Goal-Driven Budgeting

Districts all over the state each year meet deadlines in order to develop a budget for the upcoming school year. There are different types of budgets. Some may have a budget for the household where you pay your bills based on what you bring home each pay period. It is somewhat the same with a budget for a school district but for this budget, it must be goal driven. Based on the lecture with Dr.Arterbury, he defined a goal driven budget as a total planning process for the district. This process first includes the Board of Trustees developing goals for the district and then the District and Campus Site based committees developing goals for the district and each campus based on the Board’s goals. Once goals are written, funds are expended in order to help meet those goals. Dr. Arterbury mentioned as an example that schools have to teach math but in order to teach math effectively, the district and each campus have to expend funds in order to obtain resources to teach math.

In analyzing the district improvement plan for the Beaumont Independent School District, the plan was not too dissimilar from Austin’s Improvement plan but that every district is going to develop the plan based on the needs of the district. A strategic long range goal for Beaumont I.S.D is that all students will achieve state assessment standards (TAKS/STAAR) and meet state graduation requirements. The district has already put in place a plan to expect that there will be students in the district that will not meet expectations for the minimum requirements on the STAAR test. Therefore, a strategy in place is to provide summer school courses and TAKS/STAAR preparation classes for summer of 2013. The funding sources for this strategy are Perkins/CTE funds at an estimated cost of 140,000 for materials and wages at the high school level. Students that enroll in summer STAAR remediation from elementary campuses may choose to attend the Title I summer school. Funding for this program comes from the Title I budget. This figure is based off of what was spent in the summer of 2012 to offer remediation courses for students that the district knew would not meet the minimum passing standard on STAAR once the requirements are set by the state in January 2013.

Another goal set by the Board of Trustees for the Beaumont Independent School District several years ago is to close the achievement gap between minority and majority learners. A strategy to help achieve this goal is to continue to reward staff for improved achievement. All faculty in Beaumont ISD look forward to convocation. At convocation, not only do we learn about the state of the district and personnel changes, but we all look forward on seeing if our campus qualifies for the incentive pay handed out at the beginning of each year. For the past 3 years, The Board of Trustees makes sure that even if you are not on a campus or you didn’t meet the criteria to receive the incentive pay, you leave convocation with something. Everyone receives a check. In order to meet this goal, the Superintendent must set aside a specific amount each year in the event that all campuses meet criteria to receive incentive pay. The funding source for the incentive pay is a local funding source.

Every district must develop a budget for each upcoming fiscal year, but that budget must be goal driven. Each campus and the district site based management teams must keep in mind to develop their plans based on the goals set forth by the Board of Trustees.