QUESTION
Can principals repurpose budgets for smaller student enrollments, and how does it affect school programs?
1:39:34
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162 sec
Principals have the autonomy to repurpose their school budgets, but significant reductions in student enrollments can jeopardize specialized programs due to budget constraints.
- Principals can reallocate their school budgets to manage smaller student enrollments.
- Significant decreases in enrollment can lead to commensurate reductions in the budget, affecting the availability of programs like Advanced Placement (AP) classes.
- The majority of school budgets are spent on staffing, with supplies being another major expense.
- Funds for unique programs that make schools special, such as arts, culinary, and sciences, are at risk when budgets are repurposed.
- Education officials emphasize the importance of finding a balance between maintaining small class sizes and diverse program offerings to avoid placing undue strain on schools.
Shekar Krishnan
1:39:34
But if they actively want too.
Emma Vadehra
1:39:36
If they wanna do that, their budget is I mean, that's one of the things about our budget.
1:39:39
Right?
1:39:39
Their budget is there.
1:39:40
So if they wanna start repurposing their dollars themselves, that is at absolutely something they can do for next year and something we know some of them are doing.
1:39:48
What we need to figure out is weather and we're working with our super attendance and principles on this, whether we also need to tell them there's some things they have to do for next year.
1:39:56
Got it.
1:39:56
But the options are all on the table.
Dan Weisberg
1:39:58
In real world, Emma's alluding to this real world.
1:40:00
I mean, you can speak to this a former principal current superintendent.
1:40:03
Yet, you know, we get principals who will say, can we reduce by, you know, a couple of dozen kids because there are various factors.
1:40:10
There's very few if any principals are gonna say, we want you to cut enrollment by 20%, 40% in part because in part because they care about the parents.
1:40:20
To want their kids to go to school.
1:40:22
But in part, because it that means a commensurate reduction in their budget.
1:40:25
They can't offer the same number of AP classes and so forth.
1:40:28
So just to say real world, there's not gonna be a lot of principles moving
Shekar Krishnan
1:40:31
forward.
1:40:31
Right.
1:40:31
Right.
Dan Weisberg
1:40:32
We are not prohibiting them from doing them.
Shekar Krishnan
1:40:34
It's just this this Oh, sorry.
1:40:36
Go ahead.
Khalek Kirkland
1:40:36
I was gonna say no.
1:40:38
No.
1:40:39
Let me see.
1:40:39
No principal anyway.
1:40:40
Myles gonna say
Shekar Krishnan
1:40:41
that.
1:40:41
Yeah.
Khalek Kirkland
1:40:41
So let let's be very clear about I'm a former principal I think that being a principal was probably one of the hardest jobs that it is in the DOE.
1:40:50
Okay.
1:40:52
I think that we have this misnomer that there's this 1,000,000 of dollars that is in every school's budget.
1:40:57
An overwhelming percentage of a school budget is staffing.
1:41:02
Mhmm.
1:41:03
Okay.
1:41:04
So that's the huge chunk.
1:41:06
It's like a glacier.
1:41:07
70 to 80% is your school budget.
1:41:10
Is your staff.
1:41:12
Then you have supplies, is another huge chunk.
1:41:16
You know what the last chunk is?
1:41:18
The things that make that school special, whether or not it be the arts, whether or not it be culinary, whether or not be the sciences, So what you're doing is when you ask that or mandate, as Dan is saying, that principle to do something else with that money, Inverably, what you're doing is you're saying take away what makes that school special or unique that parents want that child, bitch, child to go to that school for.
Shekar Krishnan
1:41:46
Yep.
1:41:46
Right.
1:41:46
And and I and I agree.
1:41:48
And we don't want principals making those choices.
1:41:50
I I just I'm I'm frustrated by it is becoming a 0 sum game where schools have to really decide between class sizes or their other programs where really I encourage you all to think of other ways to support the schools in this because it can't be that the mandate for class ideas, which we all agree is a very good and important thing and foundational for learning it's pitted against these other priorities of the school.
1:42:12
And and that's a cost being passed on to the individual schools or the individual school districts.
