August 24, 2023
States, districts, and schools must manage resources to enhance outcomes for all students. These Spotlight resources and events aim to assist educators with managing funds to boost teacher compensation, improve outcomes for students who are and have been underserved, promote learning acceleration, and more.
Increasing Teacher Compensation: How Do We Foot the Bill?
Leaders and policymakers are exploring solutions to address the national shortage of teachers, including increasing teacher compensation. However, securing the funding to make this possible and sustainable is the challenge. In a recent blog post, experts from WestEd’s Strategic Resource Planning and Implementation team, Dana Grayson Chambers and Jason Willis, explore two approaches that can help implement and sustain increased teacher compensation: revenue-raising and expense trade-off.
Read the blog post, and be sure to check out WestEd’s Teacher Compensation Initiative page for more insights from experts in the field.
Scoping Out the Current Educational Equity Landscape
This new Budgeting for Educational Equity episode explores the perspective of someone who has had her finger on the pulse of school business and resource equity for a long time, from both a local and a statewide perspective. Nina Boyd is a school business official, administrator, and statewide leader who has seen a lot transpire during her nearly 40 years in public education, and she is still on the front lines impacting change. In this discussion with host Jason Willis, Boyd shares her perspective on the challenges to creating educational equity:
We’re looking at systems that have been around for a long time and, sometimes, there are policies in place that prevent people from doing some of the things that they need to do. And so systemically, there are things that we have to look at that might be barriers in some of the equity work that is trying to be accomplished.
Check out other episodes of the Budgeting for Educational Equity podcast.
Strategic Investments of One-Time Funds for Tribal Governments
The disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 virus on Native American peoples has amplified educational and health care inequities that have persisted for Native peoples throughout the United States. As tribal citizens and government leaders continue to take action to protect their communities, the allocation of $20 billion in one-time federal relief funds in response to the pandemic offers a way to help address immediate needs as well as those that tribal leaders have been working to address for generations.
This brief offers insights from tribal leaders on how to allocate one-time federal funds to enhance educational outcomes and infrastructure for the 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States.
An excerpt from the brief on the importance of storytelling as a strategy:
Within tribal communities, understanding how past challenges, successes, and investment choices have established present realities is an essential part of strategic resource planning. Storytelling can inform a unified vision of what tribal communities want and can help build a plan. Storytelling is foundational for reimagining and rebuilding infrastructures that support the advancement of equity for Native peoples. . . .
Sustaining Effective Programs Even When Grant Funding Runs Out: A Toolkit for Charter School Leadership Teams
While grant funding and philanthropic support offer opportunities for charter schools to further their mission and serve students, families, and communities, these funds typically have an end date. Expiring grants create a dilemma for schools: How can a school leader continue funding these effective programs and positions once grant funding runs out?
Charter school leadership teams can use this toolkit and the accompanying Evaluating and Sustaining Funds Excel Worksheet to help evaluate the use and impact of funds, determine how to financially sustain effective programs, and reflect on grant program effectiveness to foster continuous improvement.
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