Has the department ever examined a different principle or style of funding them? As I highlighted in the opening remarks, it’s my thought that schools should get a base funding and then work from there on the PTR. When I referenced base funding, I was suggesting that each school board, either the school board or how it breaks down further, should be funded at the start with a principal, a librarian, custodial staff, and then once you have a functioning community there, you can fill it, of course, with students.
But as it exists now, I’m concerned that the school boards have to make choices, and the choice they have to make is that they get into a problem where they’re only given funding for .5 of a staff or less when it comes to admin or whatnot, and then they have to start scrambling to make their funding work. From what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard in smaller communities, the challenge gets even worse when your funding is based on those things and you’re in a small community and you want to try to offer reasonable options for kids in learning programs.
So with all that sort of background said, has the department ever considered any other option to ensure that all schools had a base funding to them attached to principal programs?