1. Budget Piece Last update: 4/21/2014
In 2010, a new partnership began with a few School Improvement and Federal program team members from the AR Dept of Education and ADI client service, leadership, and development staff. Last year, the AR team came to us and asked if we could help create a budget piece inside of Indistar that would allow school and district teams to have some accountability for how their SI dollars were being spent. Could we add something to our continuous improvement model where teams could identify that the dollars they were wanting to spend were based on effective practices, sustainable efforts, and leadership?
Last update: 4/21/2014
Presented by Stephanie Benedict, Indistar Client Relations Director

2. The Basics of Indistar
Innovation. Indistar® is a structure to guide high-quality work by school and district Leadership Teams with built-in flexibility to encourage local innovation.
Research Alignment. Indistar’s Wise Ways® technology links each indicator to a succinct synthesis of the related research, examples, and resources.
Capacity. Indistar® builds the district’s capacity to support the improvement of its schools while directly guiding a school’s improvement activities.
Documentation. Indistar® provides practical documentation through built-in mechanisms for creating agendas, recording minutes, assigning responsibility, setting timelines, allocating resources, coaching, and monitoring degree of implementation.
Operational Data. Indistar® delivers the “other side of the data equation,” the district, school, and classroom behaviors and practices that contribute to student learning. Practice must improve in order for results to improve.
Indistar is a continuous improvement model….meaning school and district leadership teams do not create an improvement plan each year and start over. Teams work together throughout the year assessing indicators, creating plans based on research, and work towards sustainable implementation and building structures and processes in their buildings. Indistar helps leadership teams focus on what behaviors and practices need to be improved to contribute positively to student learning. The flipside of this conversation is the budget piece. Budgets are annual financial expenses. How do we merge the 2? And the answer to that question became our goal…..
In the end, we decided that the Budget piece is simply an extension of a leadership teams work. It helps identify if school improvement funds are being spent wisely and if those funds will help build sustainable processes in the schools and districts. It is not intended to be the end all, be all budget plan for a school or district.

3. Continuous Improvement pays!
(read slide)
Then….the last thing we want to do is overburden the team with making decisions about cost. The leadership team should focus on the fact that to improve student achievement, we may need to have professional development trainings, leadership skill trainings, learn how to use and implement sustainable processes.....not how much we have to spend.
The Leadership Team works together to build a comprehensive, continuous, and sustainable school improvement plan….then decide if funds are needed to help implement the plan.

4. Create tasks…mark for funding …move on.
For each task created, the Leadership Team:
describes the tasks
assigns a person to complete the task
establishes a date the task will be complete or routine
adds a frequency of recurrence
‘checks’ if funds may be required for the task
In Indistar, leadership teams assess indicators and create plans for those that are not yet at full implementation. To implement these practices, a team will create a goal and then come up with a series of steps, or tasks, that will need to be completed in order to meet that objective. Since the tasks are the actual work, this is where leadership teams will decide if funding will be required to fulfill the task….a simple yes or no….and the team continues their work.
So, (read slide)

5. Estimating costs
As the Leadership Team creates tasks to build their improvement plan, the principal or person responsible for the budget can come back to decide which funds are needed and if the funds are available.
The Budget piece can easily be found inside of the Navigation Toolbar, once a state has chosen to add this to their Indistar contract. The budget add-on can be added for a group of schools or all schools, and districts.
This process allows the Leadership Team to create an improvement plan without getting bogged down by dollars and conversations about costs.

6. Estimating cost includes:
Budget Summary
List of objectives and tasks that may require funding
Tool to create the budget item(s) for each task, including cost, type, source, and use.
This is the budget piece. It is very basic. The principal or person responsible for each school or district’s budget will move thru tabs 2 and 3 as they budget monies and sources needed to complete marked tasks. Tasks and budget items can be created and marked for the current year, as well as 2 additional years. Each budget item that is created can be edited at any time, until the school year has past.

7. Budget Plans & Tasks tab
In the 2nd tab, a list of objectives will display, if they had tasks that require funds to complete. As each task is budgeted, a summary of costs will display to the right of each objective for the current year. If the user chooses an objective, all tasks with funding requirements will display, as well as details important to the task such as frequency, # of budget items, summary of funds budgeted, and if the task has been completed or not. To budget monies for a task, simply choose a task and enter data specific to identified funds.
Choose objective and select a task to create, modify, or delete a budget item.

8. Budget Items tab Budget cost Notes Type (Federal or State)
Funding Source (Specific to each state) ex. Title I, Title III, PD, NSLA, ELL, etc.
Use (Specific to each state) ex. Materials, Supplies, Salaries, Benefits, etc.
Budget Years (current + next 2 years)
Budget code
Each task may require more than one funding source and use. There is a note section to identify exactly what this cost will go to….for ex. Registration fees, conference rooms, program costs, and so on. This information can be very helpful as the budget is viewed and even adjusted if necessary. For each cost amount, the user can identify from which federal or state source the money will be taken from, as well as the use….materials, supplies, salaries, benefits….and the list goes on. In the sample shown here, you will see funding sources and uses specific to the state of Arkansas. But each state will be allowed to create their own.
Once an amount has been determined, and where the money will pull from, the user will add a coordinating budget code to complete the process. Each budgeted item will require a budget code to populate on the Budget Summary tab. Those without codes will not factor into the funding totals in Tab 1.
Fund/Source
Function
Location
Program
Section
Account

9. Budget
Summary tab
A summary of all funds needed to implement tasks for a school’s improvement plan is available on the Budget Summary page.
Only requested funds/budget items with completed budget codes will be included in the summary totals.
Budget items may be populated for the next 3 years.
Item totals for the current budget year may exported to excel.
2 additional reports will be created for all users.
Back to tab 1, you will see those funding summary totals. This page may be toggled again by year if the user would like to view future summaries. Additionally…where you now see ‘Create Excel File’, we will work to create 3 standard reports as part of the Budget piece. Included will be a Summary Report much like the page you see here, a Comprehensive Budget Report that will include details specific to each objective, tasks, and budgeted item, as well as a simple Objective Summary Report….just the objectives and the fund totals associated with each for the 3 years.

10. Remember…..
This Budget piece is not intended to be a school or districts’ final budget plan. It is simply meant to estimate costs needed to implement tasks in an improvement plan….if any funds are needed.
Remember….school improvement doesn’t always cost money…
just time..…effort..…and teamwork.
(read slides)

11. Webinars will be posted on Indistar Connect
If your state is interested in getting more information on the Indistar Budget Estimator add-on, please contact:
Stephanie Benedict
ext. 32
Webinars will be posted on Indistar Connect