How much do you keep for emergencies/unplanned for events?

[dany2010]

When planning your budgets how much of your total budget do you keep for emergencies?

 

We get a 25k budget and look to reserve 3k for emergencies.

We also ensure that prices we say for equipment will never be exceeded. E.g. Computer are added as £350 but we tend to get for £310 for classroom machines. This adds to the reserve but isn't guaranteed funds as prices can go near £350.

 

Should cover a new server if needed, random laptop requests or general failures.

Edited March 2, 2014 by dany2010

[seawolf]

When planning your budgets how much of your total budget do you keep for emergencies?

 

We get a 25k budget and look to reserve 3k for emergencies.

We also ensure that prices we say for equipment will never be exceeded. E.g. Computer are added as £350 but we tend to get for £310 for classroom machines. This adds to the reserve but isn't guaranteed funds as prices can go near £350.

 

Should cover a new server if needed, random laptop requests or general failures.

 

How big of a school? 25k seems like a small budget unless it is a small primary school. I normally wouldn't set aside more than 5% of the total budget towards emergencies. Your emergency fund is exceeding 10%, which is probably justified with such a low overall budget.

[dany2010]

yep it's very tight. We have 5 sites, over 300 machines, 8 servers, about 30-40 whiteboards.

[seawolf]

yep it's very tight. We have 5 sites, over 300 machines, 8 servers, about 30-40 whiteboards.

 

And 25k is your normal annual budget? I don't know how you keep everything going on that.

[dany2010]

We don't pay for printers or toners out of that but everything else is.

 

You get really good at making things last. One site has 6-7 year old machines in the classrooms but adding ram we've got them working with win 7 well enough for what they need without complaints.

 

Guy over the road would laugh because he had double for a lot less.

 

Staff wonder why we no longer give laptops to all staff.

[sjpage10]

lol you think your budget's tight last year we had 5k for replacing computers, 8k for maintenance out of this we have to buy toners for all departments - we have approx. 650 ageing machines 40 plus interactive boards, over 60 laser printers aprox 40 of them being color, 5 servers, over 3 sites - it's the projectors that break the bank they seem to leave them on 24/7

it wasn’t always like this my budget's gone down from approx. 50k to this over 5 years

 

as for emergencies/unplanned for events we just hope we don’t have any

 

 

stef

Edited March 2, 2014 by sjpage10

[ChrisH]

And 25k is your normal annual budget? I don't know how you keep everything going on that.

 

I think you find that to be a fairly common figure for UK schools.

[dany2010]

Thats extreme sjpage.

The school can survive for a few years and then when the ageing machines start to go wrong your stuffed.

 

That's what happened to my school before my manager showers up and argued for more budget.

[sjpage10]

Thats extreme sjpage.

The school can survive for a few years and then when the ageing machines start to go wrong your stuffed.

 

That's what happened to my school before my manager showers up and argued for more budget.

 

yes I agree , only we have plans in motion to lay of staff for the next 3 years due to a predicated drop in pupil numbers for the next 5 years

so no chance of getting any more money. I used to have two technicians now only one !

 

stef

[seawolf]

TThat's what happened to my school before my manager showers up and argued for more budget.

 

There's the key guys. Make sure your manager takes a shower every once in a while before discussing budgets with the bosses. It's hard to be convincing when all people can think about is "what died in here".

 

And if he refuses to bathe....the lot of you will just have to hold him down and break out the Brillo pads and pine sol. :-)

[Iain.Faulkner]

£25k is the same as what we get (we also have a separate fund for toners)...we try and do the same and keep about £3k in reserve for emergencies (I think we've got about £1k of that remaining for this financial year)....out of that we have to replace our PC's.....as of July this year we will have 400 PC's out of warranty and over 5 years old (some PC's are 10 years old now). They are starting to die, and we've been told there is no additional funding to buy any more, so effectively we have to sit here and watch our network die.....looking forward to that.

[mthomas08]

lol you think your budget's tight last year we had 5k for replacing computers, 8k for maintenance out of this we have to buy toners for all departments - we have approx. 650 ageing machines 40 plus interactive boards, over 60 laser printers aprox 40 of them being color, 5 servers, over 3 sites - it's the projectors that break the bank they seem to leave them on 24/7

it wasn’t always like this my budget's gone down from approx. 50k to this over 5 years

 

as for emergencies/unplanned for events we just hope we don’t have any

 

 

stef

 

+This

 

Not every School has the kind of budget that's needed. Some Schools can manage with failing equipment but there are others like this one here that simply can't get by without the projector. Most classrooms also have the IWB, we recently purchased another 2 managed printers to cope with the printing.

 

We have around 100 old PCs aged 8-10 Years old another 60 aged 7 Years - And who says PCs cant last more than 5+ Years! The ones that are 10 Years old are taking forever to login. Luckily enough Windows 7+WDS has given a lot of them a new lease of life which will prolong their usage in time for me to get some budget (hopefully).

 

I have done my audit and replacement plan and hopefully SLT will decide its time to spend the money. I also got the go ahead to upgrade our 100MB network to 1GB (with 10GB main backbone). Our new building which was a test to prove to management what we can do has been fully kitted out with 1GB, new PCs (cost £300), decent projectors and properly laid out so its all spotless tidy. The feedback from this building has been incredibly positive, we have visited the building twice in the space of 4 weeks. And both of those wasn't exactly "failures".

 

As for the contingency money, I believe its been around 4K but I don't think that's good enough. I am still in the process of giving SLT as much information to plan for next Years budget.

