District Strategic Planning and Resource Allocation

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) is partnering with the Large Countywide and Suburban District Consortium (LCSDC) to provide expert support to member districts in strategic planning related to resource allocation and the use of federal, state, and local funds with respect to the school-level per-pupil reporting requirements under ESSA. From decades of deep work with urban districts to understand cross-school equity, ERS knows that reporting per-pupil spending can be messy and misleading. Districts and states together can get ahead of these challenges by understanding the reasons for differences across schools, exploring key levers and creating policies, reports and templates that illuminate and address the real challenges and strategic solutions.

The key topic areas for participant engagement in this CoP will be:

Methodology:

• Basic data and reporting infrastructures to be able to generate information efficiently and reliably
• A clear definition of method for calculating per-pupil spending to capture full school-level spending and enable comparability

Reporting and Accountability Strategy:

• Consistent and understandable reporting of the drivers of differences in school level spending by school
• Deeper metrics that go beyond total per pupil spending to explore actual resource use such as the distribution of teacher experience in schools, and that clearly distinguish between metrics that are used for “accountability” purposes and those that inform strategic decision making

Engagement:

• An engagement effort that grounds design and implementation of reporting the dollars per pupil at the school level in strategy rather than compliance