A Comparative Analysis of Budget Palnning and Management in Academic Libraries in Lagos
BUDGET PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT IN SCHOOL LIBRARIES: ROLE OF THE SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALIST
TOWOLAWI K. OLUWAKEMI
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
BELLS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
OTA, OGUN- STATE
EMAIL:
JEGEDE O. RICHARD
COLLEGE LIBRARY
MICHAEL OTEDOLA COLLEGE OF PRIMARY EDUCATION
NOFORIJA, EPE. LAGOS STATE
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ABSTRACT
This study investigated the roles of school library media specialist in school library budgets. The findings revealed that the level of educational attainment of the school library media specialist plays significant role in way in which budget monitoring and control is perceived. It was concluded that, if applied conscientiously, the school Library can remain liquid in terms of cash flow and operate within the confines of approved budget.
Key word: Budget, school library, Management, School library media Specialist
1
INTRODUCTION
Sufficient funding is fundamental to the success of any school library media program. The school library media program requires a level of funding that will give all students adequate opportunities. In an era when access to information defines the difference between wealth and poverty, school library media program must provide access to information and instruction that students and others need for an active, authentic, and information-based learning. The school library media program also requires budget that supports the continuous collection of information in all formats and that provides the instructional infrastructure that will help students learn to use that information in creative, meaningful ways.
1.0.CONCEPT OF BUDGETING
According to Oyelude and Ola (2008) a budget is a guide or directive for fiscal management. Libraries need funds for services, and these services must be budgeted for. While further quoting Fletcher (1990), they also gave two other definitions of a budget as "the overall picture of allocations (for expenditure) and income," as well as "the financial allocation for specific purpose or purposes during a given period.
On the other hand however, Hartman, (1999) opined that educational budgeting is a "working tool" for the successful operation of schools and a significant opportunity for school library media specialists to plan the mission, improve the operations, and achieve educational objectives of the school library media center (SLMC). As such, the budgeting process allows various levels offinancial and program decisions, improve operations, and enhanced relationship with the professional and other stakeholders’.In more technical terms, a budget is a statement of the total school library media program for a given unit, as well as an estimate of resources necessary to carry out the program and the revenues needed to cover those expenditures. Budgeting is a process and a plan for determining how money is to be raised and spent, as well as a document developed and approved during the budgeting process (Fowler, 1990)
2.0BASIS OF SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA BUDGETS
A number of studies have been carried out on budgets and financing of library services (Oyelude and Ola, 2008; Robinson and Robinson, 2008; Dossett and Williams, 2004; Aukskalnis, 2002); however, budgeting for school library media center services has received little attention. Most discussions of budgeting for Library services use line-item budget as focus. Line budget as noted by Oyelude and Ola,(2008) itemizes elements of the budget to add up to the totality of what the library will be spending in a fiscal year.As they noted, the most important item which are usually budgeted for in library services is personnel. It is important to point out that tools, equipment, supplies and resources (print and electronic) are also important, with services and functions, as well as equipment maintenance. Nevertheless, the school library media budgets are usually based on one of the following wants/needs (Callison, 2003):
- format
- services
- circulation
- curriculum
School fund accounts are often categorized by information format: books, periodicals, nonprint, computer software, computer equipment, etc. Budgets based upon services are categorized or grouped under headings such as curriculum resources, recreational reading, general reference, management costs, special projects, etc.These budget divisions often place varied outcomes in competition with each other for available monies. Some teacher librarians and administrators maintain that budgets for their library media collections should be based upon “evidence of use.” Hence circulation data would be gathered to find distribution shifts and budget allocations would therefore shift accordingly. Those areas showing more use or demand would receive an expanding budget portion.
3.0 TYPES OF BUDGET
The budget is a statement of purpose and review of income and expenditures by function with a timeline to explain past, current, and future financial practices of educationalagencies. It has variousforms, from the line-item and function/object budgeting (which is /are basic to all systems) to planning-programming-budgeting systems, zero-based budgeting, and site-based budgeting to link the budget to goals and objectives while devolving the budgeting process to the school program.A vertical budget includes the various income and expenditure estimates (by line item, function, object, and cost center) in a given fiscal year, while a horizontal budget will include current estimates for a given fiscal year, compared to prior audited income and expenditures, and a projection of costs into the future.
