Budgets for educational technology continue to be a challenge, especially when many schools' finances are stretched thin to begin with. In many cases, there are not many concrete practices for creating, maintaining and updating budgets to ensure that funds are used in the best way possible.
Here we speak with Frank Murray, Director of Instructional technology and Campus Support at Belton ISD in Belton, Texas, about best practices that schools and districts can use to help efficiently improve their technology budgets.
Weighing your educational needs
To understand how to leverage an educational technology budget, it's important to know what your school or district needs. This can help you make informed decisions during a technology audit, budget review, or at the end of a budget cycle. It can also reveal areas where you may be spending too much on individual tools and programs that could be eating up your budget.
“The most difficult thing is how to make data-driven decisions about what is used in school,” Murray says. “For us, the most important thing is the results of use. What are our device usage reports? We use software that tells us exactly how many times a child has logged in (on a device) and how long they were there. How long they stay and if they were focused on it. And we analyze it.”
With this type of information, Murray says schools can create realistic expectations about where money should go and whether existing uses of the budget should continue or be modified.
What obstacles should you prepare for?
When it comes to spending, having a clear goal in mind for your budget outcome can help you navigate many obstacles. Focusing on services that handle similar tasks could help you identify which ones you want to keep and which ones you can stop using.
For example, Murray says, “We had three hall pass software for student digital passes. Keep track of where they are. We had three different vendor names, three different companies for three different software that did the same thing. So purchasing power is lost there. So when everyone has one system, it will be cheaper for us as a district.”
It's important to make fiscally responsible decisions about what software to allocate in your current budget, as well as planning for the future.
“We should never sign up for software or a subscription that we don't plan to use for at least three years,” Murray says. “We should have looked at the software to the point where we know it's something we need. It's not something we're testing, it's something we need now and this is the problem it's going to solve. So we started closing multi-year deals on many of our software contracts that saved us between five and 20 percent.”
What happens when a supplier who wants to contract for three years wants all the money up front for the contract?
“For those who need everything upfront, we look at financing,” Murray says. “Even with the financing we were able to save 20 percent on many of our deals. So we are financing three years. Finance companies pay for it in advance. “We are paying the payment companies.”
How to get the most out of your supplier negotiations
As an educational decision maker, it can be difficult to know whether a vendor has your best interests in mind or simply wants to make a sale. Murray suggests that before entering into negotiations with a provider for their services, do your due diligence and come prepared.
“Go into negotiations with a clear understanding of your budget,” says Murray. “Know the desired results and their potential alternatives. We need to do a lot of research on (this service) before we know it's something we'll use for a while. Tell salespeople what you have to spend. That's the trick. You have to build a relationship with your suppliers. You have to help them understand what is happening with your budget constraints. Let them know exactly what you can afford.”
Having a firm grasp of your budget will not only help you in your negotiations with your suppliers, but will also help them understand how they can best serve you. Providers and educators are in this together, and having a high level of communication can benefit both parties when it comes to educational technology and budget management.
