Pictures are worth a thousand words. Pictures tell stories. So what does a picture tell about alarming trends in schools?
Financial Funding is Decreasing and the ‘funding cliff is coming’…
- School Safety obligations and costs are increasing
- School Safety liabilities and costs are increasing
- Regulations and Federal Mandates (OCR Dear Colleague Letter) for schools are increasing
- Compliance costs are increasing
- Legal Defensibility responsibilities and costs are increasing
- Behavioral and mental health responsibilities and costs are increasing
- Bullying and Cyber Bullying related costs are increasing
- Suicide related costs are increasing
Funding is decreasing for many reasons and funding will continue to be an ongoing challenge for all schools.
Why are costs increasing? Mostly because school leaders continue to use outdated ‘tools’ and traditional methodologies that are expensive, inefficient and ineffective. School leaders must ‘reform’ labor-intensive, paper-based, spreadsheet-based, general training and reaction-based methodologies and realize that innovative tools are available to improve efficiencies and effectiveness while also reducing their costs.
School leaders can do better and must be willing to look beyond the status quo, because the pictures clearly show it is time for change and better results.