Budgeting for Student Success

Transcription

1 Program Report Budgeting for Student Success Transparent School-Based Resource Allocation This report addresses potential reforms in the school finance system: Integrating budgeting, planning and accountability Financing local implementation of the Common Core Responses to continuing financial pressures District innovations in decision-making Now is a time of unprecedented change and opportunity for public education in California. Impending changes justify a dramatic departure from business as usual in school districts, particularly in the area of financial management and budgeting. It s a chance to create improved processes and policies that empower local educators, support innovation and align limited resources more closely with new learning goals. We have much to learn in order to do this work well in a public school system that has had its financial hands tied for decades, but a three-year-old project called Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) has provided an important head start. This is a brief report on the SSFR project. 1 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

2 History of Pivot s Involvement in Planning and Budgeting In 2009, Pivot Learning Partners and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) formed a partnership with two California school districts one very large and one mid-sized to create the Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) project. The goal of the project, which included the Twin Rivers and Los Angeles Unified School Districts (LAUSD), was to implement and evaluate a new way for districts to allocate funds to school sites and for site leaders to create their school budgets. SSFR provided a learning opportunity for both sides as district office personnel and site level leaders shifted from a district-controlled funding system to site-based budgeting. The project sought to give school sites greater autonomy over their expenditures and link that with greater accountability for goals, some of which were defined at the district and some at the school level. The hope was to encourage and support site-level innovations that result in improvements in both efficiency and performance. Another objective was to increase the transparency of the site and district planning and budgeting processes among both staff and the community. Finally, the project strived to improve funding equity among schools by implementing a model that allocated money to the school sites based on student need. These goals are generally consistent with a number of practice and policy recommendations aimed at strengthening schools ability to allocate resources in ways that better support student performance. As Jacob Adams from Claremont Graduate University summarized in his book Smart Money, a funding system that supports education reforms effectively should deliver resources transparently and fairly, induce productive behavior, build capacity, expand knowledge, develop needed technologies, and account for results in meaningful ways so that their aggregate contributions move student performance toward the proficiencies that define public expectations. The SSFR project was designed to translate those ideas into action in a pilot that confronted on-the-ground realities of running a complex school district within California. The work presented particular challenges given that it coincided with dramatic cuts in school budgets in the state. Thus an important additional goal of the project was to provide a window into school and district leaders efforts to run an acceptable school system on substantially lower funding than has previously been available. At the time of this writing, as SSFR was coming to a close in the school year, Pivot and its partners saw progress toward the project s goals and also learned a great deal about the challenges faced by schools and districts as they make fundamental changes in how they go about developing plans and allocating scarce resources. 2 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

3 Budgeting for Student Success PBAR: Pivot s Approach to Redesigning the Budget Process The PBAR approach short for Planning, Budgeting and Allocation of Resources was initially conceived as both a planning process and software tool that would respond to the challenge of budget transparency. Pivot designed PBAR to allow principals to model various budget scenarios, explore tradeoffs and be more prepared to make good budget decisions in a volatile funding climate. Over time, it became clear that the PBAR tool and process could address other goals, including enhanced stakeholder engagement and collaboration among principals. The approach also supported stronger site-level accountability both for outcomes and for the alignment of a school s proposed expenditures with district goals. Throughout the project Pivot provided district officials and school principals with technical assistance, coaching and training to help them grapple with the issues that inevitably arose when they sought to significantly change their budgeting process. PBAR facilitates a new approach to planning and budgeting Pivot worked with its district partners to develop and refine an online tool that would facilitate changes in school district and site-level budgeting processes. Specifically, the PBAR approach supported a number of goals related to improved financial efficiency and better student outcomes, including: Empowering principals and school communities to use resources in innovative ways. Strengthening local accountability for learning outcomes and for the wise stewardship of resources. Creating a professional learning community for principals as they undertake these new efforts. Shifting to a service-oriented relationship between the district office and school sites. Establishing processes that support continuous improvement and data-driven evaluation. Areas of Impact From To Resource Allocation Centralized allocation of resources Site autonomy over resources Budget Development Truncated budget development Annual budget cycle Budget Budgets not transparent Transparent budgets Stakeholder Engagement Limited stakeholder engagement Stakeholder engagement Culture Culture of compliance Culture of increased innovation Accountability Little sense of shared accountability for student outcomes Increased accountability Results Flat outcomes Improved outcomes 3 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

