1. EDUC 5139 School Finance and Campus Budgeting Principal interview
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Ismail Ardahanli

2. Outline What are the sources of funding for your school?
Is your site based decision making team or campus action team involved in the annual budgeting process at your school? If so, tell how? If not, why not?
What data sources do you use in the campus budgeting process?
Who or what determines the funding amount for your campus budget?

3. Outline
Do you (as the principal) have input in the amount of funding for your school?
What (if any) part does the campus improvement plan play in determining how campus funds are spent?
What (any) part does the campus improvement plan play in determining the campus allocation amount?
Does your campus receive federal or state grant funding? If so, which grants?

4. Outline Do you have a student activity account?
What is the process for requesting funds from the student activity account?
How do you ensure campus funds are not misappropriated? What processes are used to prevent this type of occurrence?

5. What are the sources of funding for your school?
FSP which is primary funding through our involvement and attendance
Title grant funding Title 1,Title 2,Title 3
Grant fundraising

6. Is your site based decision making team or campus action team involved in the annual budgeting process at your school? If so, tell how? If not, why not?
Our campus base decision making team is involved the budget
At the end of each year we look at the budget and how we spent the money
For our campus improvement plan, we look at how students performed, sub populations, certain groups and we partner different departments, instructional materials
We look at whole picture Where we spent it at campus level and cluster level
That guides us how we spend future money and parents are involved that as well.

7. What data sources do you use in the campus budgeting process?
We work with central office experts and we look at pretty much about excel sheet.
We look for different program data and We use JR3
We look at budget reports, budget codes where we spend the money to plan.
That is the system gives us a good snapshot to see the system.

8. Who or what determines the funding amount for your campus budget?
It is actually a decision based we do that as a group and then principal myself we share with superintendent and we also share with central office.
We determine for what area we need to spend the money and we ask to central office which has different departments assisting where we can spend it.

9. Do you (as the principal) have input in the amount of funding for your school?
I would tell we have an input we try to find a way greater impacts, greater input and try to fundraise more funds, grant dollars and huge donors to get more funding but in terms of spending and working together it is a really a big team process. I play that.

10. What (if any) part does the campus improvement plan play in determining how campus funds are spent?
The biggest part of campus improvement plan is our title money we really drive how we are going to spend Title 1 or Title 3.
Because we are looking at sub populations and the groups so it really helps there.
Reading interventionist, Math interventionist, special education interventionist, resources.

11. What (any any) part does the campus improvement plan play in determining the campus allocation amount?
It does because we look at the budget. Not only the campus level but the cluster level so if our campus needs more like we are priority school we might have additional funding which goes to help the school.
For example we are going to have this year additional training targeted to help us to meet our students` needs. They are struggling.
Funding are directly related to our performance, to our goals and to campus improvement plan shared cluster wide and central office

12. Does your campus receive federal or state grant funding
Does your campus receive federal or state grant funding? If so, which grants?
Yes, we have the Race-to-the- Top grants and a few other STEM grants related to PBL and technology
We did previously received Gates Foundation Grant and the other Title money but the greatest Race-to-the-Top money.

13. Do you have a student activity account?
Yes, we do

14. What is the process for requesting funds from the student activity account?
We want everyone to deposit into the student activity fund and the it is a permission based.
Let`s say the teacher says I am going to have an activity with the students I like to have permission to use this amount of funds
Then we have a request form which is all documented how much money they want to use for what students are going to benefit and
we try to make sure we manage the how many students are going to benefit from that but anyone can gain access if they ask the permission.

15. How do you ensure campus funds are not misappropriated
How do you ensure campus funds are not misappropriated? What processes are used to prevent this type of occurrence?
We have a really great checks-balance system so I personally believe that if we have multiple people that are involved in it which keeps us more accountable more fair if we had one person that was handling money they may have a temptation to be questionable or why not. But because we are transparent and we have an activity fund clerk doing reconciliation and he goes through all the receipt books and all the spending and them I am involved that and assistant principal involve that and a person coming from central office involve that. We have a clear track with receipts.

16. How do you ensure campus funds are not misappropriated
How do you ensure campus funds are not misappropriated? What processes are used to prevent this type of occurrence?
We also have audits and our cluster financial members as well we added that this year different account managers and superintendent. There is a lot of management of spending to help us to make sure using appropriately. And also JR3 data helps us how to follow track of spending.