Conflict Resolution

Our school district is one of many in the State of Louisiana that are faced with losing state funding. Remind you that our school district is number two in the state with Leap and ACT testing we have an overall grade of A out of seventy other school districts. On last week the Superintendent of our school system met with us and told the employees they would be laying off 18- 20 teacher for the next school year. Other districts do not offer a free universal Pre-K program they charge parents monthly for those services. Employees have voiced their opinion stating maybe they should charge a fee Pre-K programs so you would not have to fire these teachers and it would also bring money to the district.

I work with the Head Start program that is federally funded and the school board is our grantee this would not affect us unless the school board decide to stop being the grantee for the program. On the other hand the sequester that we are dealing with Congress cutting 5%of funding for all Early Head Start and Head Start programs will have an effect on us. I made a suggestion that if parents provide supplies such as pampers, milk, wipes, paper towels, crayons, markers, playdoh and ziploc bags plus if we let an employee drive the bus route that has a CDL license we can cancel the contract and this would help out with money’s being spent and save the program.

I can implement the win/win approach of the conflict resolution kit and their strategies of going back to the underlying needs and attack the problem not the people.

Now I would pose a question to my colleagues for suggestion with these issues we are faced with.

Conflict Resolution Network. (n.d.). CR kit. Retrieved from http://www.crnhq.org/pages