Smarter School Spending
Smarter School Spending - Success Stories
General
- Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) Smarter School Spending Journey - 2016
Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) was facing declining enrollment, declining revenues, and aging facilities. TCAPS realized that it needed to make smart investments to reach its student achievement goals, given the serious financial pressures it faced. - Relying on Your Gut to Evaluate Spending Can give You Indigestion
Personal observation is susceptible to biases that make it a potentially flawed basis for budgeting decisions. One superintendent averted a bad decision by sticking to his principle of consulting data before making a decision.
Plan and Prepare
- 1A - Establish a Partnership with Finance and Academics - Beaverton, OR
Forging a Finance-Academic Partnership in Beaverton Building a Coalition to Support Smarter School Spending. - 1D - Communication Strategy - Traverse City Area Public Schools, MI
Traverse City Area Public Schools’ superintendent developed an “elevator speech” to help communicate the importance of Smarter School Spending.
Set Instructional Priorities
- 2A - Set SMARTER Goals - Lake County School District, FL
LCSD decided to embark upon the Smarter School Spending journey and setting SMARTER goals was an important part of LCSD’s success. - 2B - Root Cause Analysis - Traverse City Area Public Schools, MI
Traverse City Area Public Schools solved a problem with late buses by finding the root cause and developing a solution to address it. The case highlights the power of systematic and preventative solutions. - 2B - Root Cause Analysis - Beaverton School District, OR
Beaverton School District had unsatisfactory graduation rates and an achievement gap. To find the most cost-effective solutions, Beaverton used root cause analysis.
Pay for Priorities
- 3B - Pay for Priorities - Lake County Schools, FL
Lake County School District (LCSD) was growing rapidly, but the revenues needed to keep up with growth weren’t materializing and student achievement was suffering as a result. LCSD embarked upon the Smarter School Spending journey to put an end to reactive, short-term budget cutting and take a coherent long-term approach to reaching its student achievement goals. Part of the journey was finding opportunities to shift resources away from lower value activities and towards academic priorities
Implement the Plan
- 4C - Allocate Resources to Individual School Sites - Beaverton, OR
A school district’s instructional priorities should be reflected in the budget for individual school sites. Therefore, the method used to allocate funds to school sites must be designed in a way that helps a district make the most student learning gains with its available funding.
Ensure Sustainability