Budget Questions from School Library Graduate Students

[Judi Moreillon]

Please share your per student budget.

What strategies have you used successfully to approach district-or site-level administration to increase per student funding?

If this figure is not adequate for your school library program, from where do you get additional funds or resources?

[Mary Ann Harlan]

it is sad but I generally consider myself lucky because I have $5/ student from my district for books, plus approx. $2000 in supplies, another $2000 in tech, and $6,000 in databases plus whatever maintenance costs for various software and hardware. In the grand scheme of things it is paltry but in California it is a start. I also use whatever state funds I can - like textbook $$$$ that goes unspent, lottery money, ed tech site block grants. I beg, borrow, and work closely with my site administrator to build a collaborative relationship when it comes to budget. That way I have access to monies I otherwise might not see. Mostly I pay attention to all the monies coming in with the restrictions and if I think I can use it I ask. Here is a problem I am facing this year due to an incompetent administrator (gone, thank you very much!). He budgeted my database money in a restricted fund I can't use. I have no unrestricted monies to cover it so we are working hard to figure out a work around. It is very stressful, so make sure you understand any restrictions on monies you are given.

[Robyn Swords]

It's interesting to see the per student budget. I suppose in the school I taught at we were blessed- it worked out to be about $50 per student! Also I read (somewhere...) that the national average was $24 per student. Seeing other numbers lets me see the big picture.
In comparing the budget of my most recent school, I am now curious to know the library budget for the school I taught at before that. The two schools were vastly different in community, population, teacher to student ratio, special needs students, and budget. One of the reasons I left the former school was the lack of community support- there was a feeling of "if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for my kids" in the town. The community hadn't passed a bond issue for the (built in 1928) high school for thirty years. In contrast, my next school (and my hometown) was consistently getting all sorts of budget and other support from the community.
All this makes me wonder, how the community support and attitude affects the school budget, and how that in turn affects the library. If the community sees the library, technology, and information literacy as key to education, does that get reflected in the budget and materials available? Or if the community feeling about the library is "meh- decades-old books are fine"- does the administration and LMC have to accept that and move on?

[Deborah Ramm]

Robyn,
Where is your school located? I work in an urban school in a low income area. Our budget is areound $8 per student. Although we have great community support for the school in general, it doesn't seem to focus on the library.

[Arlen Kimmelman]

I'm in NJ. I have a $5,000/year budget (+$1,000 for equipment repair) to cover everything: databases, book acquisitions, A/V equipment and library supplies, periodicals, etc. With approximately 550 students, it looks like I have $9.00/student to maintain a middle school/high school library program. Strategies for alternative funding have included receiving a $5,000 grant from Dollar General stores one year, receiving a $500 grant from the district's "Friends of..." group another year, receiving a $250 grant from the same "Friends of..." group this year, and running a Scholastic Book Fair each year, which brings in about $300 in books from each book fair. In our district teachers each get $75 from the BOE to spend for their classrooms, and I spend my $75 each year on book acquisitions. Although I don't charge late fees, I do charge lost or damaged books fees, which unfortunately more-often-than-not get placed into a 'general' school account and not into a library-specific account. I also installed a pencil machine in the library for all school use. Hey, between donated pencils, found-in-a-storeroom pencils, and dollar store pencils, the $0.25 the machine charges for pencils adds up to about $40 - $60 more a year for books. Every little bit, right?

[Brandee MacLean]

In Arizona we have a tax credit system. Anyone can donate up to $500 to whatever aspect of the school they want and then receive it all back as a tax credit. Do you have anything like that in NJ? It isn't very well advertised where I work but I'm going to try to get after that money! My total budget is $3,000. The Scholastic Book Fair is the next best fundraiser that I have. Any suggestions?

