Apparently there was some confusion about how to count special education students? I don't know the details (maybe you could find out...), but from I heard, it sounded like there were schools that were going to lose a lot of money because they budgeted based on their special education students, but they were not supposed to include these students in their count??? Again, I'm not entirely sure of the specifics...

The answer might be extremely important, but I would guess that few to no parents know it. I'm disappointed that this free and transparent funding seemed to stop at the system level. Why weren't budgets and figures made public (and posted on the web) for all BCPSS schools? There was lots of talk about only a few schools having lower funding and most schools being better off and high schools making big gains, but how about actual figures? Without before and after numbers all this budget talk is "squishy math". Why not just give the figures?

My son's elementary school had a huge influx in kindergarten -- WAY more kids than projected. It's the economy, hon!

In the mess of budget numbers, I want to highlight something you pointed out: teachers will be moved after this quarter!!!!! That is absolutely AWFUL! Students have finally gotten used to their teachers, teachers have set up rules, expectations, procedures, etc. Now, students will be reshuffled again, start with new teachers, disrupt EVERY classroom as teachers who aren't moved have to teach the new students the new procedures, and just plain cause upheaval and disruption. This is NOT good for the kids AT ALL and should not only be minimized, but absolutely not even considered as an option.

One possible solution: Hire more teachers - I know, optimistic idea at best, but since we are focusing on what is best for the kids in all our decisions these days, this is the only solution that is best for the kids. What would make it better? Hire those teachers before the year starts so that there is no disruption to student schedules once the year gets going.

I've received several new students in the last week or so, the first time it's happened like that. Apparently we're 30 or so student under-enrolled, so we're taking a bunch of transfer students to increase enrollment before the budget transfers begin. The students are really behind and I'm not sure it's in their best interests to move them around like that, but I understand the school's desire to fill the spots and get the funding. My mailbox has also been peppered with requests from around the system for students who might want to transfer, because other schools are under-enrolled and scrambling. Is this a good thing for the kids, to move and be moved around like that just because of funding?

Response to "a parent" - all preliminary budgets for all BCPSS schools can be found on the BCPSS website. On the homepage, click on Fair Student Funding (botton left hand corner), and from there you will find a link to every budget for every school. This information has been available on the BCPSS website since the summer. I can only speak for my school - but we held several budget sessions with students, parents, teachers, and school community members and all stakeholders had a say in how our funds were spent.

First to a parent, the budgets were and are available on the bcpss website under fair student funding; been there since July! Second, the projections came from DREAA (office of assessment) to the schools, which were waaaaaaayyyyyyyyy low for some of the schools. Principals were not told that there projections would be the budget number. It was an estimate for the number of students. Many principals often overstate their numbers, especially in terms of testing. Better to have too much that too little. The budget was foggy for many administrators. A 3 hour session, millions of dollars and a 2 hour site visit can not turn educators into business people. BCTR allows 2 years for career changers to become fully certified teachers. Why would we assume the other direction is any easier?

I agree with the idea that moving teachers around at ANY point during the year is disruptive - heck having a teacher out for a day is disruptive! Having said that, under FSF, it is up to the principal and the school to decide what changes if any are made when the budget comes out, when it's adjusted and so on. If your schools budget gets cut by $100,000 because there is lower enrollment, the school (yes, school, not north ave as it used to be) COULD decide to cut a teacher position (about $75,000) and cut from supplies to make up the difference OR they COULD decide to keep that teacher and make the cuts from elsewhere in the budget. In the past, when enrollment changed, since teachers were assigned by N. Ave based on a ratio of kids to teachers (differences for elem, middle and high school), you would either be forced to loose or gain teachers.

I agree that principals need to be inclusive in the decision making process and if they are not, email AAA:-)

To be clear, almost decisions about HOW to spend the $ are now made at the school level so if you are loosing teachers, talk to the person in charge. And let's remember - the pie is only so big and the choices are hard.

Dawn & Teacher - The raw numbers don't tell us winners and losers, we need the delta from the year before to figure that. Plus since each school was supposed to do a plan on how these budget numbers affected them (like "we'll have to cut our librarian" or "now we can afford 10 new computers") that would be nice to know as well. I've heard many times that only a few schools had budget cuts because of this, but I've never heard which these schools were and how much they were affected. Finally, if over-estimating enrollment is a big problem, I guess it would be nice to see the justification they had for submitting the numbers they did for getting preliminary funding, although I would think that it should have been North Ave's responsibility to look at each shool's estimate and tell them that they were way off base.

I work for a BCPSS high school and the statement in this blog is simply untrue. The enrollment projection came from North Avenue, not from the principal. We were projected to have far fewer students than we anticipated, and were severely underbudgeted, despite submitting several pieces of documentation supporting a higher enrollment expectation. Nobody at our school submitted that lower number, nor did we have anything to do with its production.

I totally agree with A Teacher. The enrollment numbers were projected by North Avenue--which department I am not sure--but we were given a number and told to work with it. We now have almost 400 more students than we were projected to have and now our classes are HUGE because of strictures on enrollment in certain CTE and other courses. Our overall enrollment is large and we knew it would be but were we listened to--NO.

Yes - North Avenue did give principals projections. HOWEVER, principals were given the option of going with the projections from North Avenue, or sending in revised numbers with justification. At my school, we felt that North Avenue underprojected - so we asked for an increased number - and we were funded on that increased number. And, just as we thought, our current enrollment is two kids over OUR projections (not North Avenue's). If our projections weren't met - then yes, we would be giving back the funding we initially asked for.