Goals for Assignment

• Understand norm-based budgeting, weighted student budgeting, and their consequences for school leadership

• Practice allocating discretionary resources

Required Resource

Please download LAUSD norm tables from: https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/123/14_2018- 19%20School%20Staffing%20and%20Other%20Resources%20Appendix%20H%20 05-10-18.pdf .

Scenario

You are the new principal of the (fictional) Jerry Brown Elementary School, a relatively small, PHBAO*, Title 1 school in Los Angeles (see Attachment 1 in spreadsheet for school demographics and the School Accountability Report Card file in the assignment for performance).

You have a presentation tomorrow to the school site council on how you propose to spend the school’s discretionary dollars. As you ponder your budget strategy for next year, you want to gain some more insight into what resources the district will provide you with.

Part A – Norm Resources

1. Using the norm tables, determine what normed teaching staff you expect your school to have next year. Assume that Jerry Brown Elementary has no special programs (i.e., that it is not a magnet, has no dual language programs, nor does it have separate special ed classrooms).

a. How many Kindergarten teachers will you have?

b. How many teachers in grades 1-3 teachers will you have?

c. How many 4-6 grade teachers?

d. What is the average class size in each Kindergarten, grades 1-3 and grades 4-6?  Based on school year 2018-19, the average class size for kindergarten is 18, grades 1-3 is 21, and grades 4-6 is 25 (I rounded the numbers to the next whole number)

2. In addition to the resources detailed in the norm tables, LAUSD provides your school with a:

• .5 FTE literacy coach (who is paid the same as a regular teacher), 

• 12 hours of campus aide time per week for the school year (36 weeks = 432 hours), and

• a full-time (40 hours per week) custodian1. 

Your school will receive approximately $25,000 based on norms in its Temporary Personnel Account to support hiring of temporary clerical help, lunchroom monitors, and so forth.

Your school has a

• resource specialist program to serve its special education population.

• One administrative assistant and 

• two teachers are assigned to this program.

Using the norm tables and Attachment 2, the Personnel Cost Summary sheet, calculate the total cost of:

a. Teaching/student service personnel (including substitutes),

First, we calculate the number of students:

As of academic year 2018-19 (latest year published), the table above indicates an average total number of students calculated as follows:

The average teacher salary, taking into account the three different ranges based on experience, is:

($43,913  +  $70,141 + $87,085) / 3 = $67,046 plus benefits

b. Administrative personnel,

c. Operational personnel (i.e., custodial),

d. Materials and supplies that will be provided to the school.

NOTE: Costs on the Personnel Cost Summary are slightly out of date – assume that they are current.

Part B – Discretionary Resources

This document contains the district determined formulas for allocating dollars to your school based on student needs. Attachment 3 in the spreadsheet contains a brief description of these programs and their intent. In addition to the grants listed, your school applied for and received a grant of $50,000 to improve services to Limited English Proficient (LEP) students.

3. Relative to your norm-based budget:

a. What is the total amount of discretionary monies you will have access to next year?

NOTE: Instructional materials and operational supplies calculated in Part A are discretionary monies.

b. What proportion of the total spending at Jerry Brown Elementary that we have calculated is discretionary and controlled at the school site?

4. Please put together a proposal for your school-site council on how to spend your discretionary funds (leaving aside operational supplies and instructional materials). For this proposal, bullets are ok to describe spending.

a. Your proposal should include your discretionary budget, what you are trying to accomplish, and how your proposed spending plan moves the school towards that goal.

b. For personnel costs, please use the Personnel Cost Summary spreadsheet. Remember, so long as you meet the basic requirements of the grant, you can use multiple grants to fund a single person or FTE.

NOTES:

• Assume that you must pay substitute teacher compensation costs to provide teachers Professional Development. This cost can be found on Attachment 3. In addition, a typical contractor will charge $1000 to provide one day of PD.

• The last two sheets in the spreadsheet are tools to allow you to budget your allocations more easily. Please use these tools to construct your budget.

• Come to class prepared to present your discretionary budget!

Part C – Weighted Student Funding

5. The Jerry Brown School has been mysteriously transported to Boston. Unlike LAUSD, Boston uses a WSF approach to budget its schools. Using the information found in attachment 4, how much weighted-student funding would the Jerry Brown School expect in Boston?

NOTE: Assume that the “threshold for concentration of number of students in poverty” is 60%. Assume that the school receives $400k as its “School Foundation”.

6. You are back in Los Angeles. Assuming you would receive the same monetary value of resources as under the current norm-based system in LA under a WSF system, which system would you prefer (and why)? What (if any) staffing changes would you make in Jerry Brown with the additional flexibility provided by WSF?

Discussion Questions for February 7

1. What are the pros and cons of distributing resources through norms?

2. The “Personnel Cost Summary Spreadsheet” has schools use expected district-wide average salaries for budgeting purposes. Why not use actual salaries?

3. What school costs did we not include in our norm-based budgeting exercise? Are these important? Should principals manage these costs directly?

4. What are the advantages of Weighted Student Funding over norm based budgeting? What are the disadvantages? How does each budgeting system reflect the school-finance values (equity, adequacy, efficiency, freedom) we discussed in week 1?

Data and Appendix