PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL DISTRICT

PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL DISTRICT



PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL DISTRICT

Introduction

Balanced budget at all levels is a prerequisite for conducting activities successfully. Excess of income over expenditure is termed as the budget deficit. In the presence of budget deficit, financing is required to be made. Financing is subject to top-priority spending to be included in the budget for current expenses (Augenblick & Myers, 2002).

School budgeting is the process for securing resources and allocating those resources to provide instructional and non-instructional programs that support student learning. Budgeting is a tool for achieving a school or school district's mission, goals, and objectives. The budget document, a result of the budgeting process, is a policy statement of what is valued (Association of School Business Officials International, 2000).

Philadelphia School District has observed a budget deficit of an amount as high as $400-500 million. This is a huge gap which has occurred due to certain factors that will be discussed ahead. This problem itself acts as a root cause for various other problems as carrying on any activity involves money.

Discussion

Funding Sources

The school's operations were carried out with the amount from different funding sources. These sources included funds from state government of Harrisburg and federal stimulus money.

State budget

The state government budget makes up 55% of the total yearly budget of the school. This means that the major part of the funds rely upon the state government budget. But from the year ahead, the size of the funding may be curtailed. This will have a severe impact on the school budget that can cause many problems.

Federal stimulus money

Another source of school funding is the federal stimulus money. This fund comes from the federal government as a particular amount has been allotted for education. In the current scenario, this source of fund is no longer available to the school. After the state government budget, this federal stimulus money had a major share in the school budget. Cutting off this fund will cause the school to face severe problems in meeting the basic requirements.

Reasons that why there is a huge gap

Many potential and tough problems await the administrator in the budgeting cycle and process. There is never enough funding to support all of the requests made in any educational organization, and with scarce resources, competition for funding is pervasive regardless of the type of budgeting used.

In order to overcome this budget shortfall, it is necessary to figure out the reasons causing this huge gap (Berliner & Biddle 2005). These reasons can be figured out by closely evaluating the performance and operations of the Philadelphia School District.

Additional costs for staffs, health benefits, etc.

One of the major reasons of this gap is the additional costs that are incurred on the staff. Excess number of staff members has been hired with no specific job description. More than one person is appointed for a particular work that can be managed with a single person.

Health benefits provided to the staff unnecessarily should also be cut ...