The School Library Budget: A Study in Power and Politics of Selected North Carolina School Library Budgets

Abstract

Is local autonomy or site-based management in its purest form grounds for calling a school “naughty”? Some might say so. But does site-based management (SBM) result in power decisions being made by local school teams, or do principals still hold the budget purse strings in most schools? These are but a few of the questions we explored in this study of school library media center budgets in western North Carolina.