Feb 24 2009
Removing categorical spending for schools
California school districts are going to get a lot more flexibility when it comes to spending the money they recieve from the state.
There used to be all these “categorical” programs - buying textbooks, training principals, training teachers, gifted students, technology improvements, tutoring for the high school exit exam and arts and music. The budget deal that was just signed removed many of these categoricals and lumped them into one big pot - at least for the next five years.
Categorical spending started in the 1960’s when it became the “it” thing to do for politicians to show they were spending money on the disadvantaged students, or the poorer school districts. Using categoricals then took off over the next few years. Money was designated to train principals, and that money couldn’t be used for anything else - even if the principal already had the training.
The budget plan takes 42 categoricals and lumps them in one pot, and then trims approximately 15% from that lump sum of money.
The goal of this is to allow school districts more flexibility on where to spend money, this way they can stop some of the financial pain from happening with the other budget cuts.
It also allows flexibility for the school district to fund what its students need: On the off chance that the needs of the students in Lake Tahoe are different from the needs in Crenshaw Heights.
This is a good thing. It gives more controls to the locals. Parents are worried their gifted child might not get as mch attention or as many “extras.” That’s ok - sometimes parents have to step in and make education meaninful. If this flexibility means that more kids will graduate from school, or simply go to school, and learn reading and writing - this is a good thing.
The local areas have different needs and categoricals didn’t allow for the flexibilty that school districts needed to meet those varied and changing needs. Now they have some of that flexibilty.
Now comes the time of reckoning as well - since there is the flexibility, there should be the expected results.
