Schools budget teams to vie for funding

Jan. 16, 2007

By Russell Stigall

Frontiersman

MAT-SU - The Mat-Su School District has initiated a new budgeting system that will combine teamwork and competition to prioritize funding for education programs and services.

According to a presentation from school board member Jack Sherman at Wednesday's board meeting, the first year of the new system will include 80 to 90 team members split into five groups. Team members will include district certified employees, classified employees, parents and principals from each school.

Each team will create three budget packages focused on their category. The five categories are small schools, grade schools, middle schools, high schools and career and technical schools, district administration and support services, Sherman said.

The school board will rank the team's budget packages before knowing how many of the packages they will have the money to fund.

Once the 2007 state, federal and borough budgets are known, the board will fund the packages from most important to least, which means there is competition between teams to get their packages ranked high, Sherman said.

When the money runs out, the rest of the list will be scrapped. This new system is called program based budgeting, and it is intended to bring more input into the budgeting process while showing taxpayers and legislators what their education dollars buy.

Tonight is the first of four team meetings. The process culminates in a presentation of packages by the five team leaders on Feb. 17, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Each leader will present three packages, each representing a different funding scenario. One scenario will be based on a budget similar to the one the school district received last year, adjusted for cost of living increase and other allowances, Sherman said.

The other packages will represent a 15 percent decrease in status quo funding and a 10 percent increase.

A 15 percent decrease would require massive cuts to functions and programs.

&#8220What you will be left with is a bare-bones budget of those things that are most important, as a team, in the middle school,” said Amy Spargo, Wasilla Middle School principal.

Spargo is the middle schools team leader.

A 10 percent increase would help improve school safety, reduce class size and put extra staff in the school office, &#8220things that were cut in the past and would like to see restored,” she said.

In middle school, the highest priority is to provide additional support in reading writing and math, she said, &#8220to create a system of intervention so no kids fall through the cracks in middle schools.”

Other teams will have other priorities.

None of the packages will represent frivolous spending, Spargo said. Even the enhanced package represents things that principals feel are seriously needed in their schools now.

&#8220This is not a wish list,” Spargo said.

Packages cannot change negotiated agreements, be unsafe or illegal, violate school board policy or violate health or safety codes.

Spargo said each package must include an impact statement: how each program would affect performance, why one program is a priority and why another is not, and whether the team thinks a particular funding allocation would result in an increase or decrease in student learning.

The school board must approve all packages representing a 15 percent decrease in status quo before approving status quo packages.

The program-based budget will be integrated into the district through a two- to three-year process, so the community and staff can gain familiarity with it, and so the district can increase the number of teams to as many as 20.

&#8220The first couple years will be the hardest,” Sherman said.

Contact Russell Stigall at 352-2267 or russell.stigall@frontiersman.com.