3.1.Line-item budgeting.Morris (2011) define line-item, or "traditional," budgeting as "a technique in which line items, or objects of expenditures - e.g., personnel, supplies, contractual services, and capital outlays - are the focus of analysis, authorization, and control While helpful in tracking costs, line-item budgeting is virtually useless for planning or management, since the functions of the expenditures are not explained and the particular need, school site, and type of students being served are lost in spending aggregated by "line." Thus, teachers' salaries, for example, are a budget line-item; but which teachers, at which schools, teaching which types of students?
3.2.Function/object budgeting. Most schools use function/object budgeting, since it organizes spending around the basic functions of the system, such as instruction, student support, operations, administration, and transportation. In addition, functions are subdivided (e.g., into elementary instruction, school operations), while the object being purchased (e.g., elementary textbooks, school cleaning equipment) is also specified. Personnel services or salaries and benefits may be handled by function; that is, for instructional, support, or plant maintenance staff, for example.While these broad categories, objects, and processes are generally the same for education budgeting across the country, a strategic attempt has also been made to determine the most effective and efficient uses of resources. These efforts have led to such innovations as zero-based, program-planning, and site-based budgeting, which attempt to be more mission-driven and constituent-friendly than traditional types of budgeting in education.
3.3.Zero-based budgeting: (ZBB) began with the assumption that the school system starts out yearly with a "clean slate." Thus, each function, program, and agency has to justify its expenditures annually, relating all costs to system goals and objectives to avoid habitual spending. Because so many costs, such as tenured teachers' salaries and benefits, are "fixed" across annual budgets, and because the programs are so complex, zero-based budgeting becomes more an exercise than a practical reality. Hartman explained thatZBB forces comparisons of and choices among programs and activities that are often difficult to compare adequately.
3.4.Program-planning-budgeting systems (PPBS):seek greater efficiency by attaching spending to particular programs to savecosts, but failing, in fact, to meet the needs of any of the school library media services very well). While rarely used in education, PPBS would require SLMC’s to spell out their mission and goals and at the same time lay out alternatives to reach these objectives, attribute costs to each choice, analyze the costs, select the best option, and then build the budget around this outcome, and finally feed data back to adjust the costs to the results. While this method sounds ideal, it often becomes so complex, and the programs so numerous, that SLMC’s cannot readily sustain it approach.
3.5.Site-based (school-site) budgeting (SBB).SBB is concerned with who will do the budgeting and where in the organizational hierarchy the decisions will be made. In attempts to bring the budgeting process closer to "end-users" - the teachers, parents, and school administrators - SBB encourages, if not requires, decision-makers in each school to examine their programs and to set their budgets to meet their particular needs as part of the process of shared decision-making. Allan Odden et al. (1995)was quoted by the Education Encyclopedia of Public School Budgeting to explain that school reform may require greater decentralization, this will be a step in which teams of individuals who actually provide the services are given decision-making authority and held accountable for results. Under site-based budgeting, schools must determine who will serve on SBB committees; which decisions and resources are devolved to schools - and using what formulas; how much autonomy is granted to spend for SLMC needs; exactly how to analyze the budget of each program; and what training and support are needed to make SBB work effectively.
In practice, SLMC‘s will utilize variations of many, if not all, of the above methods in compiling their budgets. For example, a school principal may require teachers to justify their individual budget requests (zero-based) in the development of a school (site-based) budget. A component of the district's budget may include a proposal for a new educational program, including all anticipated expenditures, revenues, and cost savings (program-planning budget). The entire school budget may be compiled onto a state-mandated format that requires line items to be categorized by fund, function, program, and object (function/object budgeting). Once the fiscal year begins, the budget is transformed from a financial plan into the initial baseline data for a working, dynamic financial accounting system.
4.0. BUDGETING PURPOSES
Budget affects SLMC in much the same way as budgets affect any organization, including the parent organization. Typically, budgets serve three major purposes according to Dossert and Williams (2004), namely: planning, coordinating andcontrolling.These three functions dictate that budgeting and the financial management process should be flexible but accountable throughout the fiscal period. Budgets are the common denominator of an organization and a constant in the life of any organization. The planning aspect of SLMC budgeting affects personnel from both bottom-up and top-down directions. From the top, management communicates SLMC goals and objectives and expects that all lower level functions within the SLMC align their objectives accordingly. From the bottom-up, all SLMC personnel would theoretically be involved in budget development especially that of line item budget development. Regardless of the type of budget developed by the SLMC, the budget process represents an ideal time for personnel to be informed and involved in the financial planning of its service complement.
