Does Cutting the Budget for Education Create Opportunity?

Like many people, I was initially shocked, disappointed and even angered at the news that almost $1 billion was going to be cut from Wisconsin's education system. Isn't it hypocritical to argue that investing in our future is important, and then turn around and drastically reduce resources for schools?

As a school leader, aren't you sick of somebody offering you a budget only then to find you must cut good teachers, services for children with special needs, professional development for your staff and even the light bulb needed for your Interactive Smartboard to engage your students in the classroom? No wonder schools feel helpless.

After my initial reaction to the news about the budget, I realized that this in fact is a real opportunity to foster a new mindset about how WE can build the BEST education system in the world. When our politicians have failed at providing any leadership on budget policy we can kiss goodbye any notion of obtaining government funding for our schools. If we want better schools and a better education system for our children, we must attract the funding from somewhere else.

So who is responsible?

There's a realignment going on right now, and it's time we embrace it. Schools are now responsible for their own long-term sustainability. While this may seem like a steep expectation for an already stressed system, it is necessary if you don't want others dictating your school's budget. When schools are 100% dependent on government dollars for their existence, they are in a very vulnerable position. They're not in control of their future.

Do you believe me when I say there's plenty of money out there? The solution to this predicament is not a question of money. Schools need to know how to attract resources.

Attracting resources does not mean fund-raising though.

My team at alinea believes that the formula for sustainability for schools comes down to effective community engagement, which in no way means just pushing information and requests for money out into the community. Community engagement really is all about inviting and welcoming the community in, which may seem very scary for some schools. So what's the formula for effective community engagement?

Story + Direction + Relationships

• Story - Your story must inspire people to want to help. It should be compelling and concise so that it is consistently told by lots of people who act as your ambassadors. Your story must also be driven by a vision of what the future looks like because of your school. What will be the future of the child who attends your school's program?

• Direction - You must be able to articulate clear and measurable goals that will drive you to your vision. Your staff, families, board members and volunteers must be able to answer the question, "What does your school need and how can people help?"

• Relationships – The first step to fostering strategic relationships is reaching out and inviting people in to witness your mission. By this, I don't mean taking people on a tour of your school and pointing out the obvious (here's our cafeteria, here's our music room.) You need to develop a compelling tour so people may experience what's unique and special about your school. The next step then is to be strategic about how you develop a relationship with each of these individuals over time.

If you implement this formula you will attract the right resources. Implementing this process will not be easy, but it will enable schools to survive and thrive in the future.

I'd love to know what you think. Do you agree? Do you have a vision for your school? How has the latest budget affected your school and what challenges do you think you will face as you strive to achieve your vision?

Deb Lukovich's Very First Blog Entry

Welcome to my brand new blog!

This is a blog about education. Well, mostly. Why do we need a blog discussing our schools and education system? Simple. We have enough blogs about celebrities and food and music. What would you say is the most important resource for the future of our planet? It’s not oil. Or water. Or wind. It’s our children.

And our education system is in trouble. Which means our children are in trouble. We should pay as much attention to the education of our kids as we do to the economy, the environment and certainly more than we give to all those tabloid and celebrity gossip stories. We should be horrified by the statistics. The dropouts. The failures. The closings. It should be unacceptable to us.

So, this will be a blog about helping to make our schools and non-profit organizations work so well that our children all have the opportunity to learn and grow into individuals who will go to college and become the people that will eventually make our world a better place.

You may ask, who am I? What makes me an expert? And why would I care enough to write a blog on the topic?

It’s a question I would ask myself. And, to be honest, it’s the surprise of my life. I never imagined myself as a person that would dedicate herself and her company so passionately to the mission of improving schools and education. I’ve had other issues and causes I’ve been an activist for, like reproductive rights, women and politics, young women as leaders and entrepreneurship. At this stage in my life, my priorities have changed.

In the Beginning

Here’s what happened. First, I was shocked and disappointed by my own children’s experience in school. And I live in a pretty wealthy school district. If my children were not receiving the highest quality education, what did that mean for children in the other districts? Then, as coincidence (or not) would have it, my consulting firm stumbled onto an opportunity to work with an MPS (Milwaukee Public School) charter school about to launch. They were having many issues and hired us to determine what their shortcomings were and ultimately to fix them.

We worked with them for twelve months and learned so much, most of it horrifying, about how new schools are formed. Interest groups often focus on what’s best for them, not the children. We made it our mission to help this school be a wild success. And so it began…

I realized that it doesn’t matter if a school is public or private, voucher, religious, Montessori or Waldorf. If a school does a good job helping children prepare for success in life, we support them.

A Lack of Vision

A huge issue we were confronted with was that many schools really have no vision for what successful education looks like. With no vision, there is no direction. And every day another child graduates without even learning to read.

It’s Personal

For my company, and me it became very personal. I even became a founding board member for another charter school, Milwaukee Renaissance Academy, chartered by the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. All of this experience gave me vast insight into what a school needs to not only survive, but to thrive.

I will nutshell it for you. It all comes down to two words: Community Engagement. It’s what makes or breaks a school.

What is it and why is it so important? My website, www.alineaconnect.com defines it for you in detail, but in simple terms it means communities and school must form a partnership to create and secure the resources needed for every child to achieve success.

The Community FEELS responsible for and ACTS accountable for their school’s success.

It may sound easy. I guarantee it isn’t. But for the many schools we’ve worked with since—we’ve developed a plan that works. And I’ll share it with you in this blog. We’ll visit the steps and the principles behind them in future blogs. Note that the plan works best with professionals leading you through it, but there are things everyone can do to make small changes now with big results down the line.

This will be a two-way conversation. You can ask me questions as we go along… You can make comments. You can give us all the benefit of your own experience and wisdom. Hopefully, we will grow together. The goal is to determine the best way to help our communities to help our schools to help our kids.

And that’s what this blog is about.