I’ve registered our new domain name – mtviewacademy.org. I’m in the process of moving the content from www.fallcreekcharter.com to the www.mtviewacademy.org.
Learn MoreSubstitutes
I’ve updated the budget with our substitute costs for the first year. ORS 342.610 defines the minimum salary for substitute teachers. You cannot pay subs less per day than 85% of the salary of a beginning teacher who holds a bachelor’s degree. The salary of the substitute teacher shall be computed as required in this subsection based on the statewide average salary for beginning teachers who hold bachelor’s degrees. The 2013-2014 numbers are located on the OSBA Substitute teacher pay web page. I estimated our substitute teacher pay at $171.
PERS
The Charter School Handbook states that all charter school employees belong to the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System (PERS). I’m confident that we can limit our employees to teachers only. I think only employing teachers should be a goal of ours. Administrators and other employees can be hired through a third party contracting firm.
Learn More- I’ve emailed Kate Pattison our latest charter school questions.
- Now I’m going to do some research to determine if our administrator needs to be certified.
- Charter School Handbook – Current Charter School law requires a minimum of 50% of the FTE (Full Time Equivalency) of the teaching and staff in a “brick and mortar” charter school to be licensed by the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (ORS 338.135). If a teacher or administrator is not licensed they must register with the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission (TSPC), the teacher and administrator licensing and registration state agency. The TSPC website, http://www.tspc.state.or.us/ provides more information about the process for obtaining licensure or registration. All teachers must be licensed or registered through TSPC.
- ORS 338.135 – (7)(a) Any person employed as an administrator in a public charter school shall be licensed or registered to administer by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission.
- ORS 338.135 – (7)(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (a) or (b) of this subsection, at least one-half of the total full-time equivalent (FTE) teaching and administrative staff at the public charter school shall be licensed by the commission pursuant to ORS 342.135, 342.136, 342.138 or 342.140.
- This answers or question – Administrators do not need to be licensed as long as 50% of the FTE teachers and staff are licensed. They do however need to be registered with the TSPC.
- I looked on the TSPC web site to see what registration entails and how it is different than being licensed, but I couldn’t find anything. I’ve emailed contact.tspc@state.or.us to determine the differences.
- “Outdoor recreational area” has been added to the budget.
I made a few minor changes to the web site. The style sheet has been updated, so that nested bullets are styled identically to MS Word.
- apples
- kale
- lettuce
- raspberry
- strawberry
- celery
- bananas
- kiwi
- altoids
- peppermint
- metal
- plastic
- spearmint
- peppermint
- mentos
- certs
I also added a print button to the bottom of each page. This allows you to print the page without the top header and the right side navigation.
Learn MoreI’ve come up with the following process for creating and approving our budget.
- Review the Vision and Mission Statement
- List out the services and resources we want to provide based on our vision and mission statement.
- Determine the number of students we want to provide our services to.
- Calculate the number of teachers needed. This calculation is based on the max students per teacher minus 5 and then dividing that number by the number of students.
- List out all of the expenses incurred by providing our services and resources.
- List out the income from the state and fundraising.
- Determine the budget shortfall that will need to be made up with community donations.
- Notify the community of the budget shortfall and ask for donations.
- Meet with local businesses and ask for donations.
- Raise the money needed to cover the budget shortfall.
- If the money cannot be raised, then one of the following decisions will be made
- Make changes to the services and resources we want to provide if they don’t violate our vision and mission statement.
- Make changes to the services and resources that violate our vision and mission statement.
- Decide that we won’t offer our services and investigate alternatives for our students.
- Finalize and approve the budget.
I want to ensure that if we are not able to receive enough funding to provide services that are in line with our vision and mission statement then we partner with another group/agency that can or we find an alternative option for our students. There are a number of viable alternatives for educating the children in our community that do not involve operating a charter school. We need to be cognizant of these options and be willing to pursue them at any time.
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I’ve decided to start focusing on the budget and financial plan part of the proposal. This is really the only deal breaker. If we can’t afford to offer services based on our vision and mission statement then we will need to make some changes or pursue a different avenue to help education the children in our community.
The key concept around this budget is to determine what services we want to provide. These services need to be driven by our vision and mission statement. I don’t want us to ever base the services we want to provide off of how much funding we receive. I would rather we recognize the funding shortfall and come up with a creative solution to bridge the gap.
Another important goal of the budget is that it is very simple to understand and formula driven.
Here’s a link to the budget. Take a look and let me know what you think.
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