Education Week - September 25, 2019 - S10

EXCLUSIVE SURVEY

How much autonomy do principals in your
school district have over their budgets?

None 5%

A lot 25%

Some 40%

A little 30%

SOURCE: Education Week
Research Center, 2019

schools," said Jason Leahy, the executive director of the
Illinois Principals Association. "They are not just going to be
able to defer to central office. They are really going to have
to have deep knowledge about what's being spent in their
building, and why it is being spent, and be able to answer
articulately to that."
Daniel D. Krause, the principal of Willowbrook High School
in Villa Park, Ill., said that his district is already having those
conversations with parents to prepare them for variations they
may see between the district's two high schools.
Krause also is not the typical principal. He teaches public
school finance to principal-candidates and has completed the
coursework needed to become a chief school business official.
He's involved in the development of the budget, both at the
school and at the district level for the 4,000-student district.
Krause already knows that on the surface his per-pupil
spending will appear higher than at the other district high
school, Addison Trail High School.

Making the Case

some leaders say they are often not even involved in the
early discussions about budget allocations on the district
level-before the district starts slicing up money on a schoolby-school basis, said Adam Ezring, policy director of the
Collaborative for Student Success, a consulting group.
Many principals also say they do not have training in school
finance or budgeting to fully participate in those discussions
or to be champions of more funds for their schools, he said.
"Regardless of the amount of discretionary spending
[principals] might control, they've never had the ability
to really direct the resource allocation that goes into
their building, which would dramatically affect school
improvement, interventions, and staffing decisions," said
Ezring.
This year, his group sponsored 13 principals from across
10 states to participate in a school finance certificate course
at Georgetown University to help them become better
advocates for their schools.
"It's not a question of whether it's 3 percent or 8 percent or
5 percent," Ezring said. "It's hard for a school leader to direct
real efforts toward improvement and change when you are
unable to control the majority of your budget or you don't
have the training to direct the majority of your budget, or you
put those two things together."
And while that has always been an issue, it will become an
even bigger concern this school year as more states comply
with a federal requirement under the Every Student Succeeds
Act to report publicly school-by-school spending. That kind
of school-level spending data will allow the public to see how
money is spent across schools within the same district and
at schools with similar demographic profiles across the state.
Principals will need to understand the dynamics of school
funding to be able to use that data to lobby for additional
resources, if necessary, and explain spending decisions to
their communities, experts say.
"I think we are going to have principals more engaged
in what's happening, from a financial perspective, in their
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 25, 2019 | www.edweek.org

Part of his job will be explaining that spending data is just a
snapshot of what happens in the school, and there are reasons
why it will appear that his school is getting more money
per student. They include more special needs students and
special academic programs that Addison Trail does not offer.
"The simple dollar amount is much like associating test
scores to the two buildings-it sometimes oversimplifies the
conversation, and it's our responsibility as school leaders to
speak to the details behind those numbers," he said. "Because
the details behind those numbers are the programs that
support our students."
Principals like Molino said that while they may not have
a say over every dollar, they don't feel cut out of spending
decisions, and they're in regular discussions with the
staff who manage district budgets. Molino, who is in her
second year as principal at Heritage Oak, said her district's
arrangement works for her.
She has relatively unrestricted use of more than $100,000
annually. There's an additional $12,710 for facilities,
$6,336 in supplemental grants, and another $46,483 in lottery
funds.
"When I am given that money, as long as I follow the rules
for that pot, there is a wide variety of things I can do within
that framework," she said.
The district's chief business officer visits the school once
a month to review the budget and see how she is spending
money, she said. There are also discussions with Molino and
other administrators about the "big picture" spending on the
district level, she said.
A bigger issue for Molino is not how the district divvies
up funds-with nine schools, she thinks money is fairly and
equitably distributed among schools in the district. Her
quarrel is with state legislators, whom she said are the biggest
obstacle to school funding for not funding schools at higher
levels and wrapping resources in layers of regulation.
"They regulate the heck out of everything," Molino said.
"We don't want mismanagement. We don't want people to be
allowed to squander the people's tax dollars. But there are so
many rules that make it challenging sometimes for us to serve

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Education Week - September 25, 2019

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