Competition Asks Students To Plan Oakland School Budget

Students from several business schools across the country gathered at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Thursday for the nation’s first education-based case competition aimed at presenting a long-term strategic plan for the Oakland Unified School District’s new budgetary system.

Teams from seven business schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, were presented with the school district’s financial situation on Monday before meeting with Barak Ben-Gal, the district’s budget director, for a question-and-answer session yesterday.

Immediately following the session, the teams were provided with private study rooms where they could discuss how to maximize the effectiveness of the school district’s new Results-Based Budgeting system.

The budgetary system, first implemented in the 2005-06 school year, was designed to give school principals the authority to make spending decisions within their respective schools.

“They are trying to give schools more autonomy in how to allocate funds,” said Stephanie Ip, a USC Marshall School of Business case competition team member. “The current problem is a lot of principals don’t have the time and knowledge to handle budgeting.”

The budgetary system also eliminated the teacher salary average and determined the amount of money allocated to each school based on current yearly enrollment and the previous year’s attendance rates.

The Haas-sponsored case competition, hosted by the UC Berkeley Leadership in Education Club, aimed to provide current MBA students an opportunity to influence real educational policies, said Joe Harrington, the incoming co-president of the organization.

“It is a very innovative idea to have a nonprofit-focused competition hosted and organized by a business school,” said Shaolee Sen, a member of the Haas team in the competition.

During the actual competition, which will be taking place today, each team will be given 12 to 15 minutes for its core presentation and another five minutes for any further questions from a panel of five judges drawn from the education field.

The competition will end at noon, at which point the judges will evaluate the presentations based on their analysis of the material, recommended solutions and persuasiveness.

The top-ranked team will be awarded $2,000, while the runner-up will leave with $1,000.

“Primarily, the reason why we have spent the last year working on this is that we wanted to create an opportunity for our students to become education leaders,” said Anna Utgoff, the former co-president of the organization, in a speech. “We thought, why not take their competitive drive and put it towards something as exciting as helping kids with their education.” Students from several business schools across the country gathered at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Thursday for the nation’s first education-based case competition aimed at presenting a long-term strategic plan for the Oakland Unified School District’s new budgetary system.

Teams from seven business schools, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, were presented with the school district’s financial situation on Monday before meeting with Barak Ben-Gal, the district’s budget director, for a question-and-answer session yesterday.

Immediately following the session, the teams were provided with private study rooms where they could discuss how to maximize the effectiveness of the school district’s new Results-Based Budgeting system.

The budgetary system, first implemented in the 2005-06 school year, was designed to give school principals the authority to make spending decisions within their respective schools.

“They are trying to give schools more autonomy in how to allocate funds,” said Stephanie Ip, a USC Marshall School of Business case competition team member. “The current problem is a lot of principals don’t have the time and knowledge to handle budgeting.”

The budgetary system also eliminated the teacher salary average and determined the amount of money allocated to each school based on current yearly enrollment and the previous year’s attendance rates.

The Haas-sponsored case competition, hosted by the UC Berkeley Leadership in Education Club, aimed to provide current MBA students an opportunity to influence real educational policies, said Joe Harrington, the incoming co-president of the organization.

“It is a very innovative idea to have a nonprofit-focused competition hosted and organized by a business school,” said Shaolee Sen, a member of the Haas team in the competition.

During the actual competition, which will be taking place today, each team will be given 12 to 15 minutes for its core presentation and another five minutes for any further questions from a panel of five judges drawn from the education field.

The competition will end at noon, at which point the judges will evaluate the presentations based on their analysis of the material, recommended solutions and persuasiveness.

The top-ranked team will be awarded $2,000, while the runner-up will leave with $1,000.

“Primarily, the reason why we have spent the last year working on this is that we wanted to create an opportunity for our students to become education leaders,” said Anna Utgoff, the former co-president of the organization, in a speech. “We thought, why not take their competitive drive and put it towards something as exciting as helping kids with their education.”

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