Therefore, he budget process represents a means of engendering buy-in from SLMC personnel regarding the planned activities for the coming fiscal period. Thus, as a fulcrum, the SLMC budget is for coordinating the center’s programs among the SLMC personnel. It also represents a vehicle for sharing information regarding program mission, development, and implementation. When staff members have a global understanding of the available resources and the commitments of those resources, then staff members responsible for individual programs will function with a more prescient knowledge of the library’s finite resources.
Nevertheless, at all management levels, the SLMC budgets typically represent an effective element of control, whether on a day-to-day operational basis or on a longer term basis. Controlling and monitoring are terms often used interchangeably; as one considers controlling/monitoring, the concept of performance standards represents a natural corollary. Therefore, SLMC budgets are often the basic performance standards by which the SLMC services are measured. If the SLMC budgets parallel the organizational goals, then performing to budget standards is typically interpreted as a reasonable element of control.
5.0 CHALLENGES FACING SCHOOL BUDGET
The school finance system, with its budgeting, accounting, and auditing sub-systems, was designed to support the operation and improvement of education. When a school library media program budget is aligned to the needs and programs of the school; when the accounting structure is clear and well constructed to reflect the way money is collected and spent; and when the auditing process determines that money was managed legally and appropriately, then SLMC should have the tools to use funds effectively, efficiently, and productively.With new technologies, a popular drive to improve the funding of education and greater interest in SLMC is the decision-making unit. With increased privatization of education and the growing influence of federal agencies in determining accounting and budgeting principles, the nation now faces an interesting and challenging future in SLMC finance. There are four key issues facing SLMC finance vis-a viz changing federal-state-local dynamics; privatization, expanding technology; and a move to channel media resources to students:
5.1. Changing Federal-State-Local dynamics:The nation’s drive to standardize accounting practices will lead to some interesting future develops in education. According to Asada (2011) the regulation of financial accounting is motivated by the need to ensure that it responds to the changing socio-economic needs of its operating environment. The main purpose of financial accounting is to record and communicate aggregate financial information about an entity to its owner and other interested users not directly involved in the active management of its entity and in doing so, objective evidence such as supporting documents are verified. However, this subtle change in accounting requirements may have far-reaching effects for education in general and SLMC’s in particular. This is due to the fact that, as bond ratings may be affected negatively, limitation in the amount of funds available for resources acquisitions will surely set in. Future developments in budgeting, accounting, and auditing will see greater standardization as the levels of government work together to improve educational spending, accountability, and performance.
5.2. Increasing privatization of school provision: Private provision of education, with public tax support, appears to be increasing. The number of charter schools, for example, has grown exponentially and U.S. President George W. Bush's national policies place "parental choice" and private provision as keys to school reform. As more and more public dollars are diverted to private providers - as a result of national, state, and local political decisions - the money will be placed into the hands of private organizations unaccustomed to the budgeting, accounting, and auditing in which public schools have developed expertise.Further, the mingling of public funding and private (even for-profit) management will make budgeting-accounting-auditing systems even more complex, blurring the lines between public and private provision, funding, and accountability. As budgets are being approved by local school boards, for example, and funding is reaching individually-managed schools (i.e., charter schools), more profit-making corporations, such as the Edison Schools or Knowledge Is Power Program, will become part of the education budgeting-accounting-auditing process.
5.3. Expanding technology and public awareness: All official publication in education be announced in advance to open to the public as converging with advances in technology. This is to heighten the possibility of financial information becoming real-time data for public inspection. With computers, Internet accessibility, and growing public interest, one can assume that budgeting-accounting-auditing procedures will become more systematic, accessible, and transparent to stakeholders of education nationwide.
5.4. Funneling resources to students: The future will also include an increasing interest in SLMC and student-centered budgeting and accounting. Driven by interest in such devices as vouchers, whereby funding would be awarded to each student (family), future systems will include revising current budget and accounting models that link resources to students. Agencies as different as the State Ministry of Education and Zonal Education Office will account for spending by individual SLMC/school, function, and program, creating greater interest in equity and productivity at the media center/school and classroom levels. Whatever future financial structures that the Nigerian SLMC/ schools adopt, the budgeting-accounting-auditing system will be required to plan, allocate, and hold decision-makers accountable for the enormous resources of the nation's largest public school service: education.