Component Nine: Coordination of Resources
Introduction
Comprehensive school reform provides the challenge and opportunity to examine long-standing practices in allocating resources. Money already allocated to a school can—and in most cases must—finance a comprehensive plan if it is to be sustained long enough to be fully implemented and institutionalized. So the process of reallocation starts at the very beginning, when school staffs create their comprehensive plans. This section provides suggestions and tools to assist school staffs dedicated to continuous improvement. It ends with ideas for more radical approaches to reallocations.
Taking Stock
District leadership is crucial in funding comprehensive school reform. While many states and districts give individual schools the authority for resource reallocation, schools in other states may be required to apply for waivers. Many districts have personnel dedicated to locating and applying for grants from governmental agencies, national and local foundations, and other local funding sources. Schools without these district services can set up a committee to carry out these functions.
Three categories of funds are available for financing school reform:
- Funds currently available to the school for operating expenses
- Federal funds, such as Title I
- Staff development funds, foundation grants, and special budget allocations from district or state sources (Odden, Reallocating, 1998)
Table 1 is a form for researching a school's funding sources. Federal funds generally available to schools are shown in Table 2. Although federal funds may be awarded differently from state to state and from district to district, they are usually available to individual schools through district and state entitlement and competitive programs. A school staff in the process of comprehensive reform will want to tap into the expertise of those at the building and staff levels with knowledge of how the dispersion of these funds takes place in its district and state. Click here for U.S. Department of Education funding opportunities.
Private
foundations and the business sector are also funding sources
for reform. Newcomers on the educational foundation scene
include Bill Gates whose foundation
is funding teacher professional development, leadership
and technological instruction for schools and districts,
and district implementation of technological innovations.
Gateway's foundation is providing online
computer training to teachers. Former Netscape CEO James
Barksdale created the Barksdale Reading Institute for K-12
literacy at the University of Mississippi with a $100 million
donation. In December 1999, Goldman Sachs endowed its charitable
foundation with $200 million devoted solely to education.
Genentech, Honda, Target, United Airlines, and Walmart,
among other well-known corporations, offer grants to teachers
and schools. Click
here for an all-purpose website for school staffs contemplating
outside funding.
In seeking private or government funding, it is important to be sure that the goals of the funding source do not overpower the school's comprehensive plan. If the funder's goals do not align with school goals, reallocating existing resources is better than bending and twisting a good plan just for extra funds.
Rethinking Existing Budgets
Schools typically have several budgets, each controlling finances for a part of school expenditures. The school bookkeeper and district finance office personnel are key resources for understanding a district's basic budget information. Yet reallocation takes more than knowledge, it also requires excellent communication because reallocating funds is often perceived as taking resources from one set of people and giving them to another. Obviously change becomes even more difficult when one's program seems to be singled out.
We suggest the following guidelines:
- Be systematic and complete in gathering and analyzing information.
- Share all information with all stakeholders.
- Base all decisions on objective research findings—on fact and data—not just opinion.
- Take the time needed for all stakeholders to understand the decisions.
In addition, difficult questions must be asked about each expenditure, including the following:
- How much of this expenditure is actually required by law?
- Does this use of money directly contribute to improving student achievement in this school according to our needs assessment?
After careful scrutiny and serious discussion among all stakeholders, budget allocations for items not directly contributing to the core functions of the school can be allotted to a pooled resource fund. The committee in charge of this function might begin recording these trade-ins in the first two columns in a document such as Table 3.
Additional Budgeting Links
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Finding Time
Around 80% of most school budgets is allocated to staff salaries and benefits, so this is obviously a major source of funds. While all reallocation decisions must be approached in a systematic and careful manner, reallocating staff expenditures "faces special hurdles that others do not" (Odden, 1998). Even in this area, while they are all sensitive issues, some decisions are less controversial than others. If school staffs want extended blocks of time to study together without added cost, they might pool professional development days to tack onto the beginning or end of the school year. While pooling days is less likely to pit one department of teachers against another, it still calls for a fundamental change in thinking. Here again, it becomes clear that the district is a crucial player in all comprehensive reform.
Reducing the number of students teachers are responsible for each day, quarter, semester, or year is a way to find time for teacers to think, collaborate, and plan. Reducing the number electives and detracking are two ways to achieve this. When the number of electives is reduced, or if subjects such as mathematics or English are detracked, the result can be smaller classes for all teachers. Students can be more easily grouped; fewer constraints on enrollment in one class or another allows a staff to hold most classes to an average number of students. Issues to consider with regard to detracking or cutting electives include the (new) mission of the school, the number and demographics of the students who actually benefit from such programs (one cannot assume that all segments of a student population benefit from electives), and the possibility of using technology to enhance traditional teaching and learning. Some comprehensive school reform models call for reducing electives and/or detracking while others do not deal with these issues. And both options would be counter to the mission of still other designs.
Additional class size reduction links
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Another way to reduce student/teacher ratios is for teacher in secondary schools to form interdisciplinary teams of, for example, four teachers. Each group is responsible for a cohort of 100 students for the whole day (or year). All four teachers are responsible for all 100 students for core content classes. Even with long blocks of time—for instance, 90 minutes for each content area—there is time left in the school day for students to take an elective or two and for teachers to work together to collaborate on their teaching and school improvement. In addition, each of the four teachers can be responsible for 25 of these same students as his or her homeroom or advisory students. If the school schedule is simplified enough (through decreased tracking, a reduced number of electives, or other alternatives), the result is that each teacher is responsible for 100 students, far fewer than the typical teacher in the typical American secondary school. The Coalition of Essential Schools Fieldbook discusses several school designs and schedules. Elementary teacher teaming or looping can also reduce teacher loads.
