School Driver Education Budgeting Procedures
Budgeting, or the allocation of resources to achieve
institutional or organizational goals, is one of the most important functions
of school district management, particularly the driver education program. In
most school districts in the
Typically, a district's budget is a process of balancing
expenditures with revenues. After estimating revenues for the next year, budget
officials ascertain the costs of providing the existing program in the
following year. After providing for current programs, if additional funds are
available, new programs may be funded. On the other hand, if resources are not
adequate to fully fund the current program, reductions are required. As a
result, school district budgets are typically incremental. Fortunately, many states, including the State
of
To allocate funds across sites and programs, districts
typically use a set of allocation rules. These allocation rules focus on three
components:
Formulaic Ratios
Formulaic ratios often rely on enrollment projections for
the allocation of funds. This is because enrollment generally drives both the
revenue received from the state and the allocation of resources to school
sites. Driver education reimbursement is a good example of this concept. School districts usually use two formulaic
ratios:
· A staffing formula
· A funding formula for supplies,
materials and textbooks.
Staffing formulas for teachers are usually established on
the basis of a predetermined average class size. For example a district may
provide one teacher for every 23 elementary school students,
or one teacher for every 18 high school students. Administrative staff are often assigned on the basis of school size. Almost
all schools have a principal. Larger schools may require additional
administrative staff, and a district may have a policy of providing an
assistant principal for any school over a certain size. Counselors and guidance
personnel are typically provided on a ratio basis, such as one counselor for
every 350 or 400 students. Clerical positions are filled on the basis of school
enrollment or number of teaching positions. Other classified staff
such as custodians, gardeners and maintenance personnel are frequently
assigned on the basis of the some factor such as building square footage,
number of classrooms, or site acreage. These allocation rules are determined by
individual districts and may vary considerably across districts. Moreover, in
times of budget constraint, these ratios are often changed to accommodate
reductions in funding, with little or no consideration of the educational
implications of the decision.
Funding formulas for supplies, materials and textbooks are
typically based on enrollments or staff positions as well. Some districts have
very detailed distribution procedures, providing separate formulas for each
item or group of items, while other districts provide a lump sum payment,
usually based on enrollment, for schools to purchase these items as they see
fit. Central control over supplies, materials and textbooks often extends
beyond these distribution formulas as well, with schools being required to
purchase items through a central purchasing system.
Centrally
Controlled Budget Categories
As indicated above, school district budgeting is a very
top down process. The first indicator of this is the centralized budgeting
systems most school districts use. Budget categories are generally determined
and established by the central office, and school expenditures need to fit into
one of those categories to be approved. Many forms of educational technology
are relatively new, and often, school districts simply have not developed
spending categories to accommodate these new expenditures. Moreover,
traditional models for allocating resources may not work as well for technology
given the demand for expenditures over time in some instances. The problem is
most educational expenditures occur on an annual basis. Those that don't, tend
to recur at long intervals (i.e., building new school buildings or remodeling
existing ones).
For example, most expenditures at
a school site are for instructional programs, and the largest single component
of those expenditures is for teacher compensation. These expenditures are
needed each year, in roughly equal amounts. Moreover, changes have more to do
with the enrollment of the school than they do with differing instructional
needs from year to year. Consequently, it is relatively easy for the district
to establish central budgeting categories within which all expenditures must be
budgeted and recorded.
Many forms of educational technology, in particular
computers, require large expenditures every three to five years, a time frame
not usually considered in educational planning. As a result, few school
district budget systems can accommodate such expenditures. One way to solve
this problem from a school perspective is to carry over revenues from one year
to the next. The problem is most school budget and funding systems don't allow
schools to do this. If the funds are not spent the year they are allocated to
the school, they are taken back by the district. Changing systems like this has
proven quite difficult in the past, although some districts now allow schools
to carry over some funds.
Another problem facing many districts is the issue of
equity. Districts typically try to allocate resources to schools on an equal
basis hoping to avoid charges of bias. This makes systems that provide
"start-up" capital, or revolving sums of money for purchase of new
computers invisible in school districts, and something not likely to be
implemented in the near future.
Pay Scales
While pay scales do not appear to be a problem in
budgeting, they are related to job descriptions and personnel systems. The
problem is that many programs create the need for employees with differing job
skills and titles, particularly at school sites. For example, until recently
there was no need for a system operator or computer repair technician at most
school sites. Yet today, keeping a school wide network,
or even a single computer lab operating requires substantial attention from
someone skilled in computer networking and repair. Often district personnel
systems take a long time to establish new positions or job titles, seriously
limiting the flexibility a school has in hiring qualified individuals. As a
result, teachers attempt to take on these responsibilities in addition to, or
in place of their teaching load, often doing both at less than optimal
efficiency. Generally the above concepts
do not affect the driver education, where teachers’ salary is based upon the
union contract and/or years of teaching experience plus educational obtainment.