[Arlen Kimmelman]

This is what I found on NJ's tax credit:

"The Urban Schools Scholarship Act, if passed, would resemble the corporate tax credit programs in Arizona and Pennsylvania, although scholarships there can be used for students statewide. New Jersey’s program would focus on seven cities with large minority populations: Camden, Elizabeth, Lakewood, Newark, Orange, Paterson, and Trenton, which together serve approximately 102,000 of the state’s 1.4 million students."
from http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20421

The Scholastic Book Fairs are a lot of work. If you have Barnes & Noble Book Stores near you, they have an in-store book fair program that I almost considered for this year and probably will for next. The [incomplete] description of that kind of book fair is that on a certain date you get people to come to their store and bring proof that they heard about the fair from you, and then you get the profits from those sales. No set up, clean up, student workers, or financial forms - just photocopying and distributing fliers for your buyers to use as proof that you recruited them.

[Deborah Ramm]

On the Barnes and Noble book fair, what is the rate of [profit from the sales? What are the average profits going to the school? I don't think many of the parents in my school district would go to a retail store of that nature - they are more of the Walmart type (I work in an urban area where the population is low income and 85% are hispanic of which at least 20% are monolingualk). See the problem?

[Andrew Zollman]

While working on our Administrative manual assignment with my partner we had some questions about creating a plausible budget for a high school library following a TUSD schools library budget. The library had a high school budget of $65,000 dollars for a year based on a full time enrollment of 1600+ students. When I read other library budgets on this forum the numbers seem drastically lower then the figure we found. What internal and external factors would affect a library budget? Can location of the school (neighborhood), quality of facilities teachers, or other factors change the amount? I do believe the budget I acquired does include expenses of support workers within with the librarian and the cost of technology upgrades/improvements.

I am unsure about school library budgets because I have not worked as a librarian or teaching professional in the k-12 grade level. I am also interested in this topic greatly because of the recent budget problems in the TUSD district and the possible library support cuts they have proposed instead of cutting middle school sports as a part of the school curriculum.

Additional resources I would try to receive from tax credits by neighborhood families or book drives which I have seen becoming more popular at all grade levels. They gain both money for the library and improve literacy in schools.

[Kathy Hellman]

One of the high schools in the library consortium for which I provide systems support gets a new principal every couple of years. This year the new one decided to save costs for paper and ink cartridges by removing all printers from classrooms and requiring teachers to use the copy machine and/or send prints to the networked printer in the library. So now, instead of paying for ink cartiridges the school is paying the library assistant to spend all his time making copies and printing items for teachers and they are not even saving any paper. Add to that the questions raised about just how necessary the library's subscription databases are to students, and it seems like a not-to-subtle effort to undermine the school library's mission.

This kind of experience underscores the importance of building collaborative relationships with teachers, parents, and community members, so that the next new principal will know without question just how valuable the school library is to the students' success. It seems like it's time for a bit of bragging, that school librarians need to begin pushing articles and studies that highlight the value of active library programs in schools under the noses of those who hold the future of their libraries in their hands.

[Judy Franz]

Reading the prior posts, I can't help but believe that the answer to our budget problems lies in collaborative effort and not in going it alone as a teacher-librarian. I am interested in how to gain financial support/resources for the library in a way that involves the total learning community from day one. Please continue to brainstorm ideas along this line, because this will "nurture two birds in one nest": financial support and helping to change the mind set of the teacher-librarian as a do-it-yourself kit.

[Kristin Bowman]

Issues surrounding library funds/budgets are definitely very important. School libraries can only do so much with limited money. Having never worked in a school library before I do not have any experiences to share but it seems that the more advocacy that we can do within the community to try and gain support for increasing funds to the program is key in being able to provide the best services to the school. However, it is great the their are so many outside grants and funds that can be accessed to help support library budgets. For those of you who do work in school libraries I would be curious to know how many of you are considered teacher-librarians and how many have been labeled more as support staff? Does this distinction in position and thus importance the school places on the library seem to also be reflected in the amount of money that the district decides to give to the media center?

[Deborah Ramm]

This may be a silly question but I feel compelled to ask. As I begin to work in a school library, or if I begin a new one, is there a standard list of books that each library should have? I think I would need to know which books should be in a new library and that way I could figure out budgeting, etc. Is there a standardized list out there?