Posted: Saturday, July 5, 2008 12:00 am
Previous plan to pair funds with need regarded as skewed
By Carol Reeves
Gazette-Times reporter
The Corvallis School District is using a new formula to balance school budgets after discovering that a previous, well-intentioned strategy to provide extra help to special-needs students left some schools short over the past six years.
However, the new approach, which targets poverty, is raising some pointed questions.
At the June 23 school board meeting to approve the 2008-09 budget, a group of parents from Garfield Elementary School spoke out against a new budget "weighting" policy, which gives Garfield less money than it's received in the past. Their point? It doesn't make sense to them to be diverting money from a school that needs it the most.
Elizabeth Jones testified that she spent every day during the school year helping first- and second-graders with math at Garfield. "It was amazing to see how needy these kids were," she said. "Even the kids who were good at math needed (extra) support."
Susan Helback noted Garfield's state report card rating is "satisfactory," while other Corvallis elementary schools have "strong" or "exceptional" ratings. Reducing Garfield's budget seems inconsistent with the district's improvement plan, which strives to close the achievement gap, she said.
School Superintendent Dawn Tarzian acknowledges adjusting to the new "weighting" formula may be difficult at first, especially in light of the instability of other state and federal funding sources. But she also defended the new strategy, pointing out that it keeps the same dollars in schools next year - it only allocates them differently to target children in poverty across all schools.
"The bottom line is, no school receives adequate funding and yet educators continue to believe in their students. We get up every day committed to student learning," she said.
"It's a slippery slope when you limit expectations for student learning by tying them directly to increases or decreases in budget dollars," Tarzian said. "There have been many years in our district when schools have received less money than the year before, and yet our students have learned and often excelled."
To understand how this problem of how to fairly distribute these monies began, a little background:
'Weighting'
Each school in the Corvallis district receives a "basic school support" budget to pay for staff, supplies and operations. The schools also receive extra money according to the number of students enrolled and their grade levels. For example, to keep elementary school class sizes smaller, those students receive more "weighting" than middle or high school students.
Beginning in 2002, students identified as talented and gifted - or who needed special education programs or for whom English is not their native language - also figured into the equation.
But starting with the 2008-09 budget, the district has decided to use a new "poverty factor." Only the number of pupils who qualify for the federal free and reduced-price meal program will count in boosting a school's per-student allocation. As a result, a few schools will see less money than in years past.
Garfield School loses about $50,000 next year, which may seem ironic, because it has the second-highest percentage of low-income students in the district. However, the school also has the largest population of English Language Learner students, in part because of its dual immersion language program. The updated weighting formula no longer assigns extra funds for these students, so there is a net loss in the total weighted allocation.
The impacts
Tarzian has announced Garfield will be allowed to carry all of its $36,000 ending fund balance over to the coming school year. She also negotiated a Sept. 30 deadline for spending the school's 2007-08 Title 1 funds. This gives the school an extra three months to purchase items for use next year. In addition, Garfield has more than $60,000 in unused kindergarten tuition revenue that can be used to offset the funding change over the next few years.
Garfield Principal Juan Baez has announced staffing changes that include adding one full-time teacher, eliminating one part-time teacher and reducing a full-time counselor to half-time. He said he is in the process of reviewing the role of educational assistants at Garfield.
"We are doing the most with what we have. If we have a lot of needs in the fall either in a classroom or to support a particular student, I intend to use my kindergarten tuition fund to cover those temporary needs," Baez said.
Looking to the future
Obviously, the short-term effect of the new allocation policy has been unsettling to principals and parents alike. But district Business Manager Kathy Rodeman stressed the goal behind changing the weighting formula was not to take money away from schools, but to disperse funds more equitably.
The district also felt it had to do something to offer more support to students living in poverty. A child living in poverty can face a number of learning problems, Rodeman said. For example, a student may come to school so hungry the child can't focus. Or because of the parents' work schedule, the child may have no one to help with homework.
According to the state's Quality Education Model, schools with large student populations that live in poverty need 28 percent more resources in order to have an equal chance at academic success, Rodeman said.
The Corvallis district had not tried to incorporate QEM benchmarks in its budgeting process before, but the numbers related to the poverty factor really stood out, Rodeman said. As a result, all schools will receive an extra $619 for each student who qualifies for the Free and Reduced Meal Program.
Nearly a third of the district's 6,745 students qualify for the federally-funded program. Garfield and Lincoln schools serve most of this population, but at least 13 percent of students in every Corvallis school fit the poverty definition.