Donate money. Convince 2 Republicans in each house of the state legislature to vote to put the tax extensions on the ballot. Support a parcel tax. It all comes down to generating more revenue. The District is getting a lot more money than it used to; it is tough to make any improvements in that situation unless that changes.

I posted prespell check and post spell check drafts.

Jim Mordecai

At last night’s special School Board meeting it was apparent from reading many of the Board Members faces that RBB was not popular with the school board, and the administration represented by Mr. Hal, when the Board has to contend with budget cuts but must sit on its hands until each site makes the decision on program and personnel cuts. RBB meaning real bad budgeting procedure is very frustrating to central administration during this period of cut, cut, and cut. And, when central administration disagrees with cuts as in the case in the past when clerical personnel that worked enrollment data at school sites were cut, there is even further delay in budget management.

The idea for what Randy Ward its created called Results Based Budgeting and what Superintendent Smith having to work with Ouchi’s idea left over from the State take-over that Superintendent Smith publicly calls “enrollment based budgeting” not connected to results, was guided by book called Making Schools Work by William G. Ouchi, Anderson school of business, UCLA.

Ouchi’s idea is better allocation of resources by decentralizing decision to school sites. It is not an idea that obviously works well with declining resources and the need to quickly respond to surprise cuts from Sacramento.

Jim Mordecai
Gordon:

At last night’s special School Board meeting it was apparent from reading many of the Board Members faces that RBB was not popular with the school board, and the administration represented by Mr. Hal, when the Board has to contend with budget cuts but must sit on its hands until each site makes the decision on program and personnel cuts. RBB meaning real bad budgeting procedure is very frustrating to central administration during this period of cut, cut, and cut. And, when central administration disagrees with cuts as in the case in the past when clerical personnel that worked enrollment data at school sites were cut, there is even further delay in budget management.

The idea for what Randy Ward its created called Results Based Budgeting and what Superintendent Smith having to work with Ouchi’s idea left over from the State take-over that Superintendent Smith publicly calls “enrollment based budgeting” not connected to results, was guided by book called Making Schools Work by William G. Ouchi, Anderson school of business, UCLA.

Ouchi’s idea is better allocation of resources by decentralizing decision to school sites. It is not an idea that obviously works well with declining resources and the need to quickly respond to surprise cuts from Sacramento.

Jim Mordecai

ALEC supporting student-based funding is suspect because, like many conservative organizations, their aim is to dismantle the public school system. Having the money follow the student is another way to say voucher. It is one of many end runs these groups are using to undermine the right of ALL students to a quality public education guaranteed by the government. It matters who supports it because what helps kids is not what their agenda is about.

Do we know for a fact that Peralta is losing a teacher “because of RBB”? Does Peralta have an unusually highly paid staff?

Also, I don’t get why the fact that a conservative group is pushing RBB constitutes a “problem with RBB.” Either it helps kids, or it doesn’t – why does it matter who supports it?

If you are losing a teacher because of RBB it is definitely because you have a more expensive, veteran staff. That is the case at Peralta.

When implemented, it was advertised as a way to have more site decision-making. But in reality, it pushes sites into making draconian decisions based on, often, incomprehensible budget allocations.

The model for the program has been Edmonton, Canada.
But like almost everything, OUSD takes what might be considered a working model elsewhere and applies it in ways that has little to do with the original model.

In Edmonton, each site pays for staff out of their own budget. BUT each site pays the exact same amount for each teacher based on a district average. This ensures that staffing decisions are not made based on how much an individual teacher costs. A school should not have its budget depleted because it has veteran teachers.

There are many problems with RBB, but I think the most telling is that it is being actively pushed by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the group responsible for crafting the Arizona immigration law.

My basic understanding of RBB is that each school is given a certain amount of money, and each principal can spend it as she or he withes. I don’t know that RBB has anything to do with layoffs/class sizes, in that districts without RBB are also laying off teachers and increasing class sizes.

One issue at those specific schools might be that under RBB, a school with many veteran (ie, expensive) teachers will not be able to hire as many teachers (or other things) as a school with young and cheap teachers. But it might well be that the schools in question here do not have that issue, and that class sizes are going up because the principals are doing that instead of cutting other things.

But, the real RBB expert on here is Steve Weinberg, so Steve, can you help clarify this?