This week we took a look at each of the departments within the district to identify their purpose, who it was that was a part of the department, key points that represent the department, budgetary items linking to that department and finally how they align with the mission of the school district. Overall this was a very eye opening assignment considering I thought I knew a lot about my district.
The most difficult part of the assignment was to see exactly how much money is spent in that department. For example, when looking at the budget classified individuals include bus drivers as well as human relations personal. These are both two different subgroups within my chart. The budget is not broken up between cost on maintenance of transportation vs. personal used to drive the buses. I found this across many aspects of every department. When discussing curriculum that uses technology does that fall under technology as a tool or a program? The technology department is a very large department that includes technicians as well as support staff in implementing blended learning. On the other hand there are also personnel that are used in technology that are not certificated and do not work with directly with students, yet are vital in making sure all of the programs run effectively throughout the district. I think overall the biggest lesson that I learned is that when looking at a district such as Vista Unified there are many, many overlapping responsibilities within each department. Due to this, how can we know for sure each personnel or item purchased is essential to running an effective educational setting so that expenditures are not being used ineffectively? When looking at our technology plan I can see that the plan has been created to be efficient and productive. However, when looking at many of our facilities I do not see quite the same care and detail being given. With that said, I was impressed with how business services lives within almost each department. Hopefully this means that the right hand is continually talking to the left hand when making decisions on how and where money is being spent and if it is truly necessary or if we are continually overspending because of lack of conversation. Finally, I was very impressed with the support and systems set up within my district. I am not in a position to say if we are using our budget effectively and efficiently but we truly are on the road to becoming the model of educational excellence!
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KellyI like people. I love their stories even more. Archives
April 2016
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