Assignment:
Mississippi is the state and the district is North Bolivar Consolidated School District
The student should read the following chapters from Financing Education in a Climate of Change.
• Chapter: Patterns for School Finance Systems
• Chapter: Eroding Local Control
• Chapter: Education: A State Function
• Chapter: Federal Interest in Education
These chapters provide the student with a foundation in the funding of public education. The actual funding of public education in the student's particular state may have many components included to address special requirements of the legislature.
The student may also want to review the following links which address the Federal Governments contribution to public education:
The following link provides a summary of the Federal contribution to public education.
The following document reviews expenditures in public schools across the United States:
Assignment: You should be able to discuss the following topics as they relate to your state and local school district. The student will submit a paper that discusses the following topics. This will be a comprehensive summary of how your state funds public education. The student must include the question and their response to that question. Each of the items must be answered. References must be included and the paper must conform to APA 5.0 format.
1. Explain how your state addresses the following funding issues.
• Program cost factors or program weights - these are commonly used to account for students with different needs. The most common type of students included in these categories are special education and at-risk students.
• Base Student Allocation (BSA) or amount per student. What is the current amount allocated per student? How has this changed over the last 10 years? If your state does not utilize a base allocation, how is the amount per student determined? Does this amount vary across districts?
• Cost of living differences across districts. How does the state insure that the funds available to each district take into consideration the varying costs of living/operating school districts throughout the state?
• How does your state address increases and decreases in student enrollment? Does the state have a mechanism in place to handle enrollment declines? Does the district receive an additional allocation for an enrollment increase over the previous school year?
2. Many states have some type of mechanism built into their funding systems to account for the higher costs of providing educational services in rural areas and/or inner-city schools. How does your state address this issue?
3. Identify the types of categorical funds authorized by your state's legislature and explain their intended use.
4. What other components, not discussed above, are included in your state's public education funding system? For example, in Florida the legislature allocates special funds for class size reduction, safe schools, at-risk students, special education, etc. You should discuss the different components of your state's funding system that provide for specific activities that your legislature has determined to be important.