Monday, 19 July 2010 10:06
You’ve probably been reading about the controversy brewing in Congress over education funding. The House of Representatives this month passed the Education Jobs Fund authorizing an additional $10 billion to help save teachers’ jobs. To pay for this, the House legislation plans to cut $800 million from the federal stimulus funds designed to encourage strategic and innovative thinking in education. Specifically, the House bill calls for a $500 million reduction in the Race to the Top program, along with a $200 million reduction in the Teacher Incentive Fund and a $100 million decrease in charter school funds. President Obama and Secretary Duncan, while supportive of the goal of preventing teacher layoffs, oppose funding the Education Jobs Fund through offsets in the Department of Education’s key initiatives, and have threatened to veto such a bill.
The issue will ultimately get worked out when the Senate reconvenes this month. In the meantime, however, we at DMC worry about the message this funding battle conveys. By sacrificing strategy and innovation to save jobs, the House of Representatives is creating a false dichotomy between economic hardship on one hand and long-term thinking on the other. Districts have a need and an opportunity to make tradeoffs to prioritize the drivers of student achievement, financial savings, and operational efficiency. We at DMC believe that building a great organization does not have to give way to fiscal crisis and innovative leaders are taking a more strategic posture.
DMC has developed an extensive set of case studies, tools, and techniques to help districts use resources more strategically. Check out the case study of Fairfax County’s budget rationalization for an example of a district that used the reality of recession to clarify its most important pursuits. The presentation on turning fiscal crisis into management focus offers a variety of methods to maintain a strategic agenda. Finally, the article on scenario planning elaborates on one of the most useful tools to approach fiscal crisis in a structured and strategic way.
Also stay tuned for the August issue of The District Management Journal, which features the theme of developing a coherent strategy and increasing the management capacity to support it. By continuing to build a strategic toolkit, a district can avoid blanket cuts and look beyond simply balancing the budget.
