Getting Started with the FY21 Title Plan

I know everyone is busily working on their FY21 Title Applications.  If you have not yet started, that’s okay.  You can still get this done. If you are new at this, let me offer some suggestions that have worked well for me over the years.

1. Gather all personnel costs for the district and each school; the month 7 MSIS net enrollment numbers; and the March 2020 free and reduced numbers, or if CEP, the direct certified counts by school.
2. Use the enrollment numbers and the poverty numbers to complete the school eligibility page.  Be sure to rank order the schools by poverty from high to low.
3. Start with your district set asides and administrative budgets.  What has to come off the top of the allocation before planning school allocations?  Enter these figures first in the budget pages.  When you enter a set aside amount in the budget page, be sure to use the set aside tag to identify it as a set aside.  This will help you later as you verify your budget. Indirect costs count as an administrative line item.
4. Enter the personnel costs for each school.  This will help identify the minimum amount each school can receive.
5. Once the set asides are entered and personnel costs are budgeted, you can address the PPA page.  Here is where you can adjust your PPA to meet the needs of the school.  Each school does NOT have to receive the same PPA. The rule is that the higher poverty schools must receive an equal to or higher amount of PPA than the school(s) below it.  Adjust the PPA till there is $0 remaining or as close to $0 as possible.  If there are a few remaining cents, you can add or subtract these figures from a set aside. This will make your PPA page equal $0 remaining.  Just remember that if you change a set aside amount, you need to go and adjust that amount in the budget.
6. Once all budgets are entered, you will need to allocate the budgeted funds to match the goals and action steps in the Planning Section.  I print my district budget from the Budget Overview page for each fund and use this to match to goals and action steps.

There is so much more involved in this plan and not enough room for me to address all of it here.  If you have any questions, just let me know.  Good luck,  You can do this!