Budgeting

My community partner is reliant on the state government and the local government to provide money for the program. Currently, my community partner is without the money and resources to be able to perform her job effectively. The state government makes the overall budget that will give money to state-wide education. This money tends to be reserved more for Title I, Title III, and other specific education programs. Many of the students at Valley Oak are designated as Title I as they come from low socio-economic backgrounds. Even though the school receives extra funding for these students, it is usually not directed towards programs such as P.E. At the local level, the school is funded based on the money allotted by the local government. Most of the money for education is raised through property taxes at the local level. I am not sure what kind of budgeting method that the Board of Education uses to allocate funds to schools and certain programs. Regardless, Valley Oak would request money from the Napa Unified School District Board of Education to carry out its duties. Valley Oak could try to specifically request money to buy a certain type of P.E. equipment as a one-time request (although it is not a large amount of money) or it could ask for a certain amount of money to be set aside for the P.E. program. It should also make a case for why there needs to be money specifically set aside for this P.E. program. My Community Partner could bring to the School Board’s attention that P.E. is an effective and healthy outlet for many of these students. This could be a way to receive more funding by making sure they know how important it is to keep properly funded.

As my community partner has only been with Valley Oak for this school year, I am unable to find out if she specifically has to ask for funding from the budget. I am pretty sure that the administrators of her school propose a budget to the School Board. Because she has recently gotten comments from various administrators and other outsiders about the work she has done with the students, she is hoping that they will recognize the need for more funding in the following school year. This is the first step to hopefully getting additional funding directly from the school district. Unfortunately, the School Board does not have P.E. as a priority on their budget. They, instead, are more concerned with raising test scores in English, math and science. I believe that the school reapplies for a budget for every school year. They should review the budget from the previous year and see how the funds were used and if the ideal results occurred. My community partner is virtually fully dependent on the school district for all of its funding needs.

I think there is a lack of consistency with budgeting in the most recent school years. Because of the recent recession and cuts to education, schools have had no choice but to make drastic cuts in its programs. Performing Arts, Fine Arts and Physical Education always seem to be the first programs that experience the chopping block in some way. Physical Education has experienced budget cuts by seeing cuts to equipment funding. My community partner has especially experienced this cut because she does not have the proper equipment to be able to effectively run her classes. The majority of the time she has to modify her lessons or borrow equipment from other schools because she does not have what she needs.