. Before anyone makes judgement calls on MPS budget, maybe they should understand the whole budget process from the allocation to the disbursements. The McKnight foundation has a whole section dealing with school finances
http://www.mcknight.org/hotissues/schoolfin_1.asp It might behoove us to read this articles so that we can understand school finances from its origin to its distribution. In fact if you want to learn and understand more about the finances of MPS, you should read the following primer. http://www.mcknight.org/files/citsguide.pdf This was written by the citizens of minneapolis (Citizens Budget Advisory Committee, CBAC) for citizens who want to learn about the funding for MPS. It is written clearly for the layperson so anyone can understand it. It contains information about the source of the finances from the federal. state etc, and the subsequent distrubution of the money to the schools. There is a discussion of compensatory funding, ELL funding and special education funding. Lastly there is a section of FAQ which talks about the amount of dollars allocated per child, and how those dollars are allocated/assigned to the child. Hopefully this will help clarify why so many people can calculate that MPLS spends different amounts per student. It all depends on what numbers you use versus the other district. Get that information and compare apples with apples to get an accurate accounting of the money disbursements. If you still want to expand your knowledge of school finances ask questions of the administration, etc, then join CBAC, one of the few citywide school citizens committee. We meet during the school year to discuss school finances and raise questions. We are an advisory group to the school board. If interested contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] There have been some complaints that the administration is still not cutting enough. It is interesting to note the varied response to school cuts and information banned about administrative cuts. Many do not understand the depth of the cuts the administration has suffered in the past several years. People complain about not getting answers to question, it is possible that person was cut. Do they expect the superintendent to answer their basic questions? In addition the finance dept has been cut to the bone such that they are so far behind in updating the individual schools budget, that some schools think they may have more dollars that expected. We are talking about so many schools that the administration is unable to keep up with the tasks. If teachers call with questions, there may not be a curriculum specialist available to help them since people still think that we are top heavy. If we are going to give all the money to teachers, who is going to do the custodial work, the clerical work, the everyday jobs that needs to be done. We need to be realistic in our expectations of people. I still would send my kids to MPS because I think it does as good as job as any private, parochial, charter schools etc. My expectations are high and those kids that graduate from MPS can get into any college regardless of wether they graduated from a MPS. MPS produces merit scholars and considering the multitude of issues that MPS faces, I am proud of what it does. Of course a lot more needs to be done, but that is true everywhere. eli kaplan Linden Hills resident Chair. cbac TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
