Aliyya Swaby Photo
Willems (right): Formula will cut arts and science.
Consensus continued to elude members of a committee examining how to switch the way New Haven funds its schools — with some sure a drafted plan will increase equity and others convinced it will destroy existing programs.
After several meetings discussing several different versions of a new plan to allocate money equitably to all schools, committee members could not agree at their final session on a final version to present to Superintendent Garth Harries and the Board of Education this month.
Chief Financial Officer Victor De La Paz presented a fifth version of a funding model to standardize how each school is allocated money from the district, to ensure each has enough resources for the next fiscal year, at the group’s recent final meeting. Community members were divided on whether the model was good enough to go forward more or less as drafted, or whether they required more time.
“What I’m trying to do is adjust to something we can live with,” De La Paz said.
Meanwhile, a preliminary survey committee members conducted of 20 local principals showed many schools lack technological equipment, trauma support and specialists needed to educate their students.
No administrators were present at the meeting.
Fifth Time’s A Charm?
The group has been tweaking a “hybrid model” of funding, in which part of the general fund is set aside to fund staff for each school and the other part is used to fund students by specific weighted needs. Read here about the two earlier versions of the hybrid model.
De La Paz’s newest version allocates about $94 million of a total $227 million in operating funds to “central expenses,” which includes transportation, facilities and maintenance, central office staff, and self-contained special education classrooms. Click here to see the breakdown of this model.
It also sets aside another $17 million to “school supports,” which includes $6 million for the four alternative schools and adult education, $940,000 for pre‑K, and about $10 million for principals, custodians and security for each school.
An undetermined amount of money would also be set aside to fund special school programs that end up unduly harmed by the switch to a new funding model. De La Paz said he promised district officials to put $1 million there, either from cutting central office by 7 percent or by using the carryover money from the state Alliance district grant.
The remaining $77 million in the general fund is divided among 47 schools, weighted based on student need.
Committee members have asked De La Paz to think more deeply about which student factors to use for the weighted funding. Funding schools with larger numbers of low-income students, some argued, is more important than funding students based on Smarter Balanced exam scores.
This version guarantees a base funding amount of $3,275 per student. On top of that, it allocates extra funding to schools with more low-income students, more students enrolling after Oct. 1, more English language learners (ELLs) and more special education students.
Funding Schools’ Needs
Members have intensely debated how that weighted funding should be distributed to schools. De La Paz and school finance resident Siddhartha Chowdri argued principals should receive the money and be able to decide how to use it at school-level based on their stated needs, with some level of guidance from the district.
Parents and teachers have argued principals should not be forced to choose how to fund multiple stated needs with a reduced pot of money. They said that would lead to larger class sizes, since staff members would ultimately need to be cut.
“Central office should be helping schools with as many things as possible,” said parent Cathy Berni. Some principals “don’t have as much of a financial background to make it better.”
“My expectation is not that when schools receive [funding], they prove how they spend it on low-income students,” De La Paz said. “I expect them to staff up for programs based on the best way to do that.” But he said he would work with principals to make those decisions.
Engineering & Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) parent Jill Kelly (pictured) presented an early draft of a needs assessment Thursday, with responses from 20 principals to two questions: What do you absolutely need to run your school? And: What are you lacking in order to run your school?
Click here to read through the needs assessment.
Kelly organized the list in order of the number of teachers who said they were lacking in each category. Technology was at the top of the list, with 12 principals saying they did not have an adequate amount and 13 saying it was necessary to run their schools. The associated comments listed “interactive white boards,” “laptops,” “LCD projectors,” a “functioning PA system” and “access to technology for all students” as equipment lacking in their schools.
The second highest category principals reported lacking was social-emotional support for students in the form of “trained trauma staff to address students with toxic stress,” “full-time social workers” and “school psychologists.”
The third was “assorted specialists” for extracurricular and afterschool activities as well as for literacy or math instruction.
Respondents came from a “good mix” of K‑8 and high schools, as well as magnet and neighborhood schools, and included two alternative school principals, Kelly told the group Thursday.
She warned that many principals were confused between the two questions and may have accidentally marked one and not the other.
Metropolitan Business Academy teacher Chris Willems said the chart “speaks to what I’ve seen. We are a human business.” He said he worried funding schools by formulas would destroy existing special programs, especially at the high school level.
De La Paz said he would use the responses to inform his conversations with principals and district officials going forward, when looking at how to prioritize funding.
Watching The Clock
At a November meeting, Metro Principal Judy Puglisi asked De La Paz to hold off on implementing a new model until fiscal year 2017 – 18 — to allow for more time to formulate something best suited to schools’ needs.
De La Paz said he could not wait. The current funding model is inequitable, for no logical reason, and he is determined to change it next fiscal year.
He said Thursday he planned to “transition” the district into using the model, by reserving funds cut from central office and by seeking new revenue sources. In past models, some schools with more than the baseline level of resources would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars — and schools without resources would gain them.
Kelly has kids at ESUMS, which has stood to gain funding in previous models — even so, she protested the idea of harming some schools in the name of equity. “We don’t want a zero sum game,” she said, acknowledging that De La Paz was trying to avoid that result.
De La Paz said Thursday he would set aside at least $1 million to make the transition easier for schools that would lose money.
Willems pointed out that when the federal grant linked with the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) runs out in two years, schools will lose staff and have to cut special programs. “We have schools attracting kids from all over the region” for their special programs in arts and sciences, he said. “Putting a formula in the plan in the name of equity will potentially destroy some of those programs.”
De La Paz responded that a formula would make losing the TIF grant a lot easier for all schools. With the current funding model, “it would be much more subjective” how schools would lose money. “But with this one, if we lose $5 million dollars, everyone shrinks [to make up a total loss of] $5 million.”
Willems said he did not agree that a formula would fix the existing inequity. He and Kelly said they worried funding specific student needs would encourage principals to “game the system” by trying to label more students as needing special education services.
De La Paz said that was unlikely and would only harm individual schools. “If everyone identifies more special education students, everyone shares the pot” and receives less money for those students. “It will play itself out. We have to distribute what we have.”
He plans to meet with each member individually in the next few weeks to “have the committee come to an agreement.” The plan will go to Superintendent Harries, the Board of Education and the public. On Jan. 18, he will present schools with their individual budgets.
For previous coverage:
• New School-Funding Fix Debated
• Ed Board Seeks Change In How It Funds Schools
I see two ways needed funds for the classroom can be liberated...
Look at the picture and you will see three people ... one teacher and two administrators ...
Need I say more?
And yes, it really is that simple ....