Everything in a school is limited by the school’s budget. Whether it is in education, sports or extracurricular activities, all subjects can only function within the limitations placed on them by the resources available to them.
Last year, the Pleasant Valley school district received $63,971,000 in total. 31.1 million dollars was put into educational funding and an additional 16.2 million was placed into support services for the school. On January 9th, 2023, the administrative board posted that month’s budget. Funding was listed as such; general fund: $370,254.85, nutrition fund: $45,039.77, elementary/junior high activity fund: $7,750.65 and high school activity fund: $22,107.17.
The school continuously receives a large sum of money and processes major influence with what they accomplish for the district. This makes it important for the school to be able to divide and use this money in an intelligent way as to not waste it.
The process to determine the funding for athletics is based on equity among the sports that are sectioned by the Iowa High School Athletic Association. There are 22 different sports in this organization that can receive support from the school directly. How much money they receive is based on the baseline needs that the sports are required to fill.
PV athletic director, D’anne Kroemer, describes the decisions made for how the funding is split between the sports. “We have to talk about what you must have. Of course, you have to have soccer balls. Of course, you have to have tennis balls. Of course, you have to have footballs. You have to have the essential components required for the sport. Each coach talks directly to me and discusses what exactly they [the teams] need and what they like to have,” stated Kroemer.
Many of the sports can supplement school funding through their own fundraising activities to supply the extra things they want for their team. Clubs are mostly funded by their own means of revenue and can self-sustain with minimal help.
Budgeting for class subjects is handled in a similar manner. All classes are divided into individual departments that can determine and request the funding they want to receive. They get their budgets based on the costs of material and maintenance required.
Principal Micheal Hawley describes the process of determining specific funding for departments as “It is all based on what they propose that they need and when they say they need something we try to balance it out. Think of it as a pie. The department figures out this pie and it goes into different slices like the english department and fine arts department” Hawley said.
The school district has the last say in the school’s budgetary use and they are planning to have a conversation with Hawley on this topic early this year. It will later be checked on a monthly basis to see if the school is falling under its budget and correctly selecting its funding usage.
The success of a school relies on its budget and the planning that goes behind it. This allows the student body to get the proper education and activities through the school system. It is a complex and tedious process that needs feedback and insight from many different perspectives to see the best use of money for the benefit of the school. The understanding of necessary funding placed into different aspects of the school is why PV is able to find success in its programs and give what is best for its students and staff.
Ethan Worlton • Sep 24, 2023 at 3:26 pm
Great story! I learned a lot about school budgets. Now this makes me wonder what general funds are, if not any of the other listed things? I was also wondering how much of the funds are put into health and safety, or is that just lumped into the general fund? Very interesting stuff that I will definitely check out later!