S/O How does the budget get divided out to each school?

[Anonymous]

Spinning off from the thread about "how many kids in your child's class?" I was wondering if anyone knows how the BIG FCPS budget gets divided up for each school? Does the school get a certain allotment based on their enrollment and then the principal can use it anyway s/he wants (i.e. some grades have 22 in a class and some grades have 30 in a class even though the total in each grade is the same). Can the principal decide to have fewer teachers but more instructional assistants? Or use less money for music, gym or art teachers, but then spend more on something else?

It seems odd how significant the difference are from one grade to another in the same school, as well as differences from school to school in staffing.

Also, is there an absolute maximum on the number of students that can be in a class before another classroom and teacher are added? I've heard that 32 is the number --- but is that based on a particular principal's budgeting plan or a county-wide rule?

[Anonymous]

Start with page 318 of the Approved Budget Book:

http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/documents/approved/2012/ApprovedBudget12.pdf

[Anonymous]

You can look at the busget book, but also note that when you are looking at the funds, some the Principal can move and some he can't. For instance, he can't use one teacher FTE dollar to pay for a table, but he can use one teacher FTE dollar to pay for part of some other FTE (They count them differently now). Music, art, and PE teachers are accounted for differently than general ed teachers and come from a different pot. Schools have other sources of funding as well - Title 1 and a few others, so the numbers need to be looked at side by side carefully to make sure you are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

And schools that receive Title I money have lower class limits for K-2, which means that upper grades can have higher student caps.