4 The Tool: District and site leaders work on a planning/budgeting platform The PBAR tool provides district officials and school principals with a shared online technology solution. The system is constantly available and accessible through cloud computing, allowing school sites and the district s financial services, human resources and curriculum-and-instruction departments to coordinate and communicate about their budgeting and planning processes in an ongoing fashion throughout the school year. District officials input the basic financial data and staffing information principals need to be able to create their plans. They also provide each school with data that shows where the school stands on district-defined outcome measures. As school principals begin the annual planning and budgeting process, they use the PBAR tool to take their communities through a step-by-step process that provides templates and prompts for: Summarizing data from a site level Needs Assessment; Developing Goals based on both those local school site needs and district expectations; Identifying Strategies toward meeting those goals and setting priorities; Calculating the Investments of staff and materials needed to implement the strategies; and then Placing the strategies within the context of the larger site Budget. At the end of the planning process, site leaders have a comprehensive school site plan and budget aligned with district goals. They also receive data and documentation systems that are easily adapted to fit state and federal reporting requirements. And they have a system for monitoring the implementation and goals they put into place and the foundational information they need to facilitate their next planning cycle. Goal #1 Empowering principals and school communities to use resources in innovative ways In most California schools, the principal and school site council go through a site-level budgeting process within tight constraints. They typically work with a small proportion of the total school budget and must conform to a set of district rules regarding allowable expenditures. Their planning process must be completed under tight time limits because they typically do not know until spring how much money they will have the following school year. They are also aware of the need to produce a formal School Site Plan that meets exacting state and/or federal format and reporting requirements, but they seldom use that planning process to drive their site budgets. None of the above conditions are conducive to innovations that might change business as usual in terms of resource allocations. In addressing that reality, the PBAR process folds the existing site-level planning processes into a new budgeting system that helps principals do the mandatory tasks more efficiently and also removes some constraints to their ability and motivation to innovate. When principals undertake their site-level planning process using PBAR, they begin by focusing on their student achievement data. The needs assessment, goal setting and strategy development come next. Site leaders do not start looking at their resources and investments until after they have completed those steps, at which point they tie their available resources into their plan to see what is possible. The objective is for the school s strategies to drive its budget decisions rather than the opposite. Once in place, the PBAR tool reduces the administrative burden of annual reporting for site leaders by keeping multiple years of data and reports immediately accessible. Completing pro-forma sections of the site plan is done quickly and easily. The system thus gives principals and school site councils the time and tools they need to develop innovative strategies and the capacity to test various budget scenarios that enable them to allocate scarce resources in ways that can support those strategies. 4 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

5 Budgeting for Student Success #1 Lessons Learned: Budgets Can Be Used to Empower Change the budget calendar Early in the SSFR project it became clear that the timing of school site budgeting needed to change in the partner districts if principals were to conduct a more deliberate and strategic planning process. Under old budget processes, the school sites did not have an estimated budget to work with even though some budget planning began in the fall. Schools did not start working on their budgets in earnest until after state projections were available in February or later. At that point in the year, time was short so budgets were finished quickly before school plan development even started. Rethinking the site and district budget planning calendars and accelerating the site-level process to begin in the fall changed this. The new schedule gave principals and school site councils the time to begin with a needs assessment and goal setting, think about the innovative strategies that would achieve their goals and develop a school plan that could then drive the budget development process. The schools were thus able to allocate their available dollars toward the goals and strategies they had already adopted. Align school innovations with district priorities In Twin Rivers USD, district officials used the PBAR approach to connect improvement goals in such areas as academic performance, school climate and attendance with the budget-building process for school sites. The schools then developed the strategies they believed would enable them to meet or make progress toward both these district-defined goals and any additional school goals, assigned priorities to those strategies, and then allocated their resources accordingly. Within those constraints school leaders had the flexibility to try new things. Most of the schools that participated in the SSFR pilot the first year tried new approaches to professional development and/or to extracurricular or after-school programing, despite having no additional resources. At Rio Tierra Junior High that included an expansion of after-school and summer school programs. Regency Park Elementary purchased new technology tools to strengthen instruction. And at Rio Linda High School teachers were provided expanded professional development opportunities. Support what if planning Given the volatility of the state budget, the principal at Santee Educational Complex in LAUSD used the data tool to create three different budget scenarios. They included a worst-case scenario, one that identified additional needs if more money appeared, and a third scenario that included everything the school would have in an ideal situation. So while preparing for the worst, the school site was able to easily identify strategic uses for additional funds were they to become available. Use the planning tools to help school staff be more effective At one site, the school secretary used the PBAR tool and found she was able to function at a higher level in support of the principal because the planning and budgeting process was well documented. By accessing that record and having a place to record changes, she could have confidence acting independently on decisions that were consistent with the plan, for example in procuring supplies or authorizing a professional development cost. 5 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

