Local school districts will have more leeway in moving money between accounts as they manage their budgets.
The local districts have to figure out a way to fold into their budgets a $225 million unspecified cut this year. At the same time, they've been told to try to save jobs for teachers in 4th through 12th grades, Lynn Bonner reports.
About 90 percent of school budgets pay for people, said state board Chairman William Harrison. School districts couldn't meet requirements without budget flexibility, he said. The State Board of Education, acting on authority granted in the new state budget, voted today to loosen money transfer rules in about a dozen line items.
Here are the programs were districts are allowed new, unrestricted transfers: Academically & Intellectually Gifted; at risk student services/alternative schools; classroom materials/ supplies/textbooks; disadvantaged student supplemental funding; limited English proficiency; low wealth school supplemental funding; small county supplemental funding; school technology, teacher assistants; high school Learn & Earn.
The board has asked state Department of Public Instruction staff for periodic reports on district spending.
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