School Principal Budgetary Reform This Work Intends

¶ … School Principal

Budgetary Reform

This work intends to address the situation of budgeting problems within the context of a fictitious school for purposes of this work, which will be called Highbridge Day Care. This is a school that receives State allocations for funding in part as well as allocations from other sources. The school budget is set and fixed prior to budget submission to the board each year.

Too many times waste in the school budget can be traced back to abstract and poorly defined expenditures allocated to poorly defined functions of administration. However, the realization of this has some district resolving the problem.

Resolution of School Budget:

Streamlining administration / support-service expense.

The school principal is ethically as well as administratively responsible to oversee budgetary concerns, not only in preparation, but as well in the carrying out of those allocations approved by the governing committee for the school. The key for streamlining administration is to eliminate those positions that are not performing a vital function. Secondly, new positions or personnel should not be added without having first eliminated positions that are vague and non-productive in terms of the budget.

II. Policy Contribution to Budgetary Difficulties:

Problematic in many schools is adhering to the State policies which will cut funding for the following year if all the funds for the present year are not applied effectively hurting the school, in terms of funding and budgeting if the school saves money.

A problem to be addressed at another time is the fact that District Level makers of policy need to broaden both the authority as well as the standard of accountability of the school principal. Too many mandates within a school result in the limitation of performance and also effectively prevents the involvement of teachers, parents and certainly principals opinion and authority in voicing concerns of curriculum, spending, and hiring.

III. Committee of Economic Development Recommendations:

The Committee on Economic Development (CED) has stated that adherence to the following will aid the school boards and superintendents in ensuring "that sufficient funds get to classroom(s) to improve learning. "

District policies should induce schools to reallocate expenditures for more effective uses within current real spending levels.

Individual schools must have greater control of resources.

Increases in real resources should be tied to progress toward agree-upon achievement goals in a school investment plan or performance contract with the district.

Such investment plans should take the different costs into account for schools to educate students of different backgrounds and needs.

Recommendations for those who govern schools at the District level are:

Ensure that all policies support learning and achievement and are "well-coordinated and coherent"

Set goals for and monitor students achievement, using state and national standards

Ensure that adequate resources are provided to schools to meet such goals.

Delegate responsibility and authority, as well as accountability, for making progress toward achievement goals.

Provide incentives to teachers, students and administrators for rewarding achievement

Establish methods for "dealing with teachers and administrators who perform poorly"

Stated by the Committee on Economic Development is that:

"Local school boards should abandon their penchant for micro-management and concentrate on education policy," giving consideration to special interest groups at the "expense for the majority of students. " (footnote eric digest)

IV. School Principal: Management Tasks and Principle Role

The school principal should focus toward:

1. Courses offered

2. How time of teachers and students utilize time

3. Methods of presenting academic problems.

4. Development of student support systems to avoid students failing.

"The core of the principal's job is diagnosis: accurately determining his or her school's particular needs and, given the resources and talents available, deciding how to meet them. Whether principals are dealing with a shortage of capable teachers, staff turnover or unpredictable funding, they face many challenges. Understanding what a school needs, and then delivering it, lies at the heart of leadership."

Principals should be able to perform analysis, diagnosis and planning in relation to areas in the administration of the school that need streamlining. There are seven areas of leadership in the school system as follows:

1. Instructional

2. Cultural

3. Managerial

4. Strategic

5. Human Resources

6. External Development

7. Micro-political

The principal should take authority over each. Schools need to be autonomous over their curriculum, staffing and budgets. Principles in autonomous schools are more likely to take the bulls by the horn and share leadership with other personnel. However, without any authority to work in an autonomous manner, the principal ends up being a middleman catching the complaints yet owning no power to bring about change.

Key is the proper training and education of principals. General training often does not prepare the principal for the many and diverse aspects met head on each day by school principals. According to a report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education:

"Principals felt short-changed by traditional training programs that emphasized instructional and managerial leadership and overlooked cultural, strategic, and external development leadership skills. Regardless of training, most principals learned on the job. . . "