Low Hanging Fruit And Its Effects On The Education Of School Districts

Our district runs on such a tight budget, and though our student enrollment is stabilizing, we have had to recover from student enrollment loss over the past few years. Budgetary changes in the last few years have also affected our district. Because we were put on fiscal distress last year, the district had to enact our reduction in force (RIF) policy. We had to cut personnel, as well as make lots of personnel shifts and changes. Certain positions changed from being full time employees (FTE) and went to pay other people for services.

For the example in this memo, I will be focusing on the funding of educational programs. As you are aware, 38% of the property taxes fund school programs such as athletics, arts, and all day kindergarten. Due to the great recession, property values here in the Knoxtown area were greatly affected and a majority of properties lost nearly 50% of their assessed value. A significant portion of our constituents also lost their homes. Due in some part to these two factors, our projected revenue was not met. The overall revenue for the city was down 42% resulting in a serious budget shortfall. The loss of these property taxes resulted in the cutting of many school programs. The children of our constituents not have fewer athletic and arts programs to choose from as well as eliminating full day kindergarten for the next term. If corrections to the budget are not made, some bus services and reduced lunch programs will also be eliminated.

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.

In taking a brief look at the Oklahoma education system, one need not look far before issues of significant underfunding and understaffing come directly into view. Many different proposals regarding what Oklahoma needs to do to resolve this problem have been suggested in the past, but very few of these proposals outline an answer regarding how these fixes will be implemented. How Oklahoma's educational system can increase the effectiveness of its limited funding is something that can be addressed with simple cost-effective steps and strategies that have proven their effectiveness in other states. Additionally, the issue of understaffing can be looked at from a fresh perspective in order to understand what the Oklahoma education system can do to bring in new teachers and keep these teachers. Finally, in joining with national-level movements and interest groups such as the National Education Association which can help with budgetary issues and Teach for America which can help to bring in new, trained and enthusiastic teachers into areas of Oklahoma that have seen poor performance from students in the past.

“Shrinking state and local education budgets matched with the added pressure of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which sets rigid standards in reading and math that schools must achieve in order to receive federal funding, have created a new challenge for districts” (Van Harken).

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.

School boards across the country have been struggling to fully fund art, music, and culture programs that without a doubt serve to round out the education of the country's youth. States such as California have faced major budget cuts. In 2008, California projected a shortcoming of $42 billion. (California Schools Girding for cuts under fiscal Plan) During a signing ceremony the governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger stated, "During a down economy and facing an historic budget deficit we have to make some very difficult decisions..." He later warned local school districts that the cuts will impact the students (I’ll be back). California is not the only state who has faced budget cuts. When put up against struggling budgets brought

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

Students in California are suffering the consequences of policies passed by lawmakers, which reduce the funding of the education system. Reduced funding has lead to a decline in the quality of a public school education in California. Larry Abramson, Dean of journalism at University of Montana School and journalist for National Public Radio, appraises the Californian budget cuts and has found that funding of its elementary and secondary schools has been cut by $18 billion within the previous two years (Abramson). The large reduction in funding of education in California is a result of the shifting of control over budgets from a local district level to a state level in order to equally fund all schools and create a unified standard for education.

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

I believe that education is essential to America’s future generations and how well we can compete with the rest of the world in diverse fields, therefore school funding should not be cut. The budget for the Department of Education has been reduced and cut in many ways. Some solutions the government thought they had found, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, turned out to increase the budget, rather than reduce it. The cutting of teachers’ unions and reduction of class sizes have also been suggested to reduce budget. Although some of these sound easy and appealing, they won’t necessarily help reduce the Department of Education’s spending.

Now a day’s Texas is growing profoundly, but as it cultivates so does its problems. One of the major issues facing Texas today is in the education department. The matter ranges from school funding to standardized testing. Not only are students themselves complaining about the matters at hand but also parents, some teachers, and even state legislature. There have always been five major issues in Texas education; school finance, school choice, expanding pre-kindergarten, school calendar, and testing. Of these issues you could never think of them separately because no matter how hard you try they will, in the end, affect one another.

We know that shutting down schools are a budget tactic within districts and according to Scholars Strategy Network an article published by Vontrese R. Deeds Pamphile, with uprooting students they loose what they value the most and that is familiarity, stability and comfort in their school. Reformers who favor performance-based school closures assume that families will choose a better school performance wise for their children and sometimes this is not the case due to parents not being fully informative on academics at other schools. According to Pamphile studies indicate that many students experience social disruptions as well as adverse academic effects after schools close and in many instances closures can undermine the very student outcome that administrators and policymakers are trying to improve. However according to the Philadelphia Research Initiative the long-term effect of school closings on student performance appears to be minimal and Kansas City;s was the best received by

Education is an issue that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another. Whether you are a parent, student, teacher, taxpayer, or employee, the effects of education on society can be seen everyday. For this reason, public schools are a top concern among political leaders. Over the past twenty-five years, confidence in the nation’s public school system has dramatically declined. While the public for the most part seems to support their school district, criticism is not lacking. Recent years especially have shown dissipating support. It appears that the prevailing view is that public education, as a whole, is in bad condition and is in need of a renewed effort to fix it. Private schools seem to fare

In today’s economic environment even the wealthiest states and districts are having to cut funding for education, while districts which were already teetering on the edge are now in an even worse position. In some schools children have to face not having enough books, paper for copies, severe overcrowding,