Allovue CEO and Founder Jess Gartner talked about the opportunities and challenges of creating equitable district budgets on the Economics of Learning podcast with Dr. Don Killingbeck, the Superintendent of Hemlock Public School District in Michigan. During the discussion, Jess drew connections between the inadequate access to resources she had as a teacher, how district stakeholders can collaborate through the budgeting process, and the importance of adopting strategic, long-term planning to ensure resource equity.
To listen to the full interview, check out the Economics of Learning podcast.
Jess’ early days as a teacher inspired her ongoing focus on resource equity. She saw that “you could walk into ten different schools in a district and see ten very different resource profiles in terms of what was available for teachers to use, what was available for students to take advantage of, and what was the responsibility of teachers and parents to provide for students.”
Jess understood that the uneven landscape of resources not only denied students educational opportunities, but also that resource disparities affected everything from teacher satisfaction and retention to student outcomes. For Jess, resources represented one side of the student success equation—the other, the one policies and administrators and headlines focused on, was student achievement.
Jess founded Allovue to improve the resource side of the equation. Allovue creates collaborative tools for structuring district budgets and tracking dollars at schools because “involving people at multiple levels of the system tends to produce the best results.” Through controlled collaboration—setting budgeting parameters around district priorities and compliance requirements while allowing both district- and school-level employees access to relevant tools—a district can leverage the expertise of multiple stakeholders to structure yearly budgets.
Beyond year-to-year budgeting practices, Jess emphasizes the importance of long-term strategic budgeting. With so many immediate demands on their funds, it can be difficult for districts to build long-term expenses into their budgets. New teaching and support staff positions, for example, require recurring investments in salaries and benefits. If districts do not (or cannot) plan for these expenses over a ten- or twenty-year time horizon, they may have to eliminate these positions after just a few years. Similarly, school buildings in the U.S. are in notorious disrepair. But modernizing or replacing facilities or systems is much more expensive than patching them up: buying window units is cheaper than replacing a central HVAC system.
A successful budgeting plan uses a collaborative process to solicit input from school-, district-, and community-level stakeholders to construct strategies that ensure long-term resource equity. Strategic investments in resources—investments informed by multiple district actors and factored into a long-term budget—can bolster student outcomes. Districts can also use a collaborative, strategic budgeting process to address resource inequities that exist in their schools. Creating resource equity requires intention.
To listen to the full interview, check out the Economics of Learning podcast.