Chapter 16, The Road Ahead in School Finance, is the last chapter in this study. Below, you will find several issues listed that surround current trends and issues in school finance. Discuss all of these issues with your classmates.
Virtual or online co-op classes are areas of consideration for all schools as they look to the future. Areas to consider are: special education, gifted education, and AP classes. Public school leaders and private school leaders must consider these. What is your school or district doing to provide the highest quality education for all students, even if it requires using a multi-media, multi-school, consortium approach to do so?
What is being done in your school, district, or state (for public schools) to prepare for the possible implementation of school vouchers? Could this be a financial disaster for your schools future financial stability? An article in NASSP indicates that this might be the biggest issue to face public education since public schools became a national mandate.
Are private schools in your area growing in number of church/school facilities and/or the number of students enrolled? How is this impacting you and your school?
Describe the tension or lack thereof between public and private school athletics. Can private school athletic teams compete on an equal basis with public school teams like in the movie Facing the Giants? Has this become a new attraction for enrolling in private schools?
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After consulting the Learn material in Module 7: Week 7 and information from your own research, reply to at least 2 of your classmates threads from Module 7: Week 7. Include information pertaining to school finance that has a direct impact on you, your school, district, or local municipality. You must include support from the Module 7: Week 7 Watch item to strengthen your reply. You may also use outside sources.
Reply to the following:
This year our school district opted to give all families in the county the option to choose face to face education or 100% virtual learning. A group of ACPS teachers were pulled to teach the remote academy. However, even the face to face teachers are using the Canvas platform to teach certain subjects and in addition to their normal lessons. There are special education teachers for both virtual and in person students also. Advanced, college-level, and AP classes are offered online as well. The gifted teacher, however, is only in the buildings though.
I have not heard anything about the use of vouchers thus far. Right now, schools are already pretty overpopulated, especially since parents can fill out of zone paperwork to allow students to go to schools not in their actual living zone. I think if vouchers were to be used though, there would be a decent amount of parents opting to use them. This would take kids out of the public school setting, but help with the overpopulation issue. Of course then private schools may now end up being overly crowded.
Speaking of, private school and church school populations are growing in this area. COVID has made a lot of parents weary about their child’s health, safety, and education. My son is 3, but his preschool added a kindergarten class this year and they are now offering a first grade class for next year. Parents appear to prefer a smaller class for their children. I do not think teachers are seeing the effect of these small shifts just yet, but I feel like it is definitely going to be noticeable in the near future.
Lastly, I do not see tension within private and public school athletics in my area. Our high school plays a local church private school. If anything, I have only heard that it is not necessarily as fair for public school students because the private school kids have grown up together and practiced with each other since they were little. So they have more of an edge technically. For young athletes and their parents this is an attractive quality of private schools. Furthermore, with sports being a huge factor in the budget, having successful teams is paramount. Brimley et al (2020) said that “Athletics are also a factor in the transportation budget” (p. 359). The buses needed for travel are not cheap, so public schools need their programs to step up in order to bring in revenue.
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References
Brimley, V., Jr., Verstegen, D. A., & Garfield, R. R. (2020). Financing education in a climate of change (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. ISBN: 9780135180068.
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