Comments on San Francisco's Weighted Student Formula
I recently linked to an Edwise article expressing skeptical opposition to the WSF bandwagon. I also added my comments to that article and was asked a question in the comment section that triggered this long response. I'm posting this here since it gives me a chance to express some thoughts on WSF that have been tossing around in my head for a while.
First, some context from the Edwise article comments. First Eric Mar also added a comment:
Eric is correct that WSF has left the BOE "off the hook" about making many of the hard choices. I'm not really sure what he means about WSF impacting the BOE's responsibility to fight for more adequate funding. Here in SF and in CA general, getting more money is not part of the BOE job description. Besides, WSF is irrelevant. A responsible BOE commissioner should be just as aware of the site council budget realities as they would be if they were drawing up the budgets themselves. The other way of looking at this is that WSF forces the BOE to delegate more of their budgeting powers to the sites. As a WSF fan I'm happy that the BOE has less of a hand to play. How could they possibly be more tuned to the real needs of all 55 schools than the affected parties in each site council? I think more money and more power should be delegated to the sites so they can be more effectively empowered to control their own destiny. The whole point of the program is to take some of these powers out of the hands of politicians and central administrative staff and push it down to the schools. These are the people who know better what is really needed. These are the people with the greatest stake in making their schools better. It's not surprising that many people — politicians, administrators, and unions — would be antagonistic to or dismissive of that goal.
First, some context from the Edwise article comments. First Eric Mar also added a comment:
As a School Board member in SF and the former President of the SF Board I think EdWize - is right on the mark - "the [WSF] proposal pays no attention whatsoever to the money coming into a school district, but is 'dividing the scraps.'"Which was followed by this question:Right wing, pro-voucher and union-busting forces are trying to frame the debate in a misleading manner. Our schools in SF with the concentrations of the lowest income kids [almost all kids of color] are really left in a terrible situation in budget deficit periods [like the last 5 years for us in SF] under the WSF to cut a teacher here or a para there or arts programs or sports. Other schools with more affluent parents and an ability to raise private funds might be a little better situation but they struggle as well.
Those difficult 'decisions' over 'crumbs' left up to the school sites have really left 'management' [me and other school board members and the superintendent] off the hook in the broader fight for adequate funding. United Educators of SF and others have been constructively critical of the implementation of the WSF in SF. The Fordham Foundation is really trying to mislead the public on this very complex issue.
How does Weighted School Funding work in San Francisco? How long has it been there? And is a funding formula really a concern for us? (that last is a real question. I don't know that it's not, but I don't understand that it is)First, any future application of WSF to NYC may or may not bear any resemblance to what we have in SF. There are some wolves donning the WSF sheep's clothing, so I readily admit that you need to be wary.
CA school finances are a deep mystery, and it would not be possible to explain the SF program without touching on a lot of that. But I'll try to jot down a short synopsis.
The state funds almost all schools throughout the state. This is way better for equity and equalization than the scandal you suffer through in NYC. When Eric bemoans the poor funding, he should bear in mind that at least here in CA the cities actually get more $/pupil than the burbs. Only rural districts get more than the cities. Of course, our urban school population has greater needs. One can legitimately argue that the differentials are not enough. But it is nothing like the stark inequality that you see between urban and suburban schools in New York.
The school districts in CA are locally governed, but report to the state. The state ed budget comes with a complex web of strings as every legislator tries to tattoo their name on this program or that. So a lot of the money comes to the district earmarked for very specific purposes with complex reporting and accounting restrictions. That is also true for federal $$ like many of the NCLB programs. These funds cannot easukt be put into the WSF system, and they are not currently allocated via WSF.
So the local budget divides into restricted and general funds. Most of the general fund is spent under WSF. Many programs like subs, facilities, custodial services, special ed, food services, etc. are excluded from WSF (and are often partly funded by restricted funds too). The WSF funds are allocated to sites based on a weighted capitation where the weights are based on identified student needs EDY, ELL, ESL, etc. There is also a per-site allocation too since small schools would get hammered by a pure-capitation system.
The site budgets are determined by site councils. There are state ed code that govern the composition and rules for site councils. They represent the administration, teachers, and the community — typically families in the schools. There are serious implementation challenges here. Mustering a real quorum at the site councils can sometimes by problematic in schools with spotty parental involvement. With the state typically not finalizing the September budgets until June, getting real budget numbers to the site councils in the April/May/June time-frame is basically impossible. In the early years of WSF, getting an overtaxed central staff to properly document and support the budget numbers and rules for the site councils was a struggle. In the real world the spring site council budgets were always amended, often multiple times — sometimes up and sometimes down. The difficulties of rallying the SSCs comes back into play, so often the administration is left to cope with budget changes. WSF does not lessen the need for competent administrations. In fact, it probably heightens it to the extent that more voices are at the table and have to be lead.
WSF budgets hire teachers using district averaged salaries. Every teacher in the school "costs" the same amount in the WSF budget regardless of their actual salaries. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but ultimately necessary given the mandates of collectively bargained contracts. Let's get real. If WSF used real salaries instead, many of the more successful schools in the district — which typically attract more senior staff with the higher salaries — could not afford their staff. They would be faced with classroom consolidations that would violate state law and the local contracts. Collective bargaining rules would not allow them to push staff out for budgeting reasons, nor would anyone want that power. The complaints about WSF heard on Edwise, that it would seduce struggling schools to hire inexperienced, cheaper teachers in greater numbers, misses the point. These schools do get larger budgets and can hire more staff, but the averaging of salaries does not give them any incentive to hire on the cheap. Quite the contrary. They would love to have more experienced teachers. Solving that problem requires other remedies and is not the point of WSF. The core goal of WSF, at least here in SF, is to promote local autonomy and control. In a different implementation, designed by less labor friendly politicians, WSF could be wielded as a means to sabotage collective bargaining. But as it has been implemented here in SF, it simply is not so. Eric notes that the UESF has been engaged in this implementation, and they would never allow it to happen were it to take such a malevolent form.
