Feedback from Work Group on K-12 State Funding

From Neal Morton at the Seattle Times via Twitter - interesting reading:

  • At the final meeting of a state work group charged with telling lawmakers how to fix K-12 formulas that pay for the adults working in school.  Editor's note: when there's link to entire report, I'll put it up.  It's due December 1.
  • And as a reminder of how many students it takes in a "prototypical" school to generate enough funding for positions beyond teachers (Interesting that only elementaries get cash money for parent involvement staff even tho that's the age when parents typically most involved)

  • A public survey got more than 3,000 responses, mostly from teachers and other folks working in education. Only four respondents took the survey in Spanish, which prompted some workgroup members to question how they can represent/amplify more diverse voices in their final report.  Editor's note: about one-third of respondents had written comments.
  • https://twitter.com/nealtmorton/status/1195417525854461957?s=20 Teachers provided a little more than a third of all the responses. Among other educators who took the survey, school psychologists provided the most responses & in written feedback often said conducting tests for special education often takes priority over helping other students.  Editor's note: about two-thirds of comments came from school/district staff and one-third from parents, with a smattering of students/retired teachers.

  • Overwhelming support on the survey to increase state funding for schools to hire staff dedicated to the mental, social, emotional and behavioral health of students.
  • A little less than half of respondents consider it "very important" for the state to pay for training on racial literacy and culturally responsive practices (workgroup had trouble agreeing on how to define "racial literacy).

  • Another popular item: More money from the state to lower class sizes.  Editor's note; this came in at 74%. 
https://twitter.com/nealtmorton/status/1195417525854461957?s=20https://twitter.com/nealtmorton/status/1195417525854461957?s=20

Comments

Anonymous said…
You know what I would love to see? A cap on the percentage of a school district's budget that is not spent on a school. Seriously, how many communication departments and consultants and new logo designs does one school district need? Because I would bet that there is a fairly direct correlation to the number of consultants hired and the number of school nurses, counselors, art teachers, etc who see their hours reduced.

-Pipe dreams
11/18/19, 9:45 AM
cloudles said…
Somewhere I saw a post about what percentage of SPS OpEx budget was for administration, but I can't find a confirmatory source. Anyone have a link?
11/18/19, 11:36 PM
Anonymous said…
Here is the link to this school year. Don't let it fool you - "Other support activities" means spending by Central Administration too - that is not spent at the schools. So it looks like this year over 20% of our budget is spent at John Stanford

https://www.seattleschools.org/departments/finance/Budget/current_budget

Here is a copy of the Bellevue budget. Being generous and including food services and transport in Central Admin expenditures, they spend 16% of their budget on central admin:
https://bsd405.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-19-Budget-Board-Presentation.pdf

And we could go on and on...

-Pipe dream

11/19/19, 6:21 AM
Anonymous said…
And to point out the significance of that 4% within an annual SPS budget of $995.4 million dollars, that is almost $40 million dollars. Makes those PTA funds that everyone is battling over look like chump change.

-PD
11/19/19, 6:29 AM
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