[featured_spectre]

My current work place has no budget so to speak, if we need something, we order it. However we do have a budget if we do an overhaul on the system.

[tmcd35]

Current situation...

 

No real "contingency fund" or development fund (all maintenance). About £2k is allocated for "repairs". Budget asked for £90k - £100k. Budget allocated £70k. Needless to say we usually come in over budget - oh hum. Currently starting the big coversation with senior leaders about completely rewriting the ICT budget from scratch. Re-examining everything we do with ICT and desiging a new based on the schools vision of the future. To me that means asking for £200k+ budget per year; on the other hand SLT are talking about falling pupil numbers and staffing implications.

 

Interesting times.

Edited March 3, 2014 by tmcd35

[DSapseid]

My annual budget is about £23k + £24k for licences (not just mine but whole school ones like SIMS, Cashless catering etc). Out of my normal £23k i have to buy all toner for all my 30 printers as well as everything else. I try and leave most of my budget alone until the end of the year then have a nice little chunk to try and do something with (hoping to have saved 1/3 this year!).

 

I have been very lucky over the last 2-3 years with serious investment being made in the network here from central pots of money, ive had a whole new network (servers, san, switches, ups), as well as replacing all machines in 3 out of 4 of our it suites and replacing all classroom machines to run the whiteboards. In my defense the whole network was 6/7 years old and the switches even older still, some of our whiteboard machines were at least 8 years old as well!

[pcstru]

It depends what you mean by 'emergency'. There used to be a contingency code in our budget but I changed it to "consumables and breakdowns". 'Contingency' was too easy for TBTB to cut to the bone! Last year that accounted for £7,500 or 3% of our overall budget, so perhaps still too easy to cut. I don't really count most consumables (laptop batteries, chargers etc) as 'emergency' since they are reasonably predictable. Given the lack of true contingency, we just juggle; if something critical and big fails then something else big just won't be done.

[PotNoodleTech]

And 25k is your normal annual budget? I don't know how you keep everything going on that.

 

Mate - come to Wales, that will give you an crash course of "network mgmt on a budget"

 

500 PCs here, 60 classrooms. I've had yearly budget as high as £45k (this year) and as low as £5k (a few years ago).

 

Lack of finance sure makes life more difficult than it needs to be for me!

[sparkeh]

Our allocation varies a lot per year, I basically write a budget proposal outlining what is essential and what I would like to do. I generally get most of what I ask for; some years I've got as much as 30k, other years drastically less. Contingency is based on my judgement of what could fail outside of the normal replacement program (from the main budget) and is usually around 3k. However this usually gets used for other stuff as April approaches. Toner budget is separate.

 

For comparison we are a primary with 600ish kids.

 

I think I might move to Oz to get the kind of budget @seawolf gets to enjoy

[Quackers]

When people are saying what their budgets are, do they have to take their broadband charges out of that pot to or does that come out of a separate pot? We get around £80,000 a year, but we have to get our licensing and leased line charges out of that too. We don't have an emergency limit set in stone its a case of something criterial they will just use the whole school pot.

[tmcd35]

The £70k-£100k I mentioned above is for everything. Broadband, Software licencing (inc. MIS, etc), Consumables, Repairs, Equipment Upgrades, etc. For information we are a High School with around 800 pupils and 100 staff, give or take.

[sparkeh]

When people are saying what their budgets are, do they have to take their broadband charges out of that pot to or does that come out of a separate pot? We get around £80,000 a year, but we have to get our licensing and leased line charges out of that too. We don't have an emergency limit set in stone its a case of something criterial they will just use the whole school pot.

We have the following budgets:

• IT (main budget)
  
• Broadband
  
• Licences
  
• Contingency
  

The figures I quoted above was just for the main IT budget.

[mthomas08]

The £70k-£100k I mentioned above is for everything.

 

Still a lot more than my budget, in fact if I had that amount I could make a massive improvement.

[tmcd35]

Still a lot more than my budget, in fact if I had that amount I could make a massive improvement.

 

Doesn't go as far as you might first imagine. £20k for broadband, £6k or so for SIMS and Microsoft licencing, £18k for printing. Soon adds up. We also have abour 3.5x the number of PC's (350 to your 100?) and a 5yr refresh rate rather than 10... Spend about £20k or so replacing PC's and teachers laptops each year. At the low end of the scale, that's the budget gone before we look at projectors, whiteboards, servers, switches, etc.

[mthomas08]

Doesn't go as far as you might first imagine. £20k for broadband, £6k or so for SIMS and Microsoft licencing, £18k for printing. Soon adds up. We also have abour 3.5x the number of PC's (350 to your 100?) and a 5yr refresh rate rather than 10... Spend about £20k or so replacing PC's and teachers laptops each year. At the low end of the scale, that's the budget gone before we look at projectors, whiteboards, servers, switches, etc.

 

We have around 600 PCs/Laptops, same facilities as you by the looks of things. We have no budget for projectors/IWBs which I am hoping to change.

 

Only positive news is the fact that we have purchased our network upgrade with full HP Procurve setup, give or take a few small switches here and there + Wireless upgrade. Totalling about 74k worth of kit.

[pcstru]

When people are saying what their budgets are, do they have to take their broadband charges out of that pot to or does that come out of a separate pot?

Ours includes all software licences, services inc broadband, subscriptions, capital projects, support contracts, student printing, cabling, telephone support etc. We have an unusual site and have to cover 19 separate buildings, 200 teaching staff, 2000 students, probably around 1200+ PC's, Laptops, Chromebooks etc.