You see, the kids in the classroom have their education paid for by different budgets. All are paid for (at least theoretically and if the winds of politics allow) by the state. All are also paid for (hopefully) by the school district budget. But then it gets weird. Some, who are learning English, have an additional funding stream. Others, who have qualified through testing and a due process designed to be sure they have a disability and not just a learning struggle of some kind, have additional support paid for by a special education funding stream. The equipment in the room, from smart boards (partnership grant from large technology corporation), laptops and LCD projectors (paid for by ARRA funds), and even people (one aide with a salary paid for by ELL, another paid for by Special Ed), visiting tutors paid for by another grant, and sometimes down to little plastic bits used to teach math (grant from large local company).
Having worked in corporate America, I understand the concept of the silo. People fight over whose budget is paying for who to do what, and whose project is being funded by who, but it never gets down to that degree of granularity. I can’t remember ever going to the supply cabinet to get a roll of tape marked Training Department. And the really weird thing is that I can’t ever remember anyone, either in the publishing world or the software world, ever watching over budgets the way that schools are looked over. Sometimes, when you spend grant money, you have to account for every dime and show how it is all used. You have to show outcomes, and measure metrics, as though you can’t really be trusted with large (?) sums, although people are more than willing to entrust you with their children for seven hours.
But where this really plays out is in the way teachers use technology. Say a teacher has a group of computers in a corner, on which they use a piece of software designed to help students write more accurately, with longer, more complex sentences. The teacher is getting great results. Then spring break comes, and over the break, the standard software load for the district’s computers is changed. The teacher returns, and the writing program is gone. They ask the building tech to put the program back on, but the tech doesn’t have a copy, and also is not allowed to install non-standard programs. (Different funding stream).
They ask someone (from the grant initiative funding stream) to come out and reinstall the software. It doesn’t work. By coincidence, the same writing program is also being funded by another initiative, this one designed to help English Language learners. The teacher has learned this for a colleague next door. The other initiative’s tech (another funding stream) comes out and is able to make it work.
But then the building tech says that if anything else happens on the corner computers, officially speaking, he won’t be able to fix them, because they are no longer standard. The tech is not happy about this, but is getting directions from a central IT department, and that is where his job is paid from.
So the funding streams swirl around, keeping the kids from using the same program they had before the break. By the way, between each of the these events, at least three days passes, because with five classes a day and more than 100 students, fixing the computers is not the teacher’s main focus. In the end, the kids get to use the program again, at least until something happens. I don’t think this was anyone’s goal when they allotted all the different funds in the first place.
And so it goes. It seems like a warped sense of priorities. The accountability for the funds, and the use of the adult resources, is of more concern than the kids using the computers, and the writing software, to write better. No one is particularly happy about it: teachers, techs, or kids, but sometimes I guess teachers get a little dizzy, as the funding streams swirl them round and round.
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