical opportunity to maintain the school’s image and promote service.
The Chicago Public School District is the third largest school district in the United States, educating around 400,000 students. Back in 1987, CPS was named “the worst in the nation”(). Moving its way up to the top, since then, CPS has completely rebuilt its structure, appointing leaders and reforming ideas. Now, with a deficit projected to be around $1 billion, CPS is headed back on a downward path, money being the biggest issue. The United States Federal Government already has financial issues of its own, which makes dealing with a CPS budget a problem.
School funding has always been a debatable topic. Although school funding needs to be increased, there is no proof of academic achievement (Hanushek). Academic researchers have sought to answer the questions of whether education expenditures are correlated with student performance(Hanushek). Hanushek has found that there is no proof of academic achievement towards funding the schools(Hanushek). It depends on how the money is spent, not on how much money is spent(Hanushek). “ There are so many areas of education that require money(Shanker).” When you are able to reduce the size of a classroom you allow the teacher the opportunity to give additional help by spending more time with each individual student(Shanker). Also, higher teacher salaries are very important when it comes to having the best teachers(Shanker). Studies show that raising the city’s basic per-pupil allocation from $9,306 to $11,608 will provide better technology and better teachers(Brown). Smaller classroom size and better teachers have a positive effect ...
Quantitative plans are called budgets. Budgets are prepared to impose cost controls on the activities of an organization (Chenhall, 1986).Budgets are then used to evaluate the performance of the management and budget itself is considered as a standard to evaluate the performance Solomon, 1956). The purpose of the budget is also to implement the strategy of the organization and communicate it to the employees of the organization Rickards (2006). The change in the external environment has led to the change in the budgeting approaches from the initial cash based budgets to the zerio based budgets (Bovaird, 2007).
I learned that school budgets not only inform us of priorities, but they can also serve as a communication tool for the whole district. I feel as if our school could use the budget as an opportunity to discuss progress as well as our strategic plan, but they don’t. Teachers and parents rarely hear about the budget’s educational and operational objectives and accomplishments. This is definitely something my school could improve on, since the school budget should reflect the community and their values. I also think there is a skewed public, and even faculty, perception regarding the school budget. Some of these views include that the school budget is wasteful, administrators are overpaid, administrators are not forward-thinking, and money is spent in the wrong areas. These adverse perceptions of the school budget are often heard during difficult economic times, such as when our school district recently went on fiscal distress. However, I have learned that without meaningful involvement of the community, educators, and staff, these perceptions will never
For-profit organizations depreciation is important because it reduces the taxes that a corporation pays. But in organizations that do not pay taxes, the importance of depreciation expense to decision making is reduced. So the only importance of depreciation expense in a nonprofit context is restricted to making a determination about the extent to which facilities have been depreciated. In this scenario it is very important to have preventive maintenance procedures to reduce the risk of collapsing public infrastructure. Without proper maintenance of facilities, public funds in excess of projections will have to be used to replace prematurely deteriorated facilities or to fund above-normal maintenance repairs. Information about the amount of deferred maintenance can be more important to a nonprofit manager than depreciation expense