6 Goal #2 Strengthening local accountability for learning outcomes and the wise stewardship of resources Pivot and its partner school districts quickly recognized that the PBAR process and tool could facilitate better communications across constituent groups and stronger accountability both at the school and district level. One key was revising the budget development calendar. A second was creating an extensive menu of reports that could be automatically generated using the information entered throughout the budget planning process. The principal or a district official could quickly create reports that: Show staff how goals, strategies and educational practices align. Summarize planned expenditures by type (using object codes for example) and track the level of investment in each goal. Compare the goals, strategies and budgets of two schools. Provide a summary of the school plan for the district governing board. The consistent format and terminology facilitated by PBAR is of particular value to district officials. It enables them to more easily and clearly report to the district board regarding the level of investment in board goals across the district as a whole and at individual sites. Over time, it also supports a districtwide approach to reporting on resources, expenditures and student outcomes in ways that can create a common language and shared understanding among all stakeholders. #2 Lessons Learned: Increasing Accountability Yields Benefits Build trust by increasing transparency At Carver Middle School in LAUSD, the principal credits the PBAR approach with an improvement in trust across all of the relationships on her campus. She explains that the school has created greater openness about its budget by being very transparent with its stakeholders about how money is spent. The result has been that all groups are very familiar with the school plan, which has built a lot more trust. She also underscores the importance of having at least one person in your support staff at the school site that is competent in budgeting. Having a staff member who can support the budget development process and help to manage the necessary paperwork and reporting, as well as the day-to-day management of the budget, is critical. Create new incentives The experiences of LAUSD principals demonstrate some of the benefits that result from giving principals control over the resources that go into running their schools. In reports on their site-based budgeting experiences, these principals recounted what happened when the district gave them full budgetary control. For example, under this new system each site would have to pay for the cost of substitute teachers out of its budget. As a result, the school staff saw the cost of teacher absences as directly affecting their school and the result was a marked reduction in those absences. An immediate outcome was that the school had more dollars available to meet other needs. Similarly, each site rather than the district as a whole realized the financial benefit of better average daily attendance, since the increased revenue generated by better attendance ended up in the school s budget rather than the district s. When principals were able to communicate this to teachers, other site staff, students and parents, attendance improved as well. 6 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

7 Budgeting for Student Success Goal #3 Creating a professional learning community for principals as they undertake these new efforts An unanticipated but powerful aspect of the PBAR approach is the way it functions as a professional learning opportunity for school principals. It can transform the annual planning and budgeting process into an experience for site leaders that increases knowledge, promotes communication and collaboration and facilitates district officials ability to assess principals learning needs. Ultimately, the PBAR tool can increase the effectiveness of site leaders as implementers and ambassadors for the district s goals. By beginning the PBAR process in the fall, principals have time to be more reflective about school goals, strategies and investments. Because the PBAR tool is online, it allows them to share with peers and with their site-level committee the district-defined goals, the planning work as it occurs, and the rationale behind budget allocations and trade-offs. District officials access to the PBAR tool can improve their effectiveness as well. It facilitates the district s ability to assess principals abilities and work with them to develop a plan for their own professional growth. As personnel work through this process, they also learn what areas of their budget local principals want control over and where they are happy to defer to the district. In a given district the latter might or might not include maintenance, instructional materials, professional development or technology support. Finally, the PBAR tool enables the district to keep district goals visible and salient to site leaders, teaching staffs and community members. To some degree that is because it sets up and promotes the use of a common vocabulary. And because district goals guide but do not dictate the development of site-level strategies, they are much more likely to be internalized by school communities. #3 Lessons Learned: Professionalization Takes Many Shapes Support new principals with new tools When Brent Givens began working as principal at Norwood Junior High in Twin Rivers Unified, he was stunned to find that he did not have any software tools for managing a school budget of over $4 million a year. He was looking for a tool, even something akin to what he used for his personal checking account, but the district s systems were designed for accounting and compliance, not budget management. As he notes, I was craving a tool that would help me manage a significant amount of money, one easy-to-use management tool that had all the information I needed. He said that once he was able to access the software developed through the SSFR project the PBAR (Planning, Budgeting and Resource Allocation) tool then I was doing the happy dance. Allow principals to share ideas and resources At Central Region Middle Schools in LAUSD, three small-learning-community schools operate on the same campus and work collaboratively to do so. With support from Pivot they have been able to plan and budget in ways that support that collaboration. As principals Hugo Carlos and Tommy Welch explained in a report to their communities, they were able to split-fund staff positions very easily, which gave them greater staffing flexibility around both core teaching positions and specialized ones based on their disparate school themes of Arts & Culture and Business & Technology. The principals also worked together to plan for a variety of scenarios based on different enrollment and budget possibilities. They created a master plan with five different scenarios which enabled them to prioritize what they will need assuming increases in enrollment and resources occur. They also planned to create a horizontal network with other middle schools in their region. 7 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

