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March/April 2012
Cost-Cutting Strategies
The “Great Education Depression” offers principals an opportunity to critically examine resources and improve the teachinglearning process.
Frances Stetson
F
or several years, principals have been reading
increasingly dire national headlines regarding the
“Great Education Depression” and studying the
impact of fiscal cutbacks on their schools with great
concern. At the same time that accountability and quality of
education for students are at the forefront of education policy
discussions, reductions in faculty and programs also have
surfaced as the reality of leaner school budgets. Yet, the budget
crises facing schools today has a silver lining. Schools can take
steps that will have an immediate and positive impact on the
quality of the services provided to students while at the same
time increasing student achievement and lowering short-term
and future costs.
Sound impossible? Not so!
This article focuses on budget-cutting ideas for immediate
application and suggests concrete strategies for increasing the
effectiveness and efficiency of services and supports for
students. Our wish is to seek “no loss” for students while
capitalizing on improving existing aspects of instructional
delivery that in many cases have long begged for attention and
change.
Framing the Work
An effort as important as budget review and reduction begins
with a clear and rational approach to priority setting. The result
of this work will provide you as principal with a set of criteria
for making difficult decisions and offer a way to make your
decisions transparent for faculty and parents. Ideally, you will
convene a small, but representative, group of faculty members
and parents to work with you to establish criteria for decisions.
This list of criteria will reassure the school community that the
quality of education for students is of utmost importance.
Your discussion can be guided by the following questions:
What are your non-negotiables? What programs or
services do you consider indispensable? Which are highly
successful and meet a particularly pressing need for your
students and community that you would like to protect?
Are there district priorities that should influence your costcutting decisions? Consider your state and district
accountability measures and any areas that are in need of
improvement, such as adequate yearly progress (AYP)
status and student attendance.
Is your school offering any nonmandated services that can
be eliminated without significantly impacting overall
quality? Examples might include summer enrichment
programs and double-blocking core subjects.
Are there any obvious candidates for abandonment? Check
for redundancy. For example, some schools have both a
literacy specialist for general education and one for special
education. Isn’t it time to embrace shared ownership and
delete artificial separation of some services?
What is your district’s reduction in force (RIF) policy?
How does it impact your school? Does it endanger the
positions of some of your newest teachers while protecting
senior-level teachers whose skills are not as strong? If so,
will additional training or coaching be needed for those
who remain? While you may not be able to change the
district’s RIF policy, it is important to consider the ways in
which it impacts your school.
For each major budget category, you must identify your best
options for reducing costs. It is even more important to
improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your remaining
staff and other resources. The vast majority of your effort will
be spent addressing personnel costs for teachers, your largest
expenditure.
Teachers: Cost-Cutting Possibilities
Your first task might be to answer this question: What are the
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positions in my school that have the least impact on students
and can be reduced or eliminated? First, confirm that your
teachers are well qualified and effective in their assigned roles.
Make sure all special education teachers are highly qualified in
at least one content area in addition to their special education
endorsement. Eliminate unneeded classes such as a special
study skills class for all students during their first year of
attendance of middle school.
Additionally, monitoring class sizes, caseloads, and workloads
on a monthly basis will ensure equitable and appropriate
numbers. If you experience high student mobility, identify the
times of the school year in which consolidation or expansion is
needed and enter into a partnership with a geographically close
school.
Review your response to intervention program to ensure it is
working effectively so that services in the general education
classroom (Tier I) are highly effective, differentiated, and
responsive to diverse learners. When the quality of instruction
in the general education classroom is low or when teachers
respond to student variance by inappropriately requesting
referral of students for additional services, the cost is high for
students and for your budget. You should conduct periodic
audits to be certain that students with disabilities are receiving
the services as stipulated in their individualized education
program (IEP) and the teachers are using their time
appropriately. By doing so, you will help ensure that your
certified teaching staff members are not filling roles that should
be provided by trained paraeducators.
For more budget reduction ideas, review the full list of costcutting possibilities and opportunities in this robust resource
from Stetson & Associates.
Teachers: Opportunities for Improvement
If your cost-cutting decisions lead you to a reduction in the
number of teachers on your faculty, numerous strategies can
increase the impact and quality of instruction for those
remaining. Regardless of the presence or absence of a budget
crisis, these changes should be made to increase student
success, turn around a low-performing school, and underscore
the professionalism of teaching.
