The Budget

I’ve come up with the following process for creating and approving our budget.

1. Review the Vision and Mission Statement
2. List out the services and resources we want to provide based on our vision and mission statement.
3. Determine the number of students we want to provide our services to.
4. Calculate the number of teachers needed. This calculation is based on the max students per teacher minus 5 and then dividing that number by the number of students.
5. List out all of the expenses incurred by providing our services and resources.
6. List out the income from the state and fundraising.
7. Determine the budget shortfall that will need to be made up with community donations.
8. Notify the community of the budget shortfall and ask for donations.
9. Meet with local businesses and ask for donations.
10. Raise the money needed to cover the budget shortfall.
11. If the money cannot be raised, then one of the following decisions will be made
    1. Make changes to the services and resources we want to provide if they don’t violate our vision and mission statement.
    2. Make changes to the services and resources that violate our vision and mission statement.
    3. Decide that we won’t offer our services and investigate alternatives for our students.
12. Finalize and approve the budget.

I want to ensure that if we are not able to receive enough funding to provide services that are in line with our vision and mission statement then we partner with another group/agency that can or we find an alternative option for our students. There are a number of viable alternatives  for educating the children in our community that do not involve operating a charter school. We need to be cognizant of these options and be willing to pursue them at any time.