Frequently Asked Questions
Classroom programs tend to take one to four weeks.
Schoolwide programs tend to take one to three months.
Teachers or school administrators manage the actual budget outside of the app.
Teachers should make certain that students have access to all financial information associated with implementing the winning proposals, as this builds trust by demonstrating that the proposals they selected are purchased and implemented.
Teachers and school administrators set the policies, such as the maximum cost of a single proposal or requiring that proposals be for capital improvements.
Student leaders and teachers review all proposals to ensure they meet school guidelines. Teachers also control which students can participate.
A voting ballot will contain between 3 and 15 proposals. Students can vote to fund any combination of proposals provided the total costs for the selected proposals is less than or equal to the available budget.
Most PB programs are run as a school-wide program.
Research has shown that:
- PB in schools increases civic engagement, even when there is not a formal curriculum driving the process [1, Bioscience High School in Phoenix, AZ].
- PB in schools and the community influences budget priorities [2, New York, NY]
- “Most scholars and participants of PB’s agree that one of their most important bene- fits is the deepening of the exercise of democracy” [3, United Nations]
[1] Cohen, M., D. Schugurensky and A. Wiek (2015). Citizenship Education through Participatory Budgeting: the Case of Bioscience High School in Phoenix, Arizona. Curriculum and Teaching, Volume 30, Number 2, pp. 5-26. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/193620515.pdf
[3] 72 Frequently Asked Questions about Participatory Budgeting, UN-HABIT
- Student submitted content is automatically reviewed to identify and remove offensive or potentially offensive images or language.
- Students can flag content for review by teachers.
- Offensive content can be removed by teachers.
FirstRoot was created by extremely experienced software developers with backgrounds in information and data security, app development, and hosted software development.
- All data is stored in an encrypted format in Amazon Web Services
- Access to the service is controlled through SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)
- FirstRoot is FERPA and GDPR compliant
Not yet.
FirstRoot is not yet COPPA compliant and cannot be used with children under the age of 13. FirstRoot expects to complete our COPPA compliance in 2021.