8 Goal #4 Shifting to a service-oriented relationship between the district office and school sites As both principals and district office officials become attuned to the systems and tools used to manage a comprehensive site-level budgeting system, they can find their official relationships transformed. School principals feel respected, take greater responsibility for their school plans and budgets, and are more willing to speak up for what their school needs. District officials find that a common set of procedures and systems across all schools gives them greater confidence and trust in local decision-making. Having real-time transparency into school planning gives district leaders confidence they can identify and solve problems as they occur. They are thus empowered to focus on supporting local priorities instead of enforcing district rules. They have a new and promising alternative to the choice between centralization and loss of control that faces district leaders in most places. The PBAR approach creates a new appetite among principals for site-level autonomy. When school principals and communities are given the opportunity to develop strategies and to allocate the necessary resources, they expect to have the flexibility to put their strategies into action. The onus is then on district officials to find out how to make things possible. The district can experience this as unwanted pressure or can use it to begin to shift the district culture from one of compliance to one that focuses on supporting schools. One result can be a new and constructive, but not always easy, dialog about how the district itself makes decisions, develops improvement strategies, creates spending priorities and supports school sites. Similarly, the PBAR tool can enable site level staff, including the school secretary, to better see and understand the vision for the school. Because the PBAR tool articulates and makes accessible the principal s thought process, staff can feel more confident in taking responsibility for decisions that were previously referred back to the principal. Over time, the PBAR tool can change the way that the district budget office and other departments interact with schools, pushing them closer to the issues of teaching and learning that need to be at the heart of the enterprise. District staff can more easily approve individual expenditures because they are accompanied by detailed rationale and specific resource and expenditure codes and because the site plan is aligned with district goals, strategies and budgeted costs. The site budget tool explains more than just what principals want to spend money on it also provides the rationale. With principals no longer having to ask permission of district officials, a more effective partnership can evolve; a partnership that begins with a shared understanding of the district s instructional goals. The PBAR process and tool can also create transparency by allowing the district staff to see the principal s site level budget as it develops. From a management perspective, it is then possible to intervene if things get off track, providing the additional coaching or support the principal needs to be successful. With that capability, district officials can deal with issues on an individual basis rather than being tempted to put rules in place for all that are driven by mistakes or poor judgments made by one or two site leaders. #4 Lessons Learned: Redefined Relationships Strengthen the Entire Enterprise Use site-level budget control to change district/school dynamics Giving principals real budget control has whetted their appetite for greater autonomy and can cause a shift in how they see the district office. Principal Eric Davidson at University High in LAUSD notes that site-based budgeting respects the position of the principal as somebody that can make school-based decisions based on data and student needs. I think it is just a matter of having mutual respect and trust. I trust that the process is going to be consistent and [the district office trusts that] the decisions that I make are going to be for the benefit of my students. 8 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

