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Strategic Management Plan 5:

Budget Plan: Prioritizing with Dollars

Hannah Steele and L. Wimberly Tyler

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development, Georgia Southern University

FRIT 7331: Leadership of the School Library Media Program

Dr. Valerie Bryan

October 25, 2020

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Budget Sources

The budget for the Warner Robins Middle School Library Media Center program hovers

around a ten thousand dollar total and comes from two main funds: Title 1 funds and a separate

account created through fundraising. Due to legality reasons, these amounts must be kept in

separate accounts. The majority of the funding comes from Title 1 funds that are based on a Full

Time Equivalent (FTE) formula. The formula operates by assigning a dollar amount to each

child attending the school. Some students are worth higher dollar amounts than others based on

categories determined by the government such as students with special needs, gifted students,

and more. The amount of money the school receives each year fluctuates slightly due to shifts in

enrollment numbers, but according to the current media specialist, the amount has never

fluctuated more than one thousand dollars in either direction. Because they are funds given to the

school through special Title 1 status, there are stipulations for what they can be used for.

Anything purchased with Title 1 funding must be directly utilized by students. Therefore, items

such as furniture, books, and interactive items can be purchased, but items such as decor or

displays cannot.

All purchases for displays or items that are used to create something else within the

media center such as shelf and book marking supplies must come out of the separate additional

account. The supplemental account was created by a former media specialist who could do a

variety of fundraising when rules for such activities were more lenient. Currently, the only

fundraisers the media specialist can do are the Scholastic Book Fair and selling school supplies.

Of those two, the Scholastic Book Fair is the most beneficial. Last school year, selling school

supplies ended up costing the media specialist money instead of bringing any profit. She sells the

school supplies at cost because she struggles with the morality of selling basic school supplies
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for more than can be bought in the store since we are at a school with nearly all students being

classified as impoverished. There is very little funding brought in due to fines or missing books.

Mentioned previously in the Strategic Management Plan, the media specialist is moving toward

eliminating fines due to the majority socioeconomic status of the school population. The money

acquired from damaged or missing items replaces those items, so no profit is made.

The WRMS principal reserves other Title 1 funding for technological needs and

curricular needs so the media specialist does not have to account for those in her budget. The

media specialist’s current budget focuses primarily on diversifying the books in circulation,

updating books for class book club use, purchasing ebook titles and licenses for software, and

updating the physical space of the media center to fulfill her goal of creating a learning commons

environment.

Based on the current goals of the media specialist to slowly update the media center into

a learning commons atmosphere, the funding is adequate for these needs. However, the funding

is not adequate for program needs identified through the analysis involved with the Strategic

Management Plan, such as the need for a maker space type area, more bilingual texts, and more

interactive display options. Due to the nature of the items needed to work toward these goals,

more fundraising would need to occur in order to add funds to the supplemental account.

Budgeting Plan

According to the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), a guideline for the

media center is that “the school library program has sufficient funding to support priorities and

make steady progress to attain the program’s mission, goals, and objectives” (2013, p. 42).
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The categories selected for the budgeting plan are derived from the areas of the WRMS Library

Media Center Program identified in previous sections of the Strategic Management Plan that

would be considered deficits or areas for improvement. The goals of the current media specialist

are also taken into account. Additionally, a plan needs to be formed for further fundraising or

grant writing in order to keep the supplemental account adequate for use. The funds in this

account are more flexible because they have no purchasing restrictions, making this account

extremely helpful for fulfilling goals. Therefore, the budget plan categories have been identified

as learning commons updates, maker space creation, diverse book additions, and interactive

displays. The proposed budget percentages would structured as follows:

The percentage of each category was chosen strategically based on item costs and

stipulations placed on funds in each available account. While the Warner Robins Middle School

Media Center has made substantial strides toward creating a full learning commons environment,
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that is still one of the current media specialist’s goals since it is a goal that takes multiple years to

accomplish. This budget category was given 35% of the budget due to the fact that the types of

items needed to update the facility into a learning commons environment tend to be quite

expensive since most of them are furniture pieces. The next largest category is the maker space

creation at 30%. This was identified as a large deficit in the media center, and it would require a

decent amount of funds dedicated since there is no foundation for such a space already. These

two categories were also determined to be the largest categories because most items purchased

for these goals would be considered directly used by students for assistance in learning, which

would make them approved to purchase with FTE funding. The Title 1 and FTE funds make up

the largest part of the media center budget, so the largest amounts of money spent must align

with the stipulations that are attached to such funds.

The smaller two categories are dedicated to diverse book additions and interactive

displays, making up 35% of the overall budget. While book additions would meet stipulations for

purchase with federal funding, the media center was found to have a plethora of print and digital

options for students already. This category was included in the budget because maintaining

current items in circulation is important for gaining student interest. Offering more diverse

selections is also one of the current media specialist’s goals, and previous analysis indicated that

more bilingual books or books written in other languages were needed for the circulation. The

items that would need to be purchased to create interactive book displays and engage students

would most likely be the least expensive items in the budget. They would also not be approved

for purchase by federal funding because even though the items would be used to create

something for students, the students would not directly be using the raw materials. Therefore,

purchase of these items would have to come out of the supplemental account, which is much
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smaller. A plan needs to be developed to increase the amount of the supplemental account so that

it would be adequate for the media center’s needs.

Even though the rules for fundraising projects have become more strict throughout the

years in the district, there are still opportunities for the media center to bring in more funding.

For example, the media specialist could find something to sell in the media center that has a low

cost investment such as nice stickers to decorate notebooks and water bottles since these are

popular with students. Bookmarks might be another option. The media specialist could provide

basic printable bookmarks for free and sell sturdier ones for a small cost. Another idea would be

to get the community involved by partnering with a local organization or business for fundraising

or donations. There is a local used bookstore in the community that is known to partner with

various organizations to support education. Reaching out to them would be a good first step in

starting to branch out into the community. Lastly, the media specialist could encourage teachers

to distribute and talk about Scholastic flyers so that families can order books year round and earn

credits for books for the school. This would enable the media specialist to use some of that credit

instead of money for books and reallocate the budget money elsewhere.
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References

American Association of School Librarians. (2013). Empowering learners guidelines for school

library programs. Chicago, Ill.: American Association of School Librarians.

Google Doc Link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15-CEoGDPIS2ZykD4-HxxNnP43WGho2TVrgg5

KLtZLNQ/edit?usp=sharing