School+Purchasing

=**Overview & Summary**=

As administrators, one cannot undervalue the importance of fiscal management skills. Understanding the purchasing process is a vital part of playing the role of a school’s financial manager.

The financial management of a school is not as simple as it appears. It isn’t simply determining needs and writing checks. It is a detail-oriented process where a greater knowledge of the system in place is necessary. With the ISLLC and Praxis standards, not only is it a continued process of evaluation, but also ensuring that you, as an administrator, are involving the correct stakeholders at each level and stage of the process.

The most common way that the purchasing process varies is based upon the cost of the purchase. For the purpose of our this portion of our Wiki, we examined the purchasing process in the Washington County School District. What we are describing below can be seen in greater detail on the Large v. Small purchase tab. At all levels, administrative approval is required; however, some levels require greater work.

1. Lowest level only requires administrative approval.

2. The next level requires admin. approval plus 1 additional bid.

3. The next level up requires the admin’s approval plus 3 additional bids or quotes.

4. At Washington Co. highest level (items greater than $10,000 ) purchases can only be made with administrative approval, 3 additional bids, and the approval of the School Board.

For both administrative and School Board approval, most districts require information regarding instructional benefit and student impact of purchases that fall outside of the norm. For instance, Pencils and paper and the like are common items, or the uniforms that are mentioned in this Wiki are items that receive approval on a repeat basis. Another purchase, pod-casting equipment, for example, would need to be linked to specific instructional standards before it could be approved. Once this step in the process is completed, it is up to the administrator to determine what fund the monies come out of. For instance, school purchasing related to classroom activities might come out of one account while the purchase of supplies that help to support Title 1 parent involvement activities may come out of another.

The timeline is relatively simple. Dustin has provided the details on his school’s purchasing timeline, and I will simplify it even further.


 * Obtain a purchase order
 * Fill out purchase order with all necessary details
 * Include necessary bids if purchase is over $1,000
 * Obtain administrative approval
 * Obtain School Board approval if necessary
 * Contact vendor and purchase
 * Have administrative staff "close" the purchase.

The process of studying school purchasing has helped us to realize the level of understanding necessary to make purchases successfully, and within the boundaries of policy at each school's level. We recognize that each school and district will be different, but also in this process, we've come to find that those differences tend to fall within the same general categories (i.e. the level that needs multiple bids or School Board approval).