Equity depends on the fair distribution of resources to schools.
Everyone should be able to understand why money flows to schools. Allovue Allocate demystifies resource allocation to encourage equity and build trust in the K-12 ecosystem.
There’s no single best way to translate student needs to school resources—the choices that make funding and staffing allocations powerful are also what make them daunting. Allovue Allocate gives districts the capacity to write a nuanced formula that’s responsive to enrollment and funding changes.
Rules rather than rows
When your formula is confined to cells on a spreadsheet, adjusting the model is an error-prone nightmare. A formula breaks or you strike the wrong key—resource allocation as we know it is a hassle. Allovue Allocate makes it easy to create and reevaluate funding and staffing allocations with easy-to-edit data and rules.
Cause-and-effect relationships
Increasing transparency around the consequences of financial decisions increases accountability for those decisions. With Allovue Allocate, districts can compare alternative “what if?” scenarios (with different enrollments or class size ratios, for example) and understand the impacts to schools when you adjust your formula.
Breaking down the math
Principals often feel like “the person behind the curtain” picks how much money each school gets—no one likes to play in a rigged game. Allovue Allocate provides an easy-to-digest summary of the actual calculations behind school funding to help principals and communities truly understand and embrace the rationale.
Your district’s equity journey begins with resource allocation.
Some of the most consequential equity work in a district happens prior to budget development in the process of allocating funding and staffing resources to individual schools.
How districts direct dollars to schools is a powerful tool for advancing resource equity—or perpetuating inequity. In light of new federal reporting requirements, many districts are realizing that how they fund and staff schools is leading to spending patterns that are (at best) equal, not equitable.
A passive approach to resource allocation guarantees inequity.
Resource equity must be implemented intentionally—that starts with defining what equity means in your district. Whether your formula is driven by staff assignments or student groups, you can distribute resources equitably with careful consideration for how student needs are embedded into the formula.
Allovue Allocate helps districts fund schools in a way that is consistent with their values. We provide one-of-a-kind support to pull districts out of spreadsheets and into a world where funding formulas are quick to create, easy to edit, and responsive to change. This helps to shift the conversation away from, “Why can’t I have more money?” and toward, “How can I best serve my students with this money?”
Spend less time prepping
Funding formulas managed in spreadsheets waste time. One Allovue Allocate district used to manage 3 models for 66 schools in Excel and model prep took three solid weeks. With Allovue Allocate, the work is done in three hours.
Remove error from the equation
Allocation models in Excel invite costly formula errors. One Allovue Allocate district discovered that its model was triple counting student groups—fixing this freed up more money to be run through the model.
Try new things
When “doing what you’ve always done” isn’t good enough anymore, Allovue Allocate provides a clear path to change. It’s easy to make incremental changes or shift to a new method like student-based budgeting.
Take the guesswork out of communication
There’s a lot a district has to say about its finances and important truths can get lost in translation. Allovue Allocate's turnkey reports help you help others make sense of why schools get different levels of funding.
Jordan Ely,
Chief Financial Officer
Gresham-Barlow School District
“Allovue effectively translates the complexities of financial statements into meaningful, understandable data points that empower administrators to allocate resources that maximizes student achievement.”
Budget Director,
54,000 student district
"We have a very messy Excel-Google Sheets-Stata thing we use to pull together our budget planning. We can get rid of it with Allovue."
How dollars are allocated to schools (and the students who attend them) is the single most important lever in a district for advancing resource equity or perpetuating inequity. Allovue Allocate makes funding formula creation and evaluation easy and accessible for school districts of all sizes.
Customize schools and students
Apply descriptions to schools like elementary, small, Title I, or magnet program to reference when allocating dollars
Add job types and average salaries for personnel-based formula rules
Define student populations that drive resource allocation like free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) eligible, English Language Learners (ELL), or grade-band enrollments
Manage enrollment projections
Add student enrollment count projections
Revise projections and automatically update formulas
Use bulk CSV upload templates or manual entry to make changes
Combine rules to create formulas
Dollar Allocations
“Allocate $500 in extra funding for every English Language Learner enrolled”
Staffing Allocations
“Allocate 1 paraprofessional for every 60 students, rounded up to the nearest 0.50 at schools that enroll students with disabilities”
Manual Allocations
“Remove $45,000 from Einstein Elementary total allocation to offset a central office FTE-override”
Baseline Allocations
“Allocate $350,000 to each school to ensure all schools can afford minimum required FTEs”
Compare formulas and school funding
Compare funding formulas to see the impact on resources overall or at each individual school
View school profiles for each formula to see rules that drive resources to each school, the associated dollar and FTE allocations, and sub-enrollment and job type breakdowns
Export (PDF) school formula and sub-enrollment breakdown reports
Export (CSV) total and sub-allocations by school to roll into your budgeting platform
Connect funding allocations from Allocate with budget planning in Budget.
Defining what equity means for your student population and allocating resources to match tells a story about how your district is working to meet the needs of every student. Allovue helps districts lay this foundation in their funding formulas and carry it through to their budget books.
