Preparing the Budget

Since most of a school’s income comes from tuition, the development of the next year’s budget begins with preparing the best and hopefully most accurate projection of next year’s enrollment at each age level. In this process, you should show enrollment for the year before, the current year, and the year for which you are planning the new budget. Patterns of attrition then can be discussed more objectively. Enrollment takes into consideration feeder schools, increasing interest in the school, future marketing efforts, etc. When preparing a budget, several assumptions are made and should be written on ~ a separate sheet of paper as an explanation of each line item so that the board and administration have a clear rationale for budget changes. Let us look at the budget line by line and list the assumption which would explain the amount on each line.