9 Budgeting for Student Success Goal #5 Establishing processes that support continuous improvement and data-driven evaluation The PBAR approach connects the identification and tracking of student learning outcomes with the school level budgeting process. Goals are tracked over time, as are the strategies and resources a school site employs to accomplish those goals. After the initial creation of the system, district and school leaders are able to begin their planning process by reviewing the strategies they used and the results they previously attained. They can modify goals as appropriate, and decide to continue, strengthen or eliminate strategies based on data. Because resources are aligned with goals, the system over time should also facilitate an examination of what kinds of expenditures provided the best return on investment in terms of student learning. #5 Lessons Learned: Sharing of Local Knowledge and Best Practices Improves Outcomes Create new opportunities for principals to learn The PBAR approach especially the way it facilitates transparency and collaboration among principals creates demand from principals for more access to examples of how others are able to squeeze more efficiency out of their budgets and make key tradeoffs to prioritize student learning. Early in the work on LAUSD s school budget initiative, Pivot visited some of its pilot schools to identify best practices for principal training content. Many school leaders expressed keen interest in learning how others are using their resources to accomplish their goals. Principals felt that they were expected to do far too much, with many of their activities focused on mandatory meetings and workshops related to district-wide initiatives. Later, Pivot met with central office leaders to share a more principal-centered approach to professional development. Many resonated with the ideas which seemed to be bubbling up at the right moment. One leader taking up the effort to redesign the district s approach to professional development is Julie Kane, Director of Academic Operations, from the Office of the Deputy Superintendent of Instruction Jaime Aquino, LAUSD. Ms. Kane, a former principal herself, now facilitates a cross-functional team in Los Angeles that is looking at ways they can make a principal s life easier by creating a system of principal- and teacher-driven professional development and online access to local best practices. The feedback we have received from principals and directors in the field is that the professional development delivered previously was too much, too fast in a one-size-fits-all approach that did not take into account the learning and leadership needs of individual principals and schools. To address these issues, we organized a cross-functional team from all divisions that create and deliver PD as well as representatives from all five Educational Service Centers (local districts) to discuss what PD should look like, where we are currently, and how we can move from our current state to the ideal. This summer we are embarking on our first steps towards making that shift with the agreements we negotiated for the design of principal professional development for : core content limited to only essentials for improving the interaction between teachers, students, and content; differentiation based on need; and design for the needs of adult learners. Over the course of the next year we will be building an online learning management system that will exponentially accelerate that shift. It s a really exciting time, and I can envision a future where principals and teachers feel truly empowered and supported by our professional development offerings. Julie Kane 9 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

10 PBAR and Pivot help districts build the foundation required so site-level budgeting can achieve its potential The work that Pivot and its partners have done in the SSFR project and in developing and using both the PBAR process and tool has been a learning experience. Among the most important discoveries was that much foundational work is required before a move to true site-level budgeting can achieve the promise of a better alignment between resource allocations and learning goals. The first requirement is that a district is seriously interested in and committed to local finance reform, defined as increased budget transparency, more school autonomy and accountability and, ultimately, greater equity in the allocation of resources among schools. This work requires technical, policy and process changes that together also prompt substantial change in school and district culture. It takes a sustained effort and a willingness to change anything necessary, from the budget calendar to the union contract. One key facilitator of this change process is an online tool. The tool Pivot has developed for PBAR is an example. In its current form, the PBAR tool allows school principals to develop budget scenarios and explore a variety of budget options, but more can be done to support these types of thinking processes. Principals can build and evaluate multiple budget scenarios that could provide alternatives when budgets increase or decrease and scenarios more directly map to district or school priorities. The tool also suggests new ways for principals to think about the trade-offs involved in various strategy choices. Looking ahead, if a district had several years of financial and achievement data for each school stored in a system such as the PBAR tool, new learning opportunities would open up. Officials could at that point analyze the relationship between the strategies schools adopt, their relative cost and their impact on school performance. The capability also exists to track planned expenditures by subgroups of students, such as low-income students and English learners, and investigate the effect of those expenditures. This new ability to analyze Return On Investment (ROI) could provide valuable new data for district leaders and school site principals to factor into their thinking as they pursue the active and demanding work of continuous improvement. PBAR provides a budget development tool. It does not replace the software that districts now use to track expenditures. Thus the tool could be used to augment the existing budgeting system in a district or to suggest functionality that could be added. At a minimum, the tool provides a window into new ways to think about allocating resources and about holding schools accountable for how they manage their resources. In this way, the PBAR approach can be valuable for any district interested in supporting site-level innovation, improving spending effectiveness, controlling costs and pursuing academic achievement gains in a way that furthers equity and strengthens staff capacity. Pivot Learning Partners offers on-the-ground support to districts Pivot Learning Partners is a nonprofit organization that is committed to creating innovative services, tools, programs and processes to assist districts on issues like these. Pivot Learning establishes long-term partnerships with school districts that build the capacity of both people and the organizations in which they work. Most school districts face competing pressures as they look for ways to operate with fewer resources and ever higher expectations for student achievement. At the same time, it now seems likely that policy changes at the state level will provide districts with greater flexibility coupled with demands that their budget processes and results become more transparent. Site-level budgeting is one strategy that in theory can help districts maximize the opportunities opened up by these changes. Many school districts that are committed to giving school sites more financial control will nevertheless struggle to redistribute the responsibility for budgeting decisions because it represents such a fundamental transformation away from business as usual. 10 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

