Archive for the ‘Financial Planning’ Category

Launch Technology Projects During a Fiscal Crisis?

October 31st, 2011 by Kevin Silberberg

Most District administrators are aware of the service FCMAT (Fiscal Crisis Management Assessment Team) provides each day in the way of the top education related headlines throughout the state. If it involves schools, and was in the paper, you can be sure that FCMAT captures the link and makes it very easy to read how school districts up and down the state are making the news.  Usually, it is a good day when you don’t see your district as a link on this website.

That being said, an article caught my eye today that speaks to the dilemma we face in California better than anything I have seen in years.  The article, “What happens if city schools go insolvent?,” describes the San Diego Unified School District’s possible financial collapse that could require a state takeover to keep the district afloat.

As a district administrator, I know well what state takeover would mean.  It is a cliff you walk over and seldom fully recover.  Here are the first actions that you can look forward to.

  • The superintendent would be immediately fired and replaced by a state appointed administrator.
  • The school board would lose all powers and become an advisory panel.
  • The state administrator would essentially become the district’s new leader and have the power to unilaterally make decisions, such as which property to sell, what academic programs to cut, which schools to shutter and who to lay off. After labor contracts expire, the administrator could impose district-wide cuts to pay and benefits.

Very depressing!  But this doesn’t tell the entire story.  Earlier in my day of reading, I had read with great envy an eSchool News special report on a visionary technology program that was being implemented in—you guessed it—the San Diego Unified School District.

Two years ago, the district embarked on a five-year journey to transform its classrooms and completely revamp the way San Diego students learn.  Since that time, the Interactive Classroom Initiative (i21) has expanded into more than 1,300 classrooms and has distributed some 78,000 netbooks and other mobile devices to teachers and students.

I can only imagine the planning, effort and vision the district has into this project.  To get all the stakeholders together on the same page to move forward is amazing and should be applauded.  The professional development alone in this program would be the envy of school districts who dream of one day moving their teachers and administrators forward embracing the appropriate use of technology that helps teachers teach and students learn.

So here we have the problem facing most schools in California.  Schools have to live within their means to make it in this economy.  With triggers about to be pulled and mid-year cuts on their way, we can in no way pull off projects like the i21 program and expect to stay away from state takeover.

Would financial insolvency mean the end of the SDUSD i21 program?  I hope not.  Unfortunately, the lesson many district officials may read into the San Diego Unified School District financial problem is: don’t risk any new initiatives; fund highly traditional low-tech expenditures; and make it through the toughest times ever experienced in California public education.

The better lesson is: we can’t do it all, and sustaining is the name of the game.  We must strive to prepare students for the technology-rich world our kids will enter while managing to stay solvent in these turbulent and trying economic times.

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Posted in Financial Planning, Leadership, Models | 3 Comments »

Summer School: Lessons for the rest of the year?

August 10th, 2011 by Devin Vodicka

It is hard to believe that summer is almost over.  Like most districts in California, ours has been under intense fiscal pressure due to ongoing budget cuts.  This influence, coupled with increasing expectations for student achievement, led us to redesign our summer school options.  We now have an opportunity to reflect and evaluate the merits of our decisions.

The silver lining in the current financial crisis has been the relaxation of rules for programs like summer school.  In the past, our revenue would have been linked to the number of hours of attendance for students that qualified for varying rates of reimbursement.  Now that the supplemental hourly programs such as summer school are flexible, we asked ourselves what the needs of our students were and how we could best use existing resources to address those areas.  As a result, we decided to offer a distance learning program for students in need of credit recovery at the high school level and an English Learner academy for all grades.   Thanks to recent funding from the Education Technology K-12 Voucher Program, we had some iPads and iPod touch devices that we decided to deploy as part of our EL academy.

How did it work?

Our district sits on the edge of the Pacific Ocean about 35 miles north of San Diego.  I mention this because the first thing we noticed was that attendance, which usually drops off during the summer, held steady in spite of the lure of our coastal diversions.  Student engagement, which typically is not at its peak during summer interventions, was remarkably different than in the past.  Teacher enthusiasm—also subject to variation during the summer—was off the charts in a positive direction.  Grades and local assessments also showed higher levels of success than we previously have seen in the summer.

