Observing and INteracting with Progra Wendy Cave - Observing and Interacting with Program Directors and Other Administrative Staff in Your Setting

I have been meeting with school district superintendents to discuss the children that will be transitioning to their school in the fall. While meeting with them I have been talking about the federal budget cuts and how it has been impacting our program. They have shared that they have experienced cuts as well and have had to look into outside grants as well as cut programming in order to meet their budgets. The one district talked about how they had to start charging students and their parents if the students wanted to be involved in their football program. They have had fundraisers but still had to start charging families that wanted to be part of this extra curricular activity.

Another school district shared that they actually cut some of the curriculum choices for the students in middle school and high school because they had to furlough teachers to help with the cuts. Now obviously they did not cut the essential content areas but they did cut shop and home economics. I think that this is a sad option because those classes are helpful to students that want to gain skills that will help them in their lives even though it related to college requirements.

I shared this information with our director of our Head Start program and she had me sit in on a committee where our role was to help decide on how we were going to cut programming in order to meet our budget. We did this as a preliminary stage so that she could met with her governing board to discuss with them the options and then she will share what they approved the program doing.

Budgets are something that many people do not think of unless you are the person writing the checks. This was a great insight for me to take part in this decision making process.