11 Budgeting for Student Success By partnering with school districts over several years and offering on-the-ground implementation support, Pivot Learning helps build district capacity to redesign critical systems in ways that support the shift from a compliance orientation to one focused on innovation and responsiveness to local communities. That takes two different but equally important forms: Providing support for the kinds of technical changes that districts need to make, for example, in their budget development, human resources and school quality assurance systems; and Providing support for the people and the change management process itself. This combination, as well as our commitment to work with districts over time, helps ensure that the comprehensive change initiatives that leaders envision actually get implemented. Pivot s commitment to implementation helps districts build leadership capacity Some organizations work with districts to diagnose problems, but then leave the district with a set of recommendations, a PowerPoint deck, and another plan. Pivot Learning Partners work shoulder to shoulder with districts to design, iteratively refine and implement strategic initiatives. This work includes helping districts put in place the structures, systems and roles they will need to manage the change process. Pivot Learning s approach ensures that solutions are customized to the unique and changing contexts of districts. This approach also builds the capacity of leaders at all levels to innovate in other system areas. Essential building blocks for system redesign Each district and each Pivot Learning project is unique. We support innovation through a set of essential practices, including: 1. User-Centered Design: The user-centered design process leverages the experiences of the district s own people to help design, refine and implement important changes. 2. Sensitivity to Context: Each project begins with a close examination of the local context of the district. More often than not, context mapping uncovers problems that need to be addressed and areas of conflict that need to be explored. 3. Embracing the Human Side of Change: Building shared ownership for results requires people within the system to take on new roles and people only embrace this level of challenge if they are invited to bring both hearts and minds to the work. 4. Leveraging Technology: Technology can be an essential tool for increasing efficiency, transparency and engagement. Many of our projects involve developing technology solutions that are based on the understanding that, in order for end users to embrace and effectively use a new technology, the solution must make their jobs easier. About the Author Mary Perry is an independent education consultant who is widely known for her ability to clearly explain complex education policy, data and research, with a particular expertise in California school finance. From 1993 to 2011, Mary was deputy director of EdSource and served as a primary author and executive editor for EdSource s publications on school funding and other education policy topics. She also teaches a course on education policy for the Educational Leadership doctoral program at San Francisco State University. Mary served as a member of the governing board of the Campbell Union School District from She holds a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Liberal Arts from Stanford University. 11 Program Report: Budgeting for Student Success (Spring 2013)

12 Program Report Pivot Learning Partners is a non-profit organization of K-12 experts who work with schools, districts and charters to address the biggest challenges they face, including raising student achievement and closing the unconscionably large achievement gaps between groups of children. Unlike consultants that prepare elaborate blueprints and then depart, we provide the strategic vision for reform and on-the-ground training and implementation support needed to ensure that transformational change happens. We partner with 70 districts serving over 2 million students, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Sacramento, Santa Ana, San Diego and many mid-sized and small districts including Race to the Top winners Lindsay and Galt. Our partners primarily serve heavy concentrations of high-need students, of whom 71 percent live in poverty, 83 percent are children of color, and 43 percent are English learners. For more information about Budgeting for Student Success, please contact: Kelly Hoppe Program Manager khoppe@pivotlearningpartners.org Phone Pivot Learning Partners mission is to revitalize public education by developing the leaders and building the education organizations of the future. We envision a future in which race, class, language, gender and culture are no longer good predictors ofeducational outcomes for students Pivot Learning Partners Market Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA Phone Fax Founded