School Budgets Online

Here is a link to the page with the school budgets.

It also has a link to the Weighted Staffing Standards Model.

Comments

Po3 said…
Could this really be true for Nova. Per student allocation is:
1,303,373


And where does one see the funding allocation for laptops at Cleveland?
3/29/11, 1:17 PM
Meg said…
well, first blush looks like the district's talent for projections are as magnificent as ever.

Garfield's enrollment projection is for 1,611 in headcount, 1517 adjusted for contact. Garfield's October (adjusted) enrollment was 1,788. March 2011 enrollment (not adjusted) was 1,784. Does anyone buy that boundary tweaking, accelerated IB and attrition will bleed off that many kids? I don't.
3/29/11, 1:17 PM
zb said…
Does the actual head count instead of AAFT correct the issue we've heard about the staffing allocations for special needs students at K-8's like TOPS?
3/29/11, 2:59 PM
Charlie Mas said…
NOVA isn't on the WSS. The District just pretty much gives NOVA a check and NOVA decides how to allocate it. There are some constraints, but not many.

You'll notice that NOVA has only 8.85 FTE on the budget allocation.

Compare it to The Center School (266 students to NOVA's 305). NOVA has no teachers, no counselor, no attendance specialist, no Visual Arts Assistant.

Compare it to Rainier Beach (402 students). NOVA has no librarian, no assistant principal, no fiscal specialist, no academic intervention specialist, no data registrar specialist, and no activity coordinator.

NOVA can allocate their money pretty much as they like. They put it into teachers.
3/29/11, 3:56 PM
Paul said…
charlie,

Is that $1,392,807.00 for teachers for 305 students at NOVA? $4566.00 per student?

I think that was Po3's question.
3/29/11, 6:18 PM
basically said…
Accelerated IB is only bleeding off about 40 kids, not much of an impact for this year.
3/29/11, 6:44 PM
Maureen said…
zb, YES!!! Now K-8s are allocated 1.0 fulltime teacher for every full class, even if some of the kids have level 2 IEPS! Hooray! (K-8s used to have to buy percentages of teachers with their discretionary funds if there were any kids who needed special ed services enrolled.)

Next thing will be to allow gen ed teachers to actually grade all the kids who are taking their classes instead of pretending like the ones who require Level 4 services spend all day in their self contained classrooms and only allowing that teacher to access their files. (Presumably that will happen as ICS rolls up-but it should be happening now.)
3/29/11, 6:46 PM
Charlie Mas said…
Paul, the way it works is that schools get a certain amount of money through the WSS. At most schools, the bulk of the money also comes with the requirement to fill specific staff positions. That dramatically reduces the amount available for the BLT to determine how to spend for themselves. At NOVA they get the money that they would have received through the WSS but without most of the staffing requirements. Consequently, the amount available for NOVA to decide how to spend is much higher.

The spending per student is equitable; NOVA just gets a lot more discretion about how they spend it. That "per student" allocation is poorly labelled. It should read something like: "money not yet committed to the FTE's shown above".
3/29/11, 7:45 PM
Maureen said…
All of the Alts (or are we calling them Innovation Schools now?)should have the same budget flexibility as Nova. Of course they would have to have principals and staff who could deal with that responsibility.
3/30/11, 9:56 AM
Kathy said…
Looks like elementary school counselors have effectively been elliminated.
3/30/11, 10:42 AM
SeattleSped said…
For those families in Special Education:

"Every Student a General Education student First!" NOT.

The WSS demonstrates that, once again, middle and high school students with special needs only count as a fraction of a kid. They can only plant one cheek on their GenEd seat.
3/30/11, 1:41 PM
Anonymous said…
Maureen, level 3 and 4 special education students in your school will also be funding a general education seat. Will those students in those self-contained programs get to go to general education now? If those self-contained students do not go to general education, to what rightly is their general education classroom, then their dollars will in fact be funding seats for other students and reduced class size for other people.

SPED parent
3/31/11, 5:15 PM
Maureen said…
SPED Parent, I think I understand that, but I can't see where the money goes. We have full gen ed classrooms at every grade level without the level 4 kids (we don't have any identified as level 3), so when the level 4 kids are in the gen ed classroom the class is bigger than the contractual max and sometimes there is no IA or Sped teacher to help them. It seems to me that if they are gen ed students first then the number of gen ed kids in a class should decrease to account for that. (In our case, that would mean a base class size of 27 and then 3 seats for the Level 4 kids, instead of 30 gen ed kids plus 3 more level 4 kids in a class). There also has to be enough money so that the Level 4 kids can have an IA or teacher (or ASL translator) with them in the gen ed class if they need it. Just dropping those kids into a class of 30-33 with no help seems wrong.
3/31/11, 9:16 PM
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