I submitted my previous school budget in the attachments.

Step One

Review the readings and what you created for your School Budgeting Project.

Locate the 3-5 most important budget decisions you wrote about in your latest discussion board.

Access and review the School Budget I have posted in Module Ten in Moodle 

Step Two

For your assignment, consider the following:

Your district has implemented School-Based Budgeting and has provided you with a budget of $10,000,000 to run your high school (see School Budget posted in Moodle).  For the purpose of this assignment, there are three main categories for you to consider – Salaries and Benefits; Purchased Services; and Materials, Supplies, and Equipment.  You will see that each of the three main categories is broken down into more specific expenditures (e.g., salaries and benefits for professional staff, purchased services for professional development of teachers, and the cost to support the Fine Arts Department), but please note that I have just listed several expenditures that you might see.  This is not actually an all-inclusive list, but for our purposes, please treat it as it is all-inclusive.  You should also notice that each of the three main categories is broken down into a percentage of the total budget (83% Salaries and Benefits, 11% Purchased Services, and 6% Materials, Supplies, and Equipment).  Just so you know, these percentages would typically hold true for most school budgets for these particular categories.

When I looked at what you all had posted for your Budget Hold’em for Districts, most of you have a budget impact that would require you to spend more money for the decisions you made.  We will say, on average, the increase in spending is about 3%.  Given that exercise, for the budget you have now been presented with, you will need to find a way to cut $300,000 from your school’s $10,000,000 budget.  The cuts are necessary because your district will not provide you with an extra $300,000.  The $10,000,000 you have to run your school is the same amount the district spent on your school last year. 

As was mentioned in the last discussion board, decisions are value-laden, and as you know, being a principal can be a tough job.

Step Three

For your assignment, do the following:

1. Take the $10,000,000 School Budget you have been presented with.  Know that you must cut that budget by 3% ($300,000) in order to implement the 3-5 most important budget decisions you made when you played Budget Hold’em for Districts.
2. In the discussion board, list the 3-5 most important budget decisions you made when you played Budget Hold’em for Districts.
3. Re-write your budget, cutting $300,000 from it.  The one requirement for your cuts is that you reduce the number of adults working on your campus by at least one person.  Post the new budget in the discussion board forum.
4. In the discussion board, identify in writing where you decided to make the budget cuts.  Additionally, discuss the following:

   Why did you make each of the cuts you decided to make?
   Consider stakeholder groups (teachers, students, parents, and board members) and explain what you believe will be the impact on each one as a result of your decisions.
   Reflect on this process of being in charge of a school’s finances and discuss how making these kinds of decisions will impact you as a principal of a school.

School Budget – $10,000,000 Total

Salaries and Benefits

83% of total $8,3000,000

80 Professionals $90,000 per person $7,200,000

11 Paraprofessionals $45,000 per person $495,000

20 Nonprofessionals $30,000 per person $600,000

Purchased Services 11% of total $1,100,000

Special Education $275,000

Nursing $275,000

Mental Health $275,000

Professional Development $275,000

Materials, Supplies, 6% of total $600,000

and Equipment

Technology (hardware and software) $275,000

Copy Machines/Paper $75,000

S.T.E.M. courses $25,000

Career and Technical Education $50,000

Athletics $87,500

Fine Arts Department $87,500

Choir

Band

Drama

Art

5

School Budgeting: Traditional Methods and Reform Initiatives

Quiana R Bell

EDL: 5500 Financial Resources for Public

Dr Westbrook

3/10/21

Part One

The Possibilities of Reform

Any organization, including schools, needs funding for fulfilling its goals and objectives successfully. Thus, they need to establish effective budgeting techniques that would help the firm in funding processes. Many budgeting models were developed in the past, but these carry some limitations with them. Cycle-based budgeting is a modern way of budgeting funds under which the latest technology allows the investment to be recognized, tracked, and examined. Student-Based budgeting is another modern technique that allocates dollars for funding based on the number of students enrolled in schools (YAN, 2016).

According to my perspective, Cycle-based budgeting is a far better technique than student-based budgeting. This method allows the management of the school to store all the financial details of the school recorded in the form of documents. If I’m hired as the principal of the school, I will use this technique for preparing the funds required for the hiring process. I would include everything from vacancies to the cost of labor or every cost applied for this purpose. Having this budget would help me in the future as well; this would provide me guidance on how to balance fundings for hiring staff or teachers. I would be able to produce a better budget every year after examining last year’s funding budget.

With the help of this budgeting, I would be able to save some funds for spending them on school development. I would use these extra funds to develop workshops for teachers to guide them on how to develop students’ skills. These workshops will provide training to teachers for educating students effectively and for enhancing their abilities. In this way, students will learn new things in classrooms and will develop an interest in learning new skills (Hartford, 2012). This plan will help me improve the overall score or reputation of the school with the help of students’ achievements.

Part Two

The Reality Check

After analyzing the funding or school budgeting techniques, I decided to interview my school principal to understand her knowledge. I wrote her a letter and directed her that I was studying budgeting reforms for the past few days, and now I wanted to ask her a few questions regarding that. I included two basic questions in the interview, which I wanted her to answer based on her school budgeting experience. The following discussion occurred during the interview:

Question:

After developing the budget of all sections, including the cost of school equipment, labor cost, cost of electricity, and cost of special services. What percentage of capital did you receive at the end which you can control for school development strategies?

Answer:

It is unnecessary to receive extra funds from budgeting which I can use for development or decision-making purposes. It’s very rare to have additional funds; it mostly occurs when there is not a budget of equipment or hiring budget. Then the capital that I gained from these two budgets is invested in student’s co-curricular activities.

Question:

Do you think there is a need to record the funding that is included in the budgets? Why or Why not? What technique does the school use for the budgeting process?

Answer:

Well, yes. There is a vital need to store all the financial transactions that occurred in the budget. These are the funds that the school receives from owners, shareholders, or students. The school is obliged to use these funds for the development of the school. Therefore there must be a formal report which includes every detail of the budget. The school utilizes Student-Based Budgeting.

Question:

Do you spend additional funds for the development of the school? Do the school’s actual finances matches the budgeted ones?

Answer:

The school pays wages to teachers to educate students, which directly or indirectly helps develop the school. So there is no necessary need to spend additional fundings on school development. In most cases, the school’s actual finances equal the budgeted ones.

Part Three

Belief

Based on the above discussion with the principal or on my knowledge about budget reforms, I want control over budgets. I wanted to develop budgets most effectively so that I could get some additional funds for school development. I want to enhance the performance of the school by funding money on arranging skills or art competitions for students. This will help all students to develop an interest in studies as well as in co-curricular activities.

I want to establish a budget on Cycle-based budgeting reform as this will help revise my budget after internals. I will make changes in the budget after analyzing my previous budget to avoid mistakes. The school principal gave her consent to help me in enhancing my financial abilities. Developing an effective budget will provide me additional funds, which I will control to spend for students’ accomplishments.

References

Hartford. (2012). Funding a Better Education Conclusions from the first three years of student-based budgeting in Hartford. Retrieved from http://www.achievehartford.org/upload/files/StudentBasedBudgetingReport

YAN, B. ( 2016, AUGUST 31). CYCLE-BASED BUDGETING TOOLKIT. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED575028