TEA Budgeting Guidelines

The school budget is a comprehensive and collaborative process that involves many decisions that affect the school and the community as a whole. One of the biggest challenges with the budget is prioritizing needs and agreeing on these priorities. Unlike the budget of a privately owned company, the school budget is looked at under a microscope because the money being allocated is tax payer money. In order to reach consensus on priorities, the budget process in schools should use a collaborative process between the board, Superintendent, and district and campus committees.      As I read through the budget guidelines from TEA, I never would have imagined that there were so many approaches to forming a budget from line item budgeting to outcome focused budgeting. I counted six different approaches on forming the budget. Each approach has it’s positives and negatives. It is in my opinion, that the line item budgeting, which includes using expenditure request based on historical expenditure and revenue data, is the easiest approach out of all of them.      Another important aspect of the budget is the performance evaluation. It is considered the cornerstone of budgeting and financial reporting. The budgets are put under a microscope by various entities such as TEA and state laws. Revenues and expenditures should be balanced. The budget overview process which consist of planning, proportions, and evaluation will help sustain a balanced budget.      There are many aspects and basic assumptions of the budget that need to be analyzed by the Superintendent and business director as they prepare it. Some items that need to be taken into account are inflation, growth rate, fund balance, construction trends, cash and fund balance forecast, grants, multi-year construction projects, and the political makeup of the legislature. Because of these aspects, a good Superintendent and business director will be very conservative when budgeting items for the school year.     School district are also required to have public hearings when adopting the school budget. In the district that I am in, the hearing does not draw a large crowd. I can imagine that in other larger districts, there may be many advocates that are at the public meetings to give their point of view on certain aspects of the budget.    School Finance and budgeting is one of my weaker areas in the Superintendent competencies. I read through most of this document and have learned a great deal about the process, laws, deadlines, and specifics of budgeting correctly. I plan to run this document off and put it into a binder for future use when needed. The budget process is very comprehensive and must be done correctly and efficiently. Knowledge of these budgeting guidelines is imperative to the budget process. With the state of the legislature and school budgets in 2012, I can imagine that more changes are probably on the horizon. Every district in the state found this out during the past couple of years when the legislature cut school funding by 5 billion dollars. The legislative session in 2013 has many issues related to education including school finance. School officials across the state of Texas will be watching.