"To acquire an understanding of the district budget process, background information about the school district is given in order to develop a budget action plan. The Fort Stockton Independent School District budget process is a hybrid method of current budgeting practices involving planning, preparation, and evaluation.
In addition, throughout the budget process the goals of the school board, school district, departments, and campuses are a major component of the budget process. Finance formulas and finance calendars establish a method and means to planning and the creation of a budget that best serves students of Fort Stockton Independent School District.
The method of the budget process in Fort Stockton Independent School District is a hybrid approach to budgeting that takes into account the different types of budgets such as the incremental, line-item, program planning programming and evaluation system, zero-based, and school-site budget. Sets of calculated dollar amounts are multiplied by the student enrollment of each campus, program, and facility. The budget process consists of allocating resources to prioritize the needs of Fort Stockton Independent School district that is then filtered through the campuses, programs, and facilities. Three major phases of the budget process for Fort Stockton Independent School District are planning, preparation, and evaluation. Planning allows the district to define goals and objectives of the district and the resources to attain those goals and objectives aligned with the goals and objectives of the district improvement plan. Preparation consists of the actual resource allocation of budgeting. Lastly, evaluation is the means of measuring the effectiveness of attaining those goals as set out by the budget supported by the district improvement plan, goals of the district, and district objectives.
The Fort Stockton Independent School District School Board of trustees have set five goals known as priorities when, planning, preparing and evaluating a district budget to help guide the budget process of the Fort Stockton Independent School District. The goals are simply priorities as set by the school board to guide district leaders in the budget process.
The goals are as follows:
- Goal 1: Academics
- Goal 2: Finance
- Goal 3: Personnel
- Goal 4: Technology
- Goal 5: Extra-curricular student participation"
To prepare for the budget, the principal was responsible for helping to identify, establish, and help create and facilitate goals. He takes a look at several different areas that affect the school: academics, finance, personnel, technology and extra-curricular activities. He helps to guide and facilitate where and how money is spent. He states that if he unable to prove that any part of the budget is able to help the academics of the school, it will be omitted from the budget.
The only issues that come up during the budgeting process is that every dollar of the budget MUST go towards the district's goals. This means that there are certain things in the budget that can be cut in order to comply with district budgeting standards.
As far as question 4: "Well if we don't know what the legislature is planning to do then we are just going to do our best to be extra conservative with the budget process. This is a little scary because of the unknown. With cost of everything going up and less money that the state gives us (or in our case lets us keep) it is frustrating. Right now we are trying to figure out worst case scenario from a budgeting perspective. Fortunately, firing/laying off off or lowering pay is not an option our school district is considering."
