Budget+and+Funding

=Budget and Funding=

Two primary goals of budgeting:

 * 1) To provide for adequate funds to meet the needs of the school library media center
 * 2) To make the best use of the allocated funds

Source of Funds
Read this April 2009 School Library Journal article about school library spending.


 * Nationally** most school libraries depend on **local funds** for their support. This is not the case in the State of Alabama in all school systems, but most Alabama school systems have some local funds that go to the school library.

State funds **, especially in Alabama, are known as Library Enhancement Funds. These funds are sent by the State Department of Education to individual school systems. The amount of funds sent is based on the number of teacher units funded for the school; this is part of the foundation formula used to fund schools in Alabama. The total amount of Library Enhancement a school system will receive for one year is divided by 12 (for 12 months in year). Then each month a check for 1/12th of the Library Enhancement is sent to each school system. See the Alabama State Department Web site for information about Library Enhancement funding and school library budgets.
 * Federal funds** go to the states as block grants. If there are funds for school libraries, these f unds are sent to the states as block grants and then it is left up to the local education agencies to determine how these funds should be spent. A committee at the local level should make recommendations to the Local Educaton Agency (LEA) Superintendent concerning the allocation of these funds. These funds are based on the enrollment in a school system. Usually a team from a school system will write a proposal for seeking federal funding for that system. Some systems have library media specialists on this writing team. The source of federal funds is usually earmarked for projects such as literacy grants. Some technology funds,a nd E-rate funds, go to school libraries.
 * 

Salaries for library media speciaists are included as part of the basic formula for funds from the state to the local education agency (LEA). The LEA does not have to spend these funds on hiring library media specialsits.

The school library media specialist should remain informed as the status of educational legislation in order to know where the funds are and how to obtain them.

Planning a Budget
Leadership for budget planning should come from the district administrator. School principals, library media specialists and department heads should be consulted about the needs and requirements of their programs. Whatever, the economic climate, some administrators may not make a practice of providing direct opportunity or encouragement for participation in budget planning. In such cases, the district and/or building level media specialist need to assume some initiative. A carefully prepared budget proposal which included indications of short and long range planning, addresses curriculum needs and assumes responsibility for maintenance and needed development of services, should be helpful to any administrator. Even if the administrator does not request it, the library media specialist should volunteer it.

It is the responsibility of the library media specialist to determine the probable costs of maintaining the collections and services, of keeping up with changing collection, staff, service and space needs and the implications of failing to meet these maintenance and development needs, and to report this to the district administrator in a budget proposal.

Such budget proposals should be based on short and long range plans and should reflect maintenance components and development components. Such proposals should also consider evaluation of the existing program and needs assessment to obtain information for budget planning.

The maintenance components should propose a realistic maintenance schedule. For example, a seven to ten year cycle for replacement of videocassette recorder/players and a three to five year cycle for replacement of encyclopedia sets or annual replacement of CD-ROM based reference materials. Using formulas, such as those found in Appendix B of __Information Power__, to calculate maintenance (or replacement) costs does not promote automatic discard of materials or equipment. Remembering to include maintenance components in a budget proposal only suggests that replacement of approximately a given percent of a collection each year would result in a more attractive, up-to-date and useful collection and equipment.

A development budget component allows one to project possible funding need to support long and short range plans. .

**Common Types of Budgets **
Library media center budgets may be allocated by two methods: a specific dollar amount may be designated at the district or school level for library media expenditures, or the specialist may be required to submit a line item proposal requesting funding.


 * __Lump sum budget__. The library media center will get a single operating budget allocation. When this occurs, the library media specialist must follow the same process used in __budget building to decide how funds will be spent.__
 * __Line item budget__. This budget shows by category what the media center spends. These are usually annual appropriations and also expended annually. When preparing a line- item budget, a media specialist usually looks at the previous year's budget for a baseline and then determines whether the budget was in line with increased costs and whether it was sufficient to keep the collection and equipment in top condition.