Summary
School district budgets typically take the form of
line-item budgets, indicating how much will be spent on individual objects such
as teachers, other personnel, maintenance and operations, capital outlay, and
others. More sophisticated school district budgets can track expenditures on
these objects by function (e.g., instruction, administration, pupil services,
etc.) and in some cases by program (e.g., regular instruction, special
education, compensatory education, etc.). Many districts have the ability to
track expenditures by school building, and some are beginning to keep track of
educational resources by school level -- elementary, intermediate or high
school -- or even at the secondary level by academic program. Unfortunately,
examples of these sophisticated budgeting systems are few and far between.
Generally, budgets relating to driver education in public
schools include the following categories:
1. Teachers’ salaries (both full time and part time) (you can not include
100% of a teacher’s salary in a budget if they also teach other subjects)
2.
Teachers’
benefits (including insurance and health/medical benefits)
3.
Teachers’
professional development, including travel to professional meetings, workshop
attendance, etc.
4.
Instructional
supplies for classroom and laboratory (driving simulation, multiple-car driving
range, and on-street) (in many cases supplies are items that cost less than
$100)
5.
Equipment
(new equipment for both classroom and laboratory) (in many cases equipment are
items that cost over a certain amount, for example $250)
6.
Contractual
service (for example, if you lease driver education vehicles, purchase
insurance for the vehicles, and the like)
7.
Payment that
will have to be made to other public school districts because of
known/projected number of legal resident students whom will be enroll and
complete driver education in other districts.
8.
Miscellaneous
items. Any budget needs that do not fall
within one of the above categories.
The Elements of Driver Education Program Budgeting
Strengths of
Program Budgeting
Despite its lack of widespread acceptance in public
schools, program budgeting offers a number of improvements over traditional
line-item budgets. Primary among them is that it offers school districts implementing
a program budgeting system to improve planning capabilities – an important
component of any technology acquisition activity. The multi-year facet of
program budgeting becomes very important. Even in districts where program
budgeting has been abandoned, there often remains a long range or strategic
planning function. Developing the capability to predict future student
enrollments and the consequent spending requirements is an important
capability, regardless of the budgeting system in use.
Another strength of program budgeting is its focus on
accountability through its stress on performance and the achievement of
objectives. Program budgeting also helps decision makers consider the full
range of available options, requiring administrators to evaluate several
alternatives before selecting the one most appropriate to his or her district
or school.
Proponents of program budgeting also point out that the
outcome orientation of the system requires the establishment of clear goals and
objectives, and then forces planners to determine what resources are necessary
to achieve those goals. When properly implemented, spending decisions are made
on the basis of what is needed to achieve the district's goals,
and not on some other basis such as "that's how we have always done it in
the past." Programs are linked to outcomes, and the specification of
activities and resources into a program structure allows inputs to be tracked
to outcomes.
Weaknesses of
Program Budgeting
As mentioned, one of the major problems with program
budgeting was its cost. Full implementation of a program budget requires
substantial personnel time, which is expensive. Some writers estimate that it takes
five years to fully implement a program budget system, and that often regular
staff had to prepare all the required documentation for a program budget along
with their regular responsibilities. The time requirements for program
budgeting were substantial. For example, if seven different alternatives were
identified, each had to be costed out and analyzed
before a decision as to how to proceed could be made. This is potentially seven
times as much work as it takes to prepare a conventional line-item budget. As
budget deadlines approached, program analyses were often set aside in favor of
regular budget submission requirements. Moreover, in many agencies, new staff
hired for program budgeting assignments was viewed with hostility by the
existing budget staff. This limited their effectiveness and the ability of
program budgeting proponents to make headway into the decision-making process
of the agency.
Another problem faced by educational organizations
attempting to implement program budgeting was the difficulty they had
developing clear and quantifiable goals. It is difficult to reach full
agreement on the goals of our educational system, much less obtain complete agreement
on the specific outcomes that are expected of each child. Moreover, even if
such agreement could be reached, knowledge of the specific resources needed to
achieve each of those goals is not available. Because program budgeting's
strength revolved around the development of such goals, and evaluation of an
agency's progress toward meeting those goals, it performed poorly in education
settings where the necessary specificity could not be obtained.
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