(ABC 6 News) – The Rochester school board met Tuesday to discuss a potential new method for distributing district resources to schools called student-based budgeting.

Rochester Public Schools is a very centralized district, where most funding decisions happen at the central office.

“Our schools look different, yet we staff them with the same model,” said John Carlson, RPS Chief Administrative Officer.

Though schools in Rochester all have students with different needs, they’re funded in the same ways.

“We have in our funding policy that each school have an instructional coach. Some principals want more of that, some principals want less of that,” said Carlson. “They can’t use that to staff a school social worker or school counselor or more music teachers.”  

To try to use district funds more efficiently, Rochester school board is considering a new approach to allocating resources that puts more power into the hands of principals.

“Another way might be to have some of our resources that are more flexible at the school level, so that schools could use those dollars in ways that might meet their particular student needs a bit more effectively,” said RPS Superintendent Dr. Kent Pekel.

A student-based budget would still allow a set amount of resources given to each school for administrative needs, but the rest would be left up to school leaders.

“You might in a building be able to decide you wanted to put more into your reading strategy for instance, cause maybe your test scores and your data’s telling you, you need that, or maybe at the high school level you wanna actually launch more accelerated coursework in a new subject area,” said Pekel .

There are still a lot of questions on how the district would implement this policy, and much also depends on the success of the referendum on the ballot in November.

You can find the presentation breaking down the student-based budget option here.

The board will continue to review data through the fall and make its final decision at its December 17 meeting.