Funding Cuts on District Schools - Essay Example

 Funding Cuts on District Schools The issue of funding in district schools has been gaining much concern from the authorities, the schools and parents in general. Largely, district schools get a significant part of resources required to complete its budget from the authorities. The federal government being behind several funding programs that are aimed at expanding schools, renovating and installing the required facilities to ensure smooth operations in the schools, and employing teachers and other staff who are required to run these schools. For a long time, it has been viewed that each child is an individual with unique learning styles and growing unique approach to situations and their own innate capacities. To ensure that each child is catered for including the disabled and special needs children, district education boards assisted by the federal governments have over the time funded these schools. The district education board also recognizes that aspects of growth in a child are related; which means that the emotional, physical, social and intellectual needs in a child have to be catered for (Farguhar & Fitzsimons, 2007). This has forced the district boards to use massive budgets in employing different types of teachers and other instructors in the different fields to ensure a smooth growth in children under district schools. These areas of child growth make the idea of having several early childhood instructors an important undertaking in all district schools. However, currently with the economic crisis in federal governments and the overall spending cuts by the central governments there has been a crisis where the budges under the district schools required to runt these operations have been subjected to massive cuts and strict control in funding of these schools. This has been viewed by many as lack of a strong grip by the federal government on education system, while others have feared that such massive cuts will affect the quality education for all children in these schools. However, considering the alternative approaches that district schools can apply to balance the effects of budget cuts, these budget cuts would not affect the quality of education in these schools. In most cases schools are faced with serious budgetary constraints in their performance, which has been explained by many to affect the learning quality especially in early childhood education, where special care has to be taken in offering the children quality care that attributes directly to their growth. There are those who argue that positions that are not crucial and those that might be reestablished without the need for critical training and orientation might be affected when budget cuts have to be affected by management of such schools (Adsit & Murdock, 2011). In addition Adsit & Murdock further explains that programs that can be rebuilt more easily without sacrificing the quality of the overall learning objectives might be affected in cost cutting, while those that might take many years to reestablish have to be protected from the budgetary cuts, to ensure sustainability of quality in education programs. A study by Warren (2009) in a survey of more than six small schools in Texas school districts aimed at elaborating on the link between the changes in the funding of schools and the respective performance of these schools in education standards portrayed that there was a minimal link in this relation, with only one school out of the six surveyed schools portraying a direct correlation between the two. This argument portrays that though there has been a perception that budget cuts and other funding issues would result to lowered quality of education, there is no evidence that actually correlates the two. However, Warren recommends further research on more schools in readiness to formation of a general hypothesis linking funding cuts and education quality. The opponents of this assertion critically abide to the findings by Warren and fail to conceive any relation between the quality of education and the budget cuts district schools. On the other hand, Stone (2008) explains that families in Los Alamitos School district have reported a reduction in the quality of education in the district school after the California state made massive cuts to funding the district schools. The argument to link funding and reduced quality in education in these schools have been due to the strategic actions taken by the district school in California to reconcile shrinking budgets. Stone (2008) further argues that the budget cuts have led to reduction in the teaching staff size and other instructions that are necessary for smooth operations in these district schools. This has resulted to an increased pupil-teacher ratio, which has been viewed to reduce the necessary attention that teachers have particular on pupils. This loss of attention has been attributed to decreased level of education quality in school districts in California. Warren (2009) further argues that among the respondents in the survey, there were claims of increased safety issues due to large class sizes and reduced numbers of uniformed police officers in campus as a result of eliminating the DARE program due to budgetary constraints. Davidson (2011) further argues that other necessary services such as health facilities and auxiliary services in these district schools would be affected and this has been explained to affect the operations in these schools and the overall quality in education in these schools. The implications of these arguments would have a direct effect in the society. For example those who view that the budget cuts do not have any effect on the quality of education have to ensure that the important areas are not affected by these budgets cuts. Stone (2008) argues that in order to ensure the quality of education is still maintained, parents in California district schools have initiated fundraisings and increasing their contributions to the tuition charges to offset the deficits by the government. The Class Size reduction Campaign is one of those fundraisings that are ensured at maintaining a favorable student- teacher ratio that would not prejudice on the quality of education. On the other hand as Picus (1994) explains the presence of schools with a higher per-pupil property wealth compared to district schools would be the alternative where those who view the budget cuts as being directly linked to lower quality of education would take their children. These wealthy schools would therefore ensure continued quality of education due to their huge resource reserves. The budget cuts and funding issues in district schools would not have a direct effect on the quality of education in district schools, considering the above facts. As warren (2009) argues, the budget cuts may be designed to affect only the less crucial sections in these schools, with those that require much training and reconstituting being protected from these cuts. In addition as Stone (2008) argues, parents and the society at large may chip in to offset the deficit in budgetary allocation to these schools to ensure the quality of education is maintained. Adsit & Murdoch (2011) further elaborate that these schools may eliminate nonessential services and merge others to reduce operations costs. The costs that would be incurred in these programs would then be channeled to more important areas such as maintaining a favorable pupil-teacher ratio in the school. Picus (1994) explains how wealth distribution may be carried out from the wealthy schools to the less wealthy schools across the district through a recapture process that would have wealthy schools reducing their wealth significantly in favor of the less wealthy schools in the district. To implement the above advocacy, there would be a need for parents and all stakeholders in these district schools to have discussions on how some of the above proposals would be implemented. For example, parents might be requested to increase their contributions to a certain percentage to allow the schools to meet daily operational needs for quality education needs. It would also be necessary to critically involve all the stakeholders in on a fact finding mission in indentifying the areas that might be scrapped, merged or non essentials where some staff might be reduced significantly to reduce the overall operation costs. As Picus (1994) elaborates, there is need to utilize the available resources in curriculum improvements. With subsequent improvements, more students would be absorbed into the school. The flow of more students in a school would translate to increased revenues in these schools; the same case with the wealthy schools that are viewed as offering high quality curriculum levels. This would in turn increase the revenues in the school to offset the budgetary deficit arising from these budget cuts. References Adsit T.L., & Murdoch G., (2011). Cutting costs and generating revenues in education. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Davidson S., (2011). Pennsylvania budget makes drastic cuts to education. World Socialist Web Site. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/penn-m12.shtml Farquhar S., & Fitzsimons P., (2007). Philosophy of Early Childhood Education: Transforming Narratives. NY: Wiley-Blackwell Picus L.O.,(1994). The Local Impact of School Finance Reform in Four Texas School Districts. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 16(4), pp. 391 Stone M., (2008). Class size reduction campaign. Los Alamitos Unified School District http://www.losal.org/146310615114929237/site/default.asp Warren S., (2009). The effects of the recapture provision of Senate Bill of 2003 upon the quality of schools. MI: ProQuest Read More