Deep in the Rochester City School District’s 373-page proposed budget is a 27-page section of program profiles and budgets. In addition to outlining the expenses for a total of about $62 million in programs, the section makes the bold attempt to say something about what the programs are doing and how well they are doing it.

It’s not uncommon to find in a government or school budget some language about programs and some reference to performance metrics. But the level of detail attempted in this section is unusual and commendable. Each of 27 programs is briefly described, program objectives are listed, measures toward those objectives are reported, and expenses are listed not only by categories but also on a per-student basis.

The effort was clearly taken more seriously by some programs than others. There are a few where the listed objectives were precisely met in each of five years (which rarely happens in the real world, leading us to question their accuracy). Some programs had objectives as simple as increasing participation in the program. Rigorous evaluation was not evident everywhere.

But the principle established is important: that programs must have specific objectives, measure progress toward those objectives and report them in connection with their spending levels. While many programs report not meeting their objectives, others were heartening. Two examples: Read the rest of this entry »

The Rochester City School District community is in turmoil over the district’s budget proposal.  Conflict with the teachers union over the contract (and most everything else) adds fuel to the fire, and contributes to longstanding community distrust of the district and its numbers, fed by years of threatened and largely abandoned budget cuts.

Controversy is inevitable when significant spending cuts are involved. The anger and misunderstanding is deepened by leadership’s decision to fix longstanding budget inequities at the same time. The proposed shift to roughly equalize per-student funding across the district’s 60-some schools was poorly timed and badly explained to the public. The district put out apples-to-oranges comparisons that confounded the two issues of overall funding cuts and the new school funding model, leaving itself vulnerable to even more criticism than perhaps was warranted.

With all schools experiencing cuts, parents are in an uproar and no school felt enough like a winner to agitate for the plan. Using Facebook, blogs and other online tools for connecting, community opposition to the district’s proposal is perhaps better organized and more vociferous than it has ever been.

The troubled relations between district and union leadership have intensified the rhetoric and left the community experiencing a lot more heat than light. While Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard and Rochester Teachers Association President Adam Urbanski parse line items, the big picture and important facts are obscured, including an accurate understanding of how we got here. Read the rest of this entry »