Interactions with Local Government

School districts are one of the six different types of local governments. They are also known as single district local governments because they generally have jurisdiction over part of a city or even multiple counties. In recent years, there have been a shrinking number of school districts because the operating cost to run them can be too great. Valley Oak High School interacts with the Napa Valley Unified School District. NVUSD decides the funding that Valley Oak will receive and for what specific programs in the school it will go to. Schools are usually allotted money on a per pupil basis which means that a smaller school like Valley Oak will not receive as much funding as other schools. In addition, schools usually receive money based on daily attendance. Because many of the students at Valley Oak have left regular high school because of truancy issues, it may be hard for the school to find extra money that they can give to programs such as P.E. In the case P.E. at Valley Oak, the decision to create a P.E./health program that will teach various sports was made by various administrators in the school. The administrators in the school are connected directly to the NVUSD School Board because the administrators are appointed by this group of 5-7 members. The administrators of Valley Oak, however, do not have control of the purse strings so they cannot give additional funding to my sister. The decision for the P.E. program at Valley Oak to receive more funding must come from the school board. The school board is in charge of making basic policy decisions and how money is spent. The school board also has the power to raise property taxes which are used to fund schools. If my sister were able to make the case for how important P.E. has been for the alternative school students, the school district decide to give her program more money. They could raise this money by raising the property taxes if they needed to. I do not know of any specific person that has had a key influence on my community partner. Although the administrators and principal of the school are not directly elected, they are hired by the school board. In this way, I could argue that the principal and administrators of the school have been the ones that have been the biggest advocates for my sister. She has recently gotten compliments from the principal of Valley Oak and a few other administrators about my sister’s ability to get things done. Since she first arrived at Valley Oak, my sister has been able to convince the nearby Boys and Girls Club to allow her to use their gym on a daily basis. She also has a key to their building. This has greatly helped her because she now has an indoor facility that she can use when it is raining outside. She also has gained access to some of their equipment. By partnering with other community groups, she has been able to get some things accomplished. She has also gotten compliments from the principal and school administrators about how much the students like her class and how they now see more students excited about going to class. If she can continue to show this success, I think she will be able to gain the support of influential people in the school district. This may be a relationship that will gain her more funding.

In the case of alternative high schools, they also serve students from across several districts. In a number of cases, students will come from a bordering district because they have been expelled from the district in which they live. This means that their requirement to continue in school must be completed in another school district. For example, she has several students from Fairfield, which is part of the Solano County School District. I am not sure what happens with funding when your school agrees to teach a student from an outside district. I imagine that the other school district will send money for that student to the school that they are now at. I also want to mention that the majority of the money that schools receive are from the local school district. Only a small portion of funding comes from the state or federal government and most of that money is directed at a specific program. In this way, it is important for my community partner to try to convince at the most local level that she needs more money.