Eight Steps to Aligning Your School Budget with Your Instructional Vision and Organizational Mission

“Are We Somewhere in The Nowhere?”

When it comes to the budgetary planning process, principals frequently become lost, wandering in the direction of less than meaningful activities.  Campus leaders find themselves diverted into an instructional “somewhere in the nowhere,” all the while attempting to align the budget with the school’s vision and mission. What’s required is a model for success.

In the latest edition of the Principal’s Guide to School Budgeting, Lloyd Goldsmith and I present an Integrated Budget and Vision and Mission Model comprising eight components: 1) Stakeholders Defined, 2) Stakeholders Selected, 3) Data Gathered (Needs Assessment Conducted), 4) Data Analysis, 5) Needs Prioritization, 6) Goal Setting, 7) Performance Objectives Identified, and 8) Action Planning.

The model is based upon research supportive of organizational visioning, integrative planning, and collaborative decision-making. When correlated with the budget development process, each component serves as a GPS to ongoing evaluation, analysis, and correction to direct budgetary alignment with instructional visioning.

Component #1—Stakeholders Defined. The entire learning community must share ownership of the vision and mission processes as aligned with budget development. It is the principal’s responsibility to ensure that every stakeholder feels valued in the visioning, planning, decision-making, and budgetary development practice. This means identifying and training stakeholders.

Advice for Principals—Leading, when it comes to defining stakeholders, is all about participative engagement. In this style of leadership, a principal creates a teaching, leading, and learning environment where stakeholders are involved in aligning an effective school vision, mission, and budgetary management process.

Defining stakeholder roles and responsibilities better safeguards increased student achievement and organizational success.

Component #2—Stakeholders Selected. When it comes to initiating a stakeholder site-based decision-making approach, principals must ensure stakeholder selection is in compliance with state laws and district policies as a means of determining the proper structure and authority of the planning committee.

Advice for Principals—Focus on creating a diverse team of stakeholders and ensure team members receive proper training. Also, develop a schedule of staggered terms of service. Each of these considerations correlate with aligning instructional visioning into the budget development process, as well as promoting equity, equality, and empathy—all absolutes in schools today!

Component #3—Data Gathered (Needs Assessment Conducted). It is essential that all data be gathered and scrutinized via the needs assessment process. Verification of performance with data can only be conducted by collecting and assessing data which supports performance authenticity. Schools today must be data-driven. A needs assessment process is crucial to effective teaching, leading, and learning.

Advice for Principals—First, a question: “How well is your school meeting your instructional vision, mission, goals and objectives as identified within the campus action plan?” Gathering data provides school leaders and their teams an opportunity to conduct a needs assessment and then follow up with a needs prioritization (see Component #5). This requires a principal and team to identify the what, when, and where certain “academic holes” or “instructional gaps” exist within the instructional program. All budgetary allocations and expenditures must align with the campus vision, mission, and action plan.

Component #4—Data Analysis. The measurement, analysis, and management of data are keys to improving student performance and achievement. Data analysis provides the linkage between effective teaching, supportive leading, and valuable learning strategies. Remember, collecting data without analysis is an exercise in futility.

Advice for Principals—When data is analyzed and disaggregated, a strong level of specificity occurs which provides a differentiation of subpopulations based on, but not limited to, race, gender, and economic status.

Accountability through data analysis is the key!

Component #5—Needs Prioritization. Data review and analysis, as previously noted, is a critical aspect of prioritizing needs. Failure to use data knowledge is costly to both student academic performance and organizational success. When a principal trains faculty and staff in the needs prioritization process, team planners will avoid conflict and place student needs first in any alignment of vision and mission with budgetary development.

Advice for Principals—Fairness necessitates principals model to the planning team how to place student needs above personal needs. Also, include in the decision-making process how the prioritization of needs ensures the “biggest bang for the buck,” specifically when it comes to budgetary allocations and expenditures.

Components #6, #7 and #8—Goal Setting, Performance Objectives Identified, and Action Planning. These three components are crucial to aligning visionary instructional measures with the campus action plan and budget. Each must reflect the essence of principal and team instructional ingenuity when it comes to developing a set of instructional goals, along with establishing performance objectives. The creation of an action plan, especially as linked to prioritized needs and budgetary planning, better ensures both student achievement and improved climate and culture.

Advice for Principals—It is important to realize the relationship between the three planning facets—components 6, 7, and 8 (along with components 1-5) and why each is essential to understanding how stakeholders are defined and selected, data is analyzed, needs are prioritized, goals are established, performance objectives are identified, and action plans are developed. Each component is coordinated to meet the organizational mission and instructional vision. Most importantly, each is conducted to best develop a student-centered campus budget and positively impact targeted student subpopulations, not to mention teacher instruction.

References

Sorenson, R. D. & Goldsmith, L. M. (2024). The Principal’s Guide to School Budgeting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.