(ABC 6 News) – The balanced budget model aims to allow schools to have more flexibility on how money will be spent to better suit their students and staff.

Here’s how it works. RPS wants to give less money to so called Title I schools to free up money for the district.

Title I schools are schools that receive federal funding to help students from low-income families.

“We have kids that have the same needs in our middle schools and high schools, so I’m proposing that we change that funding stream to spread those dollars more broadly,” said Supt. Dr. Kent Pekel.

Under this proposal, schools that receive title one funding would receive less money from the RPS general fund in order to provide more funding to schools with similar demographics.

Another source of funding the district is looking to reshape comes from what is called compensatory funding which is similar to Title I. It aims to help low-income students, but the money doesn’t come from the federal government.

Currently, 80 percent of compensatory funding RPS receives goes to the school level.

Under this new model, 100 percent of that funding would be given directly to schools.

“The bigger change is not really the reshuffling; the bigger change is us not telling us all of our schools how they have to use those dollars,” Pekel said.

The money won’t come from the recent referendum – because that money is being used to keep the school district stable to not have to make cuts.

“The referendum is filling what would otherwise have been a multimillion-dollar gap, and that money is going right into our balanced budget model if the board approves it and then it will allocate it out to our schools to continue the work we’re doing in reading, in math, and all of our academic agenda,” Pekel said.

The school board will continue to discuss and review the balanced business model where they will vote on the finalized model on January 7th.