Goal Driven Budget

Week Two Assignment One

Goal Driven Budget

A goal driven budget, as Dr. Arterbury described in the lecture, “is attaining a budget from a shared vision of the school district and each campus.  The district and campus goals should reflect the Board of Trustees goals and the budgeting process should reflect a commitment to expending funds to achieve those goals.”  The example Dr. Arterbury used, “was to effectively teach math the district expends the funds for teachers and materials to address the teaching learning process for math.”

For a district to truly understand and incorporate a goal driven budget into the district, the budget must always tie back into the Board of Trustees Goals for the district.  The District improvement plan must connect with the Board of Trustees Goals and the Campus Improvement Plans must reflect and have a direct relationship with the District Improvement Plan and Board of Trustees Goals.  In a district that utilizes a goal driven budget every department and/ or campus must always have a correlation to the goals of the entire district – the goals of the Board of Trustees.

The Livingston Independent School District Improvement plan describes the monetary value in the goals section of the document in a very general and basic monetary term.  For example, under resources the following terms are used: local funds, Title 1 funds, Grant funds.  However, the funds allocated for the State Compensatory Program is very specific in listing the exact amount of funds for the specific program or service.

In talking with our business manager LISD does not specifically utilize a goal driven budget.   Our budget process uses the site based budget preparation guidelines.  But knowing and talking to my superintendent, the LISD budget will always be determined according to the needs of the district in reaching the needs of our students.