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Weighted Student Formula: Is it working?
The Weighted Student Formula (WSF) was designed to distribute resources to schools more equitably. It is based on students’ needs, allowing school sites more flexibility than the staffing ratio model it replaced, according to the WSF FAQ on the District’s web site.
Cynthia Lasden, building rep and 4th grade Spanish immersion teacher at Fairmount Elementary, believes in the concept of Weighted Student Formula but is concerned about its practice.Instead of the central office directing sites how to spend the bulk of their resources, school sites decide on the staff and non-staff items to purchase with the funds allocated to them under WSF, “with the largest part of the District’s budget more transparent.”
Schools are responsible for developing their budgets and academic plans. Each school’s principal and School Site Council (SSC) discuss their school’s needs, challenges, and priorities and build its budget accordingly for the upcoming year. “All stakeholders are better able to see and understand
how resources are allocated and spent at each school.”Do all stakeholders better understand the budget? Do sites have more flexibility?
Two years after its implementation, questions arise as to whether it is working. UESF surveyed one group of stakeholders, our UESF members who represent the staffs on their SSCs. When asked if the union should continue to support WSF, the majority of respondents replied that the union should not. Here are some of their comments."Who is gaining from WSF?” asks Molly Last, teacher at Longfellow Elementary in her second year on the SSC. “Our SSC is presented with a dollar amount to allocate. We don’t see how that amount is generated, nor do we necessarily see that the children who are receiving the most money in the weighted formula directly benefit from the extra funding.”
Cynthia Lasden, building rep at Fairmount Elementary supports the WSF in theory, but is concerned about its practice. “Our SSC spent one to two nights a week at meetings until 8:00 p.m. It takes a really long time before we, staff and parents, can understand what we need to know about the budget – LEP, consent decree, SIP money, Title 1, Title VII – each coming with its own set of rules and hoops to jump through.
Need more support from District at sites
“Then, just as SSC parents start to understand how the process works, that they’re not supposed to advocate for just their one child but the school community with its diverse populations at large, their SSC term is up, or they leave the school. You get a council or administrator and have to start over. We need more support from the District.”At Presidio Middle School, co-building rep Barbara Webb is also concerned with the “short term investment of parents who participate on SSCs only for as long as their children attend the school.” She questions the appropriateness of giving kids a vote on the SSC. “We have children, sitting there with their teachers and parents, who get to vote on large sums of money. This is someone’s position or program at stake. Do they understand the intricacies of the budget and the effects of their votes? Are they too easily influenced?"
”If students are to benefit from WSF, you’d think ours would,” says Susan Boshoven, co-building rep at Mission High.“We definitely have the ‘weighted students.’” But, Boshoven questions the process, particularly during difficult economic times. “We don’t think that teachers should be in the position of cutting colleagues’ programs. Speaking of programs,” she continues, “we’re told that the programs we’d really like to cut – the district mandated reading programs are ‘untouchable,’ even though we already teach reading through the content areas. Isn’t the WSF supposed to give us flexibility?”
Need clarification on what we can and cannot do
At Lowell High, Liz Rogers, teacher and SSC member, feels that she and most SSC members are unprepared to make budget decisions even though the District has held training workshops.“There never were enough workshop openings for all SSC members. I’d like to see a concerted effort from downtown to send someone to our sites to walk all of us through the budget, step-by-step, at the same time. We need clarification on what we can and can’t do.”She recalls that last year her SSC debated and deliberated many hours.“We decided to cut a VP’s position to half time so we could keep a classroom position. We submitted the plan, only to be told by the district that we couldn’t do that. Why didn’t they tell us that from the start? We reinstated the VP to full time, but since found out that there really were no legal barriers at that time to our making the cut we wanted.”
At Lafayette Elementary, Anna Wong is also frustrated by having gone through the process many times only to be told they had to redo it because they weren’t allowed to do what they proposed. She says, “We need more assistance at the site level. When we have questions during an SSC meeting, we can’t get answers right away. Since we only meet once a month, sometimes we have to make decisions without enough information. Plus, the decisions we make at our sites are just as restricted now as they were before.”
She continues, “I find it ironic that in the same year teachers were hassled about the seven-hour workday, they expect us to put in endless and unpaid hours to work on this. Give this job back to the administration downtown!”
Continuing to analyze data
UESF realizes that the issues around WSF are complicated. Would people feel differently during better economic times? As announced before spring break, we posted our survey on line, so we could continue to hear from you and better analyze and review your responses.