Academic Learning Time. In our reviews of classroom
practice, we frequently observe minimal academic learning
time (ALT), or time in which students are actively engaged in
appropriate learning activities, set at the appropriate level of
difficulty. Principals should consider conducting regular audits
of the amount of academic learning time in contrast to the
amount of time allocated for learning. Watch for the
detrimental effects of poor classroom management,
inappropriate instructional materials or activities, and lost time
due to administrative tasks such as taking attendance or passing
out student work. You should consider reviewing the definition
of academic learning time and providing teachers with the
opportunity to chart their own ALT, to set goals for increasing
ALT, and to engage in team discussions about ways in which
to improve the rigor and appropriateness of assigned tasks.
Appropriate Use of Scaffolding or Instructional
Accommodations. Scaffolding, or use of instructional
accommodations, offers ways in which teachers can adjust
methods, pacing, or materials to increase student acquisition of
skills. They are then removed when the student masters the
content. The learner outcome is not changed, just the ease with
which students might acquire the learning. Examples include
graphic organizers, chapter outlines, word banks, math
manipulatives, and many other options that enable students to
be more successful learners. When lecture-based instruction is
provided in the same format day after day, many students grow
frustrated, lose motivation for learning, and might achieve at
lower levels.
Effective teachers know that almost every student benefits
from an occasional learning scaffold. If an instructional
accommodation is indicated on the IEP of a student with
disabilities, that accommodation is deemed essential to support
their learning. What the student is learning is not changed, but
the way in which the student is presented the information is
adjusted.
In my reviews of classrooms at all levels, and particularly
striking within low performing schools, students seldom
receive the scaffolding that would increase success, minimize
teaching time, and maintain student interest and motivation.
Teachers who do not understand the need for some kind of
scaffolding for students who are learning new material often
believe that additional services and/or staffing is needed to
correct the problem. To what extent are all teachers in a school
aware of these issues and strategies and to what extent are
measures of student achievement impacted by the lack of
appropriate scaffolding or use of instructional accommodations
for any student who requires them?
Use of Instructional Planning Time. Principals sometimes
feel like magicians as they create master schedules that offer
common planning periods for teachers who share grade levels,
subjects, or students in common. Yet having accomplished this
difficult feat for all or most teachers on the faculty, school
leaders must also provide direction and model the strategies for
using their time well. As budgets become tighter, educators
must use every resource, especially the resource of planning
time, efficiently and effectively. Lead teachers should create a
consistent agenda and norms for team behaviors, such as
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arriving on time with necessary materials and staying on topic.
There should be some type of informal, but useful, product at
the conclusion of the planning period. Historically, planning
periods have been difficult to arrange and have not always
resulted in improved instruction, collaboration, and creative
problem-solving regarding difficult content or struggling
students.
Roles of Department Chairs. Eliminate inappropriate or
ineffective duties, review time used for each class period, and
increase direct teaching responsibilities.
Schedules of Special Education, Other Special Population
Teachers, and Related Service Personnel. Are these staff
members providing services as assigned? Check regularly to
ensure they are in the classrooms or settings indicated on their
schedules. Make sure they are available to support students and
are not consistently replaced by a substitute teacher due to
attendance at inefficient IEP meetings. Make certain that
special education teachers assigned to provide collaborative
teaching in general education classrooms are indeed in their
assigned classrooms providing instructional support in the roles
of certified teachers versus paraeducators. If they require
additional training and coaching regarding core content areas
and research-based methodologies, provide this training
immediately and follow up with scheduled meetings.
Inappropriate Use of Paraeducators. Assess the number of
paraeducators on your staff. Review paraeducator schedules to
make sure they are appropriately assigned to the correct
number of students. Confirm that your teachers are aware of
their responsibilities for matching paraeducator services to
student needs. Make certain your teachers are providing
paraeducators with consistent constructive feedback to help
improve their performance. Principals can recapture a valuable
resource for schools by ensuring the appropriate use of
paraeducators and by making certain that teachers fulfill their
vital roles in directing and monitoring paraeducator services.
While principals are being forced to make painful
decisions in today’s tough economic climate, they also have the
opportunity to critically examine each and every resource and
to improve the teaching-learning process. We can and should
do more with less.
Frances Stetson is president of Stetson & Associates, Inc., a
consulting firm that focuses on educational excellence and
systems change.
Principal is published five times a year by the
National Association of Elementary School Principals.
To learn more about NAESP, visit www.naesp.org.
©2012 Nati on a l As s ociati on of E lem enta ry S ch ool Princ ipa ls . All Ri gh ts R es erved.
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