Comparison of District Improvement Plans

While comparing Austin ISD’s Improvement Plan with our district’s plan I noticed a vast difference.  The Austin plan had a tremendous amount of introductory information including the attendance and notes from meetings.  This was very interesting to me because it is not something that I would have thought to be important, but now seeing it in the document I will probably add it to our campus plan.  They also have a much bigger or more obvious focus on the budget in their plan.  Our district plan does not really address budget issues or show where funding comes from for the needed improvements.  Our plan has nothing even similar to Appendix A in the Austin plan.  Our plan is very basic and consists of a table of goals and looks very similar to Appendix B in the Austin plan.  Our goals are very specific and it shows our focus for needed improvement.

In regards to the funding sources and how they support various goals, I did not see much evidence of that at all in our plan.  There are a few places where it states where the funding is coming from, but not in most places.  The Austin ISD plan was much more budget-oriented, but it also did not clearly spell out where all of the money was going to specifically.  Appendix A shows where a big chunk is going, but it did not break it down by each category. 

Overall, the Austin ISD District Improvement Plan is more detailed and has a more clear focus with the budget, but I still like our plan more because it focuses on specific goals and areas of concern.  I wish our plan was more detailed with budget issues.  I think a combination of the two documents would be a great plan.  When we finalize our campus plan in a few weeks, I hope to incorporate some of this information into the plan to make our budget more goal-driven.