Needs-Based Budgeting Strategy

During the 2023-24 school year, Manteca Unified School District worked to implement a significant shift in its budgeting strategy.  This shift fully aligned school site strategic plans with MUSD’s Local Control & Accountability Plan (LCAP) which determines how MUSD’s budget is spent down to every dollar to ensure that each dollar has a goal, a plan, and a purpose. 

To achieve this alignment between site strategic plans, the LCAP, and the District’s budget, several essential steps had to occur– including data collection, gathering input, establishing a common language, planning through an equity lens, and allocating dollars where they are most needed.

Collecting Data

Planning Begins with Understanding the Data

The ultimate goal of the LCAP, Manteca Unified’s District-level strategic plan, is for students to learn state standards. To achieve this, MUSD must ensure that educational access, resources, and opportunities are made available for students by utilizing budget provisions and staffing - essentially, putting all of the puzzle pieces together for individual student achievement.

Creating MUSD’s new, three-year LCAP cycle required the thoughtful development of goals, actions, and services using meaningful, measurable data. To build the LCAP, District leadership created a plan to collect data, allow for input, analyze information, and ensure that all educational partners had the opportunity to participate in this process. 
Leadership thoroughly evaluated the California Dashboard data for the District followed by an analysis of local data through measuring achievement and growth. District leaders worked closely with department administrators and site principals to ensure each understood their data to create purposeful goals, actions, and metrics in their new three-year (2024-27) strategic plans. 

During this process, District leaders guided administrators in identifying and understanding metrics to ensure that the actions they implement in their strategic plans are not only aligned with their SMART goals, but also effectively address the needs of students as outlined in the LCAP. This emphasis on metrics is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of actions taken in achieving these goals. 

Gathering Input

Gathering Input is Essential to Ensuring ALL Student Needs are Being Addressed

To allow educational partners to provide feedback and offer suggestions for refinement, the District hosted several LCAP Community Input workshops for staff, families, and the greater community in March and April 2024. These meetings showcased the intentionality the District placed into the input process, as MUSD was extremely strategic in how the community workshops were planned, how information was presented to those in attendance, how data was collected from attendees, and how the District could be more inclusive within this process of qualitative data collection. Community workshops were hosted in-person and virtually and offered live Spanish and Punjabi translations.

The workshops provided the opportunity for attendees to engage in critical points of data such as academic growth in English Language Arts and Math, College and Career Preparedness, Interventions and Student Supports, Health and Safety, and Measuring Academic Progress for students experiencing homelessness and identified foster youth, students acquiring English to become bilingual, and students who receive Special Education services. Each topic was facilitated by an educational expert, guiding attendees to interact with the data by sharing observations, explaining their significance, and offering input to enhance educational practices.

The District visited all comprehensive high schools to gather the input of students, our most important educational partners. Additionally, we released a District-wide student survey and gave presentations to student-led advisory groups to receive feedback. During in-person meetings, students were shown their school’s data and were encouraged to talk and engage with District leaders authentically, allowing student voices to be at the forefront.

Equity Lens

Considering Every Student Through an Equity Lens

MUSD leaders and staff members know each and every child can achieve, however, equity is recognizing some students need more support than others. With equity at the forefront, there is an important shift of viewing each student as students first and circumstance second. 

As MUSD worked to bridge site strategic plans to the LCAP, it was an opportunity to incorporate targeted equitable opportunities and access to our students, staff, and community and reflect the analysis within the District’s master plan. By doing this, equity and access are now systemically embedded in our LCAP planning and development process as we dedicate resources based on student needs.

To support this, all District leaders and site administrators have received and continue to receive cultural proficiency training so that all administrators can more effectively assess learning barriers, build and cultivate a positive school climate that promotes engagement, safety, and support for all students, adopt curriculum and instructional materials that accurately reflect students’ individual needs, and collaborate with local agencies and educational partners to ensure students have necessary supports when needed.

District Alignment

Planning Through School and District Alignment

As every school and department in Manteca Unified developed their strategic plan, it was essential to foster District-wide alignment through consistency, communication, and professional learning with teachers, staff, and leadership. As an educational village, establishing a common language and shared process became fundamental to our ability to more accurately communicate and understand student needs within our environment.

Once a common language was in place, leaders practiced building SMART goals (goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) aligned with the identified needs of their students. SMART goals require one to consider what they hope to accomplish, how they’ll know when they reach their goal, if the goal is realistic, and why the goal is important for student success. Leaders also must outline action items and the appropriate metrics they’ll use to evaluate progress. SMART goals are a requirement of each department and school site’s strategic plan and were documented in Needs Assessment Workbooks.

Allocating Dollars

Allocating Dollars to Every Student Need Identified

After spending months analyzing data and completing needs-based planning workbooks, sites and departments submitted their workbooks to Fiscal Services in February 2024.

District leaders intently reviewed all identified student needs through Needs Assessment Workbooks, which included detailed information vetted by the Superintendent, Deputy Superintendent, Chief Business & Information Officer, Educational Services Executive Directors, Strategic Alignment and Accountability Director, Facilities and Operations Director, Information Technology Director, and Fiscal Services Director. Once workbooks were reviewed, the Fiscal Services team initiated the development of the budget to prioritize identified student needs. This is what we mean when we say Manteca Unified has a needs-based budget where every dollar has a goal, a plan, and a purpose.

This is a major shift, as the District is now directly budgeting for student needs instead of planning based on dollars allocated to school sites, with both the LCAP and budget going forward to MUSD’s Board of Trustees for recommended adoption in June 2024. Such a critical change allows MUSD to establish a new baseline for budgeting, utilizing data, input, analysis, and equity-focused strategies to continually improve upon in the coming years.