Targeted Technical Assistance for Converging District Challenges - Strategic Budgeting
As discussed in our previous Op Ed, districts today face a growing set of converging pressures. A notable example comes from Maryland’s new funding formula and the corresponding initiatives that districts face.
Blueprint for Maryland’s Future
In 2021, Maryland passed the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, which not only overhauled the State’s school funding formula, but redesigned it in alignment with a broader strategy for improving education statewide. The formula was not reworked to fit a current system, but instead designed in concert with Maryland’s direction for improving education laid out in the Blueprint’s Five Pillars. Districts have had to change resource allocation and accounting to meet the requirements of the Blueprint, as well as rethink how they serve students to align with the Blueprint.
To oversee the implementation of the Blueprint, the state established the Accountability and Implementation Board (AIB), which provides oversight and technical assistance to Maryland districts across all pillars. In 2024, the AIB recognized the need for technical support for districts with strategic resource allocation and hired several firms to work with districts. Augenblick, Palaich and Associates (APA) was hired to both provide direct technical assistance to districts, as well as co-lead the community of practice focused on strategic resource allocation.
While the overall strategic allocation work supported districts with needs across all pillars, the main focus was around Pillar 2 – Educator Effectiveness, specifically non-instructional time requirements, and Pillar 4 – Student Support, particularly around the Minimum School Funding (MSF) requirement. The AIB and districts recognized that short-term, targeted support provided an efficient and timely approach to supporting the implementation of the new requirements of the Blueprint.
Strategic Budgeting and Resource Allocation
Most of APA’s work centered on helping districts implement the Blueprint’s MSF requirements, most closely aligned with Pillar 4. Under MSF, districts must allocate at least 75 percent of several major funding formulas—and 100 percent of others—directly to the schools whose students generated those dollars. The 75 percent requirement includes the foundation, compensatory education, and multi-lingual learner formulas, while the 100 percent requirement includes special education and concentration of poverty dollars.
Though the MSF requirements can be viewed from afar as simply an accounting exercise where districts determine how to account for resources in alignment with the requirements, done with fidelity MSF truly underlies a key theory of action of the Blueprint. When the MSF requirements are used to examine current resource allocation practices and work is done to ensure that resources are allocated in alignment with the Blueprint, districts a left with resource allocations systems designed to meet the needs of their highest need students.
Building Foundation-Level Resource Models
APA worked with several districts that were refining their resource allocation approaches to align with and successfully meet the MSF requirements. This work included not only district finance staff, but also academic leaders in the district to ensure funding reflected academic expectations. One of the first steps was coding items within district finance files to different areas, foundation, compensatory education, multilingual learners, and special education. While most districts had begun this work, it was not always the level of detail needed to ensure MSF compliance. Once district resources were coded, APA had a baseline of current resource allocation and alignment to the Blueprint.
APA worked closely with the districts to define the foundation-level resources that should be available to every student in the district. This includes the teachers, support staff, administrators, and core operating costs necessary for each school before accounting for additional needs, such as compensatory education or multilingual learner populations. Establishing this baseline allows every school to receive a consistent starting allocation with adjustments layered based on student need.
To build this model, APA reviewed each district’s current policies and mapped them to foundation-resource frameworks the firm has developed in other states. For each district, APA created an initial grade-level foundation resource model and evaluated how well it aligned with both the proposed funding system and existing resource allocation. The final foundation models were refined to meet district needs while ensuring compliance with MSF.
Aligning Resources with Student Need
APA then worked with districts to design resource allocation approaches for compensatory education and multilingual learner funding -- the two areas where districts across the state tended to be furthest from meeting 75 percent MSF goal. This work often began by reviewing the current allocation of resources and their alignment with the actual student needs in schools. Existing district practices that set minimum resource levels by school were often unintentionally resulting in differences in funding that did not reflect actual student need. APA was able to work with districts to create models that were more reflective of actual student needs and flexible with changes in student demographics overtime.
Strengthening District Finance and Coding Systems
Once the foundation, compensatory education, and multilingual learner resource allocation models were created, APA worked with finance staff to codify the models and strategize their implementation into district accounting systems. One of the hurdles districts face is the upfront work needed to rework finance and accounting systems to align to the Blueprint approaches. To address this, APA created code books for districts that outlined the decisions on which resources were aligned with each funding stream. The firm then helped finance departments create systems to more easily track changes to staff overtime and how they align to the Blueprint areas, ensuring sustainability of the systems past APA support.
APA Support
As more states redesign funding formulas and shift accountability requirements, districts need partners who can help them translate policy changes into clear and sustainable models. APA supports systems through every stage, from clarifying resource models to building long-term coding and accounting structures, allowing districts to implement new requirements with confidence, with students’ needs at the center. For districts facing similar shifts, APA offers support that builds capacity and leaves lasting systems in place. Get in touch here — and in the meantime, follow us on LinkedIn for more.
Michaela Tonking, MA, is a senior Associate at APA. Michaela has ten years of experience in education. She contributes primarily on APA’s evaluation and school finance portfolios. She has participated in multiple state school funding and adequacy studies and has participated in APA projects on cost modeling, program evaluation, district technical assistance, and early childhood education.
Michaela can be reached via email at mht@apaconsulting.net.