Jan. 8—ROCHESTER — After months of discussion and analysis, the Rochester School Board has approved a restructuring of the way it funds the schools in the district.
The School Board approved the decision on Tuesday, Jan. 7, after a final round of presentations and questions about the topic. In broad terms, the change will give schools more autonomy over some of their funding. Superintendent Kent Pekel described the new model as a way to accommodate more student success.
“Given that our district demonstrated such uneven outcomes using a highly centralized system of funding and staffing schools, we theorized that providing schools with more flexibility to allocate resources might result in more effective services and supports for the students who attend each of our unique and extraordinary schools,” Pekel wrote in a memo about the change.
The district has branded the new strategy as “the balanced budget model.” In his memo, Pekel explained that the name for the model was meant to convey two things. One is that it “balances the authority about funding and staffing between the school and central office levels.” The second is that he hopes the efficiencies accomplished through the change will “enable the school district to balance its budget on an ongoing basis.”
Under the model, the district has designated four funding categories: Fixed school staffing, flexible school funding, specialized programs and districtwide services.
Overall, schools will still be obligated to spend a lot of their funding in specific ways. According to documentation from the district, 80% of schools’ funding will be considered “fixed,” and pertain to costs associated with lead principals, the number of teachers needed to meet a certain student-to-teacher ratio, and school counselors, among others.
“The majority (of the funding) is still being allocated in that way that guarantees that common educational program across the district,” Pekel said.
Pekel’s memo clarifies that schools will have to implement their flexible funding in a way that works toward school-improvement goals.
In the flexible funding category, schools will have more discretion when it comes to how they fund assistant principals, teachers beyond the minimum required to meet the standard student-to-teacher ratio, reading specialists, supply budgets, equity specialists, reading specialists and professional development among others.
Part of the district’s change will include redistributing what schools are eligible for certain revenue streams.
For example, the district will start reducing the funding it gives to high schools based on the number of students who are enrolled in the postsecondary enrollment options program, which allows them to gain college credit while still enrolled in high school. Pekel has described the process used up to now as “double dipping” — meaning that the district pays for a student in the form of funding to high schools, while also paying tuition to the college where the students are enrolled in PSEO.
Another change will pertain to how the district distributes the state and federal funding, known as compensatory revenue and Title I funding, respectively. Both revenue streams are meant to support students who are designated low-income, or who face other barriers.
Although Minnesota law only requires spending 80% of compensatory funding on the schools that generate the revenue, the district will now be dedicating 100% of the revenue to those schools.
While RPS will be tightening its focus on compensatory funding, it will be broadening the number of schools that receive Title I funding. Up until now, the district has focused that funding at the elementary school level.
Now, however, it will be applying that funding to the secondary schools as well.
“Concentrating our Title I funding in the same schools that have significant amounts of compensatory funding has really maximized our resources in a very limited number of schools,” Pekel said. “But those students are still with us in middle school. They’re still with us in high school. And so we would expand the use of those dollars at the secondary level.”