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School finance is a complex formula that receives revenue from many sources. I am encouraged by the legislative attempts to balance out funding to make things relatively equitable, although I understand there is a lot of work to be done.

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Why do you think there is such disparity in funding per pupil?

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Our reading assignment for the week, as well as looking at the info I got from our finance director interview and start that assignment.

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Chris Olson                             The funding is helpful, but it looks to be temporary. ESSR funding will be going away in a couple of years and there will be some balancing of budgets at that point.

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Chris Olson                             The funding is helpful, but it looks to be temporary. ESSR funding will be going away in a couple of years and there will be some balancing of budgets at that point.

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What is not to love? Having some free time and some time to travel and gain perspective. Spend time with my family.

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I predict it will look fairly normal for grades 7-12 (ages 12+). For those populations not vaccinated (elementary) there may be some mask wearing. MAybe some mask wearing on buses as well.

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School finances play such an integrate role in the success and opportunity of schools and students. To know that there is so much down behind closed doors to limit or hinder our children from being successful is ridiculous. Kudos to programs like "Still not Equal" for bringing awareness to unfair/unequal issue the education system continue to encounter.

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Why don't schools re-calculate their enrollment algorithm to meet the needs of all students racially and economically so there can be less disparities amongst neighboring schools in the sam district?

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Work on upcoming assignments

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Although funding has increased because of Covid, it will trickle away and schools will be left in the same position they started in before. Hopefully schools are strategic in how they utilize these funds so when they are taken the schools wont fall apart.

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Enjoying moments with my family!

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At the elementary level? A hot mess. So many students opted to stay in distance learning this school year as well, about 1/4 the enrollment in our school. The are so many unknown variables to take into account.

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I have no idea.  So many students were in distance learning all year and some of those students had very poor attendance. I had one student with over 100 absences this year.  That is my concern for the fall.  How are the students going to be with school?  What expectations will be modified to fit the needs of students who have been out for almost 1.5 years?  How will expectations on teachers be, especially with standardized testing?

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I love spending as much time as possible outside.

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There is some extra funding, but as the others say it is temporary. I wonder how schools are planning to most effectively use these funds so their affect isn't temporary as well.

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I am going to work on the reading and then the following assignments. Like Chris, I have conducted my interview so I need to work on the assignment portion.

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I am very curious about funding of rural schools or even further out suburbs.  I have only worked in St. Paul so I am more comfortable with that, but listening to the fully funded school video made me wonder more about other locations of districts and their funding.

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I learned that I am fortunate to live in a state that values education more so than Arizona or Florida. I had no idea, until today that there was a such a difference in school funding policies across this country. I knew that there were differences but the teacher in Arizona who works 4 jobs, and a $300 paycheck - my goodness no wonder the United States is lagging behind more successful countries in education.

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Today I learned that big businesses help the more wealthy districts pay off levies via the tax laws. I am curious how a reduced cost of living in rural areas can be considered in the equation when the cost of living is all relative? It seems unfair that districts with higher poverty rates and less economic opportunities are paying more for less. It would seem that this creates situations for perpetual poverty. Does anyone know if such discrepancies are addressed in Governor Walz's Due North Plan?

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Today clarified how many people are involved in funding schools.  Many types of organizations have a wide range of stakeholders, but almost everyone is a stakeholder with education.  This leads to many different thoughts.  I also learned a lot about how people are still fighting to get equity in funding between schools and states. I

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Last week I interviewed our Superintendent.  He came to our district as an assistant superintendent with a financing background. After the interview I left his office with more knowledge than I could absorb, 15 pages of responses to questions, and several district budget spreadsheets.  I will be sifting through all of this as I begin summarizing my interview with Dr. Wayne Kazmierczak.

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In learned that the state revenue relies heavily on sales and income taxes and that these were hit hard during COVID. Despite the hit on revenue the state just passed legislation that will provide more funding to MN schools in the 2021-2022 school year. I wonder how this will adjust our current budget that was approved before the governor passed the legislation.

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I love going to my son's baseball games. Nothing like a warm day at a ballpark.

