When I consider the business architecture of my school, I am shaken to see the price being paid being a one campus, K - 8 district. With real estate capital assets exceeding $50 million, and $10 million annual budgets, Rowe School is big business. When you build a home, the per square foot price of construction is highest in the kitchen and bathrooms, whereas the covered patios and garages are least. Developers know that the biggest ROI happens on the square footage BEYOND the kitchen and bathrooms. In a one campus district, you still need a superintendent, and arguably a principal for each school (in our case one for 250 middle schoolers, and one for 440 elementary schoolers). This makes our administrative salaries a much higher percent of our overall budget than larger, multi-school districts. One way to get the percentages back in line, once they become part of the overall salary to budget ratio, is by cutting down on the salaries and benefits of teachers.
As it regards technology, having the total number of iPads and Chromebooks exceed the number of students is embarrassing. It reflects the price the board was willing to pay to be a “cutting-edge” school, seemingly to act out of ego and fear of being left behind, without completely considering what to do with the technology once acquired. When the state of California made a commitment to “class size reduction” they insisted that districts receiving monies conduct professional development trainings to best take advantage of the new situations. Arguably, Rowe School didn’t invest enough into empowering the teachers to use the technology to its potential. I believe this (and of course Chromebooks better complementing SBAC testing) contributed to the circumstance we have now with more rapidly obsolescing tablet devices than students. Our business architecture can be improved by not only looking more holistically at how our $10,000,000 annually is being spent, but also for how long we can commit to the technology purchased.
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October 2016
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