Here are a few recommendations based on this experience:

  • Take advantage of the existing options to be creative with program design.
  • As always, consider multiple funding streams to support your plans.  We used Voucher funding for the hardware, Title III dollars for the EL academy instruction, and some Tier III revenues to provide for distance learning resources.  Much of the planning was supported by a one-time, ARRA Technology grant.
  • Remember that many technology resources—hardware and software—are unused during summer.  For us, having the iPads sit in storage would not have served our students.  The distance learning licenses we purchased earlier in the year were “annual” subscriptions that also were viable for use in the summer without any additional expenses.
  • Use student achievement data to guide your areas in need of attention.
  • Empower teachers and staff to best use the technology resources.  Our teachers discovered new and creative ways to motivate and instruct students that we would not have been able to anticipate had we provided too much of a script for their plans.

As educational leaders, my hope is that we find ways to turn our challenges into opportunities for improvement.  Strategic and novel deployment of existing technology resources is one strategy that will help us to best serve our students and communities.  If we can make it work during the summer, what is to stop us from doing the same throughout the year?

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Posted in Data-Driven Decision Making, Financial Planning, General, Integration, Models | 1 Comment »

Staying afloat—and on course!

July 16th, 2009 by Tim Landeck
Queen Mary 2

Queen Mary 2

Times are hard.  According to a recent report, 48 of the 50 states are grappling with $166 billion in budget deficits for the coming year.  California’s share of that is at least $26 billion.  Districts are cutting librarians, music programs, sports, counselors, assistant principals, nurses, buses, and increasingly, teachers.  In California alone, over 26,000 teachers received pink slips this past spring.  With all of these cuts, how can the cost of supporting the technology infrastructure be justified?

Times may be hard, but times have also changed.  Today’s school district is nothing like it was 10 years ago.  In our district, for example, all of our computers are connected to the network and use the network to function.  People are saving and retrieving files constantly; network servers are hosting the programs that we access for student software, financial records, attendance, assessment, payroll—you name it, technology handles it.

Today it is virtually impossible for an office worker to accomplish anything without the use of a functioning, network-connected computer.  If the network connection goes down, it’s time to take an early lunch.  Imagine a bank today without access to its network.  It is the same in a typical school district office: everything comes to a screeching halt when the network goes down.

How can we not fund the positions that keep this technology functioning?  Is it realistic to think we can just hope the technology keeps working long enough to ride out the tough times?  I don’t think so.  I liken technology support to an ocean liner.  Cut the engines and for awhile, the ship will keep pointing in the right direction and moving quite quickly.  All too soon, however, even the QM2 will find itself adrift and out of control.

Let’s insist that technology in the schools be a high priority as we struggle to keep the engines running and our educational enterprise on course.

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Posted in Financial Planning, Operations and Maintenance | 2 Comments »

Buck Up, Cowboys: Find the Funds!

March 19th, 2009 by Bob Price
Copyright K; used by permission

Kevin Spear; used by permission

As a superintendent who supports the infusion of technology in education and seeks to provide 21st century skills for our students, each year finding the funding to support and expand educational technology becomes more difficult.  My district is suffering from a “perfect storm” of declining enrollment, a state budget crisis, and being a part of ground zero for foreclosures.  As we ponder the crisis before us, the special interests line up and begin their lobbying efforts.  Balancing the competing priorities of class size, music, counseling, libraries, athletics, technology, and safety becomes an almost impossible challenge.

  • “Don’t forget the role of libraries in information literacy,” shout the librarians.  “Oh, and while we’re at it, don’t forget the award you got for supporting libraries.”
  • “How can students suffering from emotional stress be expected to meet state standards?” ask the counselors.
  • “Music helps build reading skills,” shout the music teachers.   “We took our cuts last year.”
  • “Many of our students will drop out if we cut sports,” moan the coaches.
  • “Class size reduction is what allows our student to develop basic literacy,” remind the primary teachers.
  • “I can’t afford printer cartridges now,” complain the teachers who also remind you that you promised them Smartboards.

What’s a superintendent to do?  I strongly believe that our students need access to technological tools if they are to learn in a Web 2.0 world.  We can’t continue to put tech orders on hold, cut tech support, or fail to provide the basic supplies needed by those who use the technology to support instruction.  Certainly technology should suffer its fair share of the hits.  But just because we can save large amounts of money by postponing or canceling tech purchases doesn’t mean we should do it.

It’s my job as the instructional leader of the district to advocate for and support the infusion of technology into the curriculum.  Teachers won’t use technology that is unreliable due to lack of tech support.  Students won’t gain the skills they need for the new workplace by using paper and pencil.  Our very future will suffer dramatically if we are forced to use 20th century tools in a 21st century world.  To my fellow superintendents I say, “Buck up, cowboys.  Find the funds to support the technology.  We may need to reprioritize and look at our world a little differently, but we can’t afford to cheat our students by not supporting them with the technology they need to learn 21st century skills.”

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Posted in Financial Planning, Leadership | 4 Comments »