In the end of the day the WSF monies barely cover each site's staff salaries. There is often very little discretion left by the time the hard requirements of funding classroom teachers are taken care of. In some years and at some sites there is literally nothing to spare. To me this is the biggest shortcoming of the SF program and the area ripe for the greatest improvements. Finding some way to roll more of the restricted funding into WSF administered programs is essential to making site based budgeting real. Under the current system site councils do make important choices about which programs to support and which non-classroom staff to hire. These are real, meaningful choices. They are also making hard choices about where to cut too. The WSF concept would be far more powerful, far more empowering, if more money could be budgeted at the site level.
The state funds almost all schools throughout the state. This is way better for equity and equalization than the scandal you suffer through in NYC. When Eric bemoans the poor funding, he should bear in mind that at least here in CA the cities actually get more $/pupil than the burbs. Only rural districts get more than the cities. Of course, our urban school population has greater needs. One can legitimately argue that the differentials are not enough. But it is nothing like the stark inequality that you see between urban and suburban schools in New York.
The school districts in CA are locally governed, but report to the state. The state ed budget comes with a complex web of strings as every legislator tries to tattoo their name on this program or that. So a lot of the money comes to the district earmarked for very specific purposes with complex reporting and accounting restrictions. That is also true for federal $$ like many of the NCLB programs. These funds cannot easukt be put into the WSF system, and they are not currently allocated via WSF.
So the local budget divides into restricted and general funds. Most of the general fund is spent under WSF. Many programs like subs, facilities, custodial services, special ed, food services, etc. are excluded from WSF (and are often partly funded by restricted funds too). The WSF funds are allocated to sites based on a weighted capitation where the weights are based on identified student needs EDY, ELL, ESL, etc. There is also a per-site allocation too since small schools would get hammered by a pure-capitation system.
The site budgets are determined by site councils. There are state ed code that govern the composition and rules for site councils. They represent the administration, teachers, and the community — typically families in the schools. There are serious implementation challenges here. Mustering a real quorum at the site councils can sometimes by problematic in schools with spotty parental involvement. With the state typically not finalizing the September budgets until June, getting real budget numbers to the site councils in the April/May/June time-frame is basically impossible. In the early years of WSF, getting an overtaxed central staff to properly document and support the budget numbers and rules for the site councils was a struggle. In the real world the spring site council budgets were always amended, often multiple times — sometimes up and sometimes down. The difficulties of rallying the SSCs comes back into play, so often the administration is left to cope with budget changes. WSF does not lessen the need for competent administrations. In fact, it probably heightens it to the extent that more voices are at the table and have to be lead.
WSF budgets hire teachers using district averaged salaries. Every teacher in the school "costs" the same amount in the WSF budget regardless of their actual salaries. This is somewhat counter-intuitive, but ultimately necessary given the mandates of collectively bargained contracts. Let's get real. If WSF used real salaries instead, many of the more successful schools in the district — which typically attract more senior staff with the higher salaries — could not afford their staff. They would be faced with classroom consolidations that would violate state law and the local contracts. Collective bargaining rules would not allow them to push staff out for budgeting reasons, nor would anyone want that power. The complaints about WSF heard on Edwise, that it would seduce struggling schools to hire inexperienced, cheaper teachers in greater numbers, misses the point. These schools do get larger budgets and can hire more staff, but the averaging of salaries does not give them any incentive to hire on the cheap. Quite the contrary. They would love to have more experienced teachers. Solving that problem requires other remedies and is not the point of WSF. The core goal of WSF, at least here in SF, is to promote local autonomy and control. In a different implementation, designed by less labor friendly politicians, WSF could be wielded as a means to sabotage collective bargaining. But as it has been implemented here in SF, it simply is not so. Eric notes that the UESF has been engaged in this implementation, and they would never allow it to happen were it to take such a malevolent form.
In the end of the day the WSF monies barely cover each site's staff salaries. There is often very little discretion left by the time the hard requirements of funding classroom teachers are taken care of. In some years and at some sites there is literally nothing to spare. To me this is the biggest shortcoming of the SF program and the area ripe for the greatest improvements. Finding some way to roll more of the restricted funding into WSF administered programs is essential to making site based budgeting real. Under the current system site councils do make important choices about which programs to support and which non-classroom staff to hire. These are real, meaningful choices. They are also making hard choices about where to cut too. The WSF concept would be far more powerful, far more empowering, if more money could be budgeted at the site level.
Eric is correct that WSF has left the BOE "off the hook" about making many of the hard choices. I'm not really sure what he means about WSF impacting the BOE's responsibility to fight for more adequate funding. Here in SF and in CA general, getting more money is not part of the BOE job description. Besides, WSF is irrelevant. A responsible BOE commissioner should be just as aware of the site council budget realities as they would be if they were drawing up the budgets themselves. The other way of looking at this is that WSF forces the BOE to delegate more of their budgeting powers to the sites. As a WSF fan I'm happy that the BOE has less of a hand to play. How could they possibly be more tuned to the real needs of all 55 schools than the affected parties in each site council? I think more money and more power should be delegated to the sites so they can be more effectively empowered to control their own destiny. The whole point of the program is to take some of these powers out of the hands of politicians and central administrative staff and push it down to the schools. These are the people who know better what is really needed. These are the people with the greatest stake in making their schools better. It's not surprising that many people — politicians, administrators, and unions — would be antagonistic to or dismissive of that goal.
Labels: School Board Notes, SFUSD Politics
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