Achieving Equity and Transparency in Schools

L to R: Michael Borges, Executive Director, ASBO New York; Katie Hagan, Researcher, Georgetown University; Ian Rosenbloom, Executive Director, Education Trust-New York; Kimberly Lewis, Director of Business and Finance, Schenectady City School district; Rick Karlin, Reporter, Albany Times Union and Deborah Cunnigham, Director of Education and Research, ASBO New York.

ASBO New York held its fifth school finance symposium September 18, 2018 at the Albany Capital Center. In other symposiums ASBO brought researchers, policy analysts, and practitioners to study school district fiscal stress, the Tax Cap, making money matter, and improving state Foundation Aid. This year’s symposium focused on achieving equity and transparency in schools.

The symposium was attended by members of the Board of Regents and Education Department staff, legislative and executive branch staff, school business officials and other district and BOCES practitioners, New York State educational associations, school district financial software developers, and others.

This school year, state and federal laws require school districts to engage in school level financial reporting. A panel of experts described the purpose of these laws: to use the powerful tool of data transparency at the school level to improve equity in the use of resources so school districts will be better able to achieve their student learning goals.

Katie Hagan, a researcher from the Edunomics lab of Georgetown University, described how the ESSA requirement is changing the way we think about and use education resources all over the country. Many districts, including Boston and a host of other large cities, are using weighted student funding to distribute funds to schools and give principals greater autonomy in the creation of school budgets.

Ian Rosenblum, executive director of the Education Trust—New York and former education secretary to Governor Cuomo, summarized results of 76 school districts required to report school budgets before the start of the 2018-19 school year. He showed that the Big Five city school districts and selected others invested a mere four to nine percent more resources to their highest need schools compared with their lowest need schools. Mr. Rosenblum argued that this is not enough to provide the programs and supports needed by students in high need schools.

Kimberly Lewis, Director of Business and Finance at Schenectady City School district, agreed with the need to improve equity in high poverty schools through transparency but described the many obstacles to achieving equity. A very low wealth district with high student poverty, Schenectady depends on Foundation Aid from the State, which is $40 million from full funding. District staff were stretched to comply with state requirements to submit the extensive data required by the new school level budget reporting, as well as its annual financial report due at the same time, and starting school. Ms Lewis described a school building index that Schenectady has developed to allocate more resources to high need schools.

Panelists made presentations and engaged in questions and answers moderated by the Albany Times Union’s capitol reporter Rick Karlin. They discussed the challenge of distributing teacher resources given contract requirements, communicating with the public, engaging and educating principals in a new role of greater management of resources, and state actions to support school districts in achieving greater equity and transparency in schools. The panel discussed the possibility of waiving the burdensome reporting requirements in school districts where all student subgroups perform at high levels or there is only one school.

ASBO New York’s goal is to inform the debate about state policies and school district practices that promote equity and adequacy. Next steps include considering legislative recommendations to advance with ASBO New York’s Government Relations Committee.