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It will be interesting to see how many students actually continue to attend our newly formed "Distance Learning Academy". The enrollment numbers are still up in the air because of this variable. Additionally, several students left our school district during Covid to attend schools that were in-person full time. It will be interesting to see how many, if any of these students return to White Bear Lake.

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This morning I completed my field study interview with my Director of Special Education, and I am very pleased at how aligned his responses were with the reading and additional learning we have done related to the integration of school budgeting and creation of a school improvement plan.

I was surprised to learn about how much variation there is in per-pupil funding from state to state in our nation; however, I was NOT surprised to learn that increased funding is not always correlated with higher student achievement.

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I conducted my interview this morning, so my next step is to process all of the information and turn it into a paper!

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While school have received some additional funding for things like summer school in order to minimize loss of learning during distance learning, I'm curious to know whether other districts struggled like mine did. We had to dramatically decrease the number of students that we recommended for summer school because we just didn't have enough staff interest in teaching during the summer. We have so many students who would have benefitted from this additional support; however, after surviving a year like this last one, I also can't blame teachers for wanting their summer break to themselves.

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Time to read books! Not textbooks, though. Fiction!

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I anticipate that there will be a wide range of student skills when everyone returns to in-person learning. It will be interesting to see whether students had similar rates of progress regardless of the learning model that they chose for the year.

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I'm wondering what cold and flu season will look like.  We just moved back to in-home services, but I wonder as we go into fall if families will opt back into virtual to reduce the spread of all the other germs.  I'm personally
preparing for lots of sick days with my own kids and I hope some of the cleaning mitigation measures stay in place.

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I going to focus on one assignment and expectation at a time. I am overwhelmed by work, school and family balance. I am going to tackle  readings for this week, and then try to begin planning for my interview scheduled next Tuesday.

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The disparities and inequities across districts and states are remarkable. The inequities are more complex than I even knew, which makes all of this even more challenging to wrap my brain around changing. If so much is managed locally and at the state level, with the exception small funding streams, how can we even begin to build equity across this country.  (I guess that is take aways and wonderings).

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The information share on segregation is astonishing; I truly had no idea our US schools are more segregated today than they were during Brown v. The Board of Education in 1954. How do we build more empathetic and caring communities that will rally around the needs of all children, groups, and communities, not just their own child or children.

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MN vacations, watching my boys play baseball, golfing, mountain biking, water skiing, fishing, walking Daisy, sleeping in sometimes, working out, and coffee on the deck.  I love summer!

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There are a lot of additional funding sources that are being provided, but I am curious about who is getting access and how the fund are being used. I also wish that counties were provided some additional funding to get things moving with truancy. I am so worried about the number of disengaged students, who next year will be drop outs. Counties are not chasing truancy, and there are not current systems to catch these kids and get them reintegrated into their schools.

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One of my biggest takeaways from today's came from one of the articles that stated "school budgets are moral documents." I found this really stuck with me because I've never thought of money and numbers like that before. The way we use our budgets should directly affect the students we serve - and, as adults, we have a moral obligation to be sure they are better than "just fine."

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I feel like coming "back to school" after Covid is the perfect time for schools to start making some real changes. What changes do you hope to see, in terms of how money is spent, based on what you experienced during teaching this past year?

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I actually just finished interviewing both my principal and our business administrator about how our budget is constructed, so I am going to start putting that together.

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What I think I learned is that while there was money given to help schools, the varying discrepancies in the different districts and what they truly needed speaks volumes to the distribution of money in general. Plus, I think that Covid gave us time to pause and really think about how money needs to be spent and allowed us to see "into the homes" of more students than ever and how, for a lot of kids, coming to school every day is something of a haven and how can we provide more for those who need it?

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Slower pace/schedule!

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My hope is we are as "back to normal" as possible. The Catholic schools were all in-person this past year, but that didn't mean there weren't challenges: quarantining whole groups of kids, teaching both in-person and remotely at the same time, little to no movement and kids stuck in the same room all day, etc. Hopefully, the only thing we will need to do - if anything - is wear a mask!