Chapter 7: Leading With Less: Principal Leadership in Austere Times

Resource allocation decisions are an important aspect of principal leadership. School principals make critical decisions about the configuration of staff and the use of resources in their schools. These decisions ultimately shape the conditions for teaching and learning in the school (Darling-Hammond & Snyder, 2003; Grissom & Loeb, 2011). Surprisingly, education researchers have not thoroughly examined principal leadership in relation to school resources; instead, they have focused on state and district-level resource allocation strategies (Fuller, Loeb, Arshan, Chen, & Yi, 2007; Plecki et al., 2009; Rubenstein, 1998). The research is especially sparse with respect to the actions that school principals take when their schools are faced with budget reductions. The absence of research in this area is somewhat disconcerting given the unprecedented financial challenges that school districts throughout the United States are currently facing.¹ The current fiscal context surrounding schools elevates the importance of understanding how principals manage school resources and to what extent, if at all, principals use their leadership to prepare their schools for budget reductions.