Additional scheduling links
- J. Allen Queen and Kimberly A. Gaskey. Steps for Improving School Climate in Block Scheduling. Phi Delta Kappan v 79, p. 158-61 October 1997.
- Lois-Lynn Stoyko Deuel. Block Scheduling in Large, Urban High Schools: Effects on Academic Achievement, Student Behavior, and Staff Perceptions. The High School Journal v 83, no. 1, p.14-25, O/N 1999.
- Mark D. DiRocco. How an Alternating-Day Schedule Empowers Teachers. Educational Leadership v 56, no. 4, p. 82-4, Dec. 1998/Jan. 1999.
- Regional Multicultural Magnet School: The Looping Program
- SERVE's Scheduling for Grade Team Planning in the Elementary School: A Formative Evaluation.
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In addition to classroom teachers and administrators, most schools have other staff including instructional, administrative, support, clerical, custodial, lunchroom workers, instructional aides, volunteers, and other personnel who provide services to students and/or teachers in the school. The reallocation committee can research the contributions of these staff members by asking
- Does this position contribute directly to the improvement of student performance?
- Is it essential to the operation of the school with the new mission?
Unless the answer is unequivocally "yes," this question follows: How could the resources funding this position be used more effectively? There are at least three possible responses:
- Redesign the position to reduce or eliminate non-essential or non-contributing functions.
- Reallocate the resources to a higher priority level.
- Reallocate a portion of these resources to fund two part-time positions.
For example, an analysis of the staff of one elementary school showed that the duties assigned to five instructional aides did not significantly contribute to improved student performance. For example, an analysis of the staff of one elementary school showed that the duties assigned to five instructional aides did not significantly contribute to improved student performance. Therefore, the resources were reallocated to hire two additional teachers. However, such decisions do not always have to mean that a certain person no longer has a job; often the same person can fill a different position.
While eliminating non-teacher positions may at first seem like an easy way to find new money for teacher positions, there are cases when it has not proven to be the answer. When the staff at Central Park East Secondary School in New York City was organized, they decided that teachers would carry out all secretarial duties. This provided the small school with more teachers and the low teacher-student ratios they wanted within regular school budgets. However, after a time, they changed their minds. Teachers decided they needed a few people in the school, who did not deal directly with students, to answer phones and handle attendance and other clerical necessities (Paul Schwartz, private communication).
Yet relatively few school staffs have actually looked at how they spend their days. Reducing time spent on matters not directly contributing to improving student performance can open up needed time. However, objective and practical decisions to increase or decrease allotted time require actual data. These data can be gathered by conducting a Time Inventory as shown in Table 4. Once school staff begin this process, they can brainstorm ways to use time creatively.
Several educational organizations have rethought how a school might use its time; see The National Education Commission on Time and Learning's "Prisoners of Time," and the Journal of Staff Development articles "Time: It's Made, Not Found." Additionally, David Collins (1997) suggests these ways to find time for professional development.
- Schedule special classes next to the lunch period to give classroom teachers extended non-contact time.
- Share extracurricular duties so that half the teachers are duty free at any given time.
- Dismiss teachers 30 minutes early two days per week to gain an extra hour on a third day.
- Use funds saved on substitutes to pay for extra teacher days.
Supplies, Materials, Furniture, Equipment, and the Physical Plant
The committee can also analyze the budget for supplies, materials, furniture, and equipment. If there are sufficient numbers of these items for the next year's operation, the money could be reallocated. In addition, expensive remodeling can sometimes be avoided by taking an inventory of space available in a building or buildings and changing the classroom configuration. Table 5, Table 6, and Table 7 can be used to inventory these resources.
Radical Reallocation
Most of the tools and concepts in this section provide ways for staffs to think incrementally about changing the way they use their resources. Also, earlier in this section we gave an example of a school staff that took responsibility for clerical duties to use the money for lower student-teacher ratios. In this case, the experiment did not work as first planned. However, the last thing we would want to do is discourage staff members from trying well-researched, but radical, new ideas. To the contrary, we encourage educators to dare to completely rethink how their schools function.
We advocate moving from "leaving it alone so adults will be happier" to "making a change to improve student learning." For instance, you may want to rethink even your partnerships to better serve a revitalized intellectual focus. In Clover Hills, Washington, they decided that an organization with which they had collaborated for years could use the time and energy of its staff to provide student tutoring instead of providing clothing for needy children. After initial discomfort, the result is "a flourishing partnership that directly benefits student learning." (Program Report: Proceedings of the CSRD Strand of the Education Now and In the Future Conference October 30-31, 2000, Portland, Oregon. December 2000, p. 8. NWREL.)
It may pay a staff to rethink how they evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a given innovation. For instance, a cost-benefit analysis of New York City's small schools "revealed them to be an excellent value" because the analysts looked at the cost per graduate rather than per student. (Research Shows Small Schools Offer Big Education Returns, pp. 4-6 in School Improvement Report. Vol. 1, No. 3. June 2000.) It behooves a staff to ask, "What is the purpose of our school anyway?"
References
Grissmer, D. W. (1998). Education productivity. Washington, DC: NEKIA.
Keltner, B. (1998). Funding comprehensive school reform. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Miles, K. & Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). Rethinking the allocation of teaching resources: Some lessons from high-performing schools. University of Pennsylvania: Consortium for Policy Research in Education.
Odden, A. (1998). Reallocating budgets to the needs of higher performance school strategies.
Odden, A. How to rethink school budgets to support school transformation. Arlington, VA: New American Schools.
Small schools offer big education returns. (2000). School Improvement Report, 1(3), 4-6.
Towle, N. J. (1999). Reallocation of resources: A six-step process.
