How much control does the school have over its budget?

Districts allocate money to schools, either directly in the form of money or indirectly in the form of staff. The school must be clear about the latitude it has in the use of that money. District requirements and union contracts often stipulate what the money can be used for or stipulate the number and kinds of staff who will work in the school. A change in the requirements will create a change in the use of resources unless new resources are available. These are district level changes that impact each school. For the school to make changes on its own, however, requires a significant change in how the district operates in the areas of accountability and school-level decision making. For example, if the district or contract requires that each school have a librarian, then reallocating the money used for that position is impossible unless the district cedes that decision making to the school.

Sheree Speakman, a director at The Princeton Review, discusses problems with funding formulas.

Kathleen Ware, currently the chair of the Education Department at College of Mount St. Joseph, discusses how Cincinnati put an end to formula staffing.

Paul Castro, a principal at West Briar Middle School in Houston talks about how a Houston principal is empowered by having control over staffing at his school .

A union contract may include a formula for allocating physical education, art, and music teachers to a school or visiting teachers, school nurses, and paraprofessionals. Usually a school can exceed the number of required staff, but rarely can a school have fewer than the minimum. Schools should examine their budgets and determine the exact amount of money, including staff, over which they have control. School personnel may be surprised to find that they have control over only about 15% of the total budget because staff usually account for about 85% of a school's budget, and they often do not have much control in this area. If this is the situation, then larger issues must be addressed related to school accountability before allocation of resources can be considered. The process of allocating resources is hard work and should not be undertaken if the school's decision making authority is limited to the "copier money." The real money is in staff, and that must be part of what is under the school's control.

Paul Castro discusses how little actual dollars a Houston principal has to spend

Student achievement gains or losses occur at the school level. High stakes accountability has increased the focus on schools. Many districts, however, maintain centralized structures where most of the decision making occurs at the district level while the accountability shifts to the schools. Schools in these kinds of districts should not be concerned about resource allocation; they should be concerned about being held accountable for something over which they have very little control.

Marguerite Roza, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Reinventing Public Education, discusses the disconnect between district level allocations and school level accountability..

Bob Suess, a principal of high achieving high school in the Cincinnati Public Schools discusses how one Cincinnati principal responded when his schools got control over more than "copier money".

Bob Suess talks about how one Cincinnati principal traded in support staff for smaller class size and smaller load for his teachers.