Inventory
For the inventory assignment I was lucky. I recently got a job as a PE teacher at a charter school. I inventoried the equipment on one of our first pre-service days. So I just took that list, popped it in an Excel file, and posted it on Google Docs. Our school is now going into its third year, so you should notice that most of the equipment is listed as in good or excellent condition. I only listed one set of items as poor, that would be our plastic tubing hockey goals. Who ever purchased these chose ones of very poor quality, and according to some of my students they didn't last long before they broke. That's the balance our book talked about between price and quality (p.127-128). It's a tough line to walk, especially when you have a small budget. Here's the link to my inventory:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ai1ndFf7vEsxdE1aZUhX...
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Comments
This is a pretty basic inventory, have you thought about adding a cost column. The benefits are this you will automatically know the cost of items you are wanting to purchase, you can compare to previous orders and more readily see any price jumps that would encourage you to shop around, and it will also allow you to see cost in advance to help you better balance your yearly budget what I mean by this is that you can create a cycle of purchases maybe your gym mats, outdoor basketball backboards and tackling bags are all in fair condition. They will all need to be replaced soon. By keeping a cost of replacement column you can better determine in which order you can replace items as well as determine if you need to shop around because of price increases. In some cases if you contact a company and have you numbers in front of you they will adjust their prices and you will save money to purchase other equipment.
That is a very good point Daniel. Unfortunately, my school doesn't have a set route for purchasing equipment. When it came time for me to procure equipment for my PE program and for getting our athletic program off the ground I had to shop around from places like Gopher, US Games, Walmart, Big 5, S&S Worldwide, and through a classroom purchasing agent we use but he doesn't usually handle sport/game stuff. It took a lot of work to put together a purchase order that way, and their prices and item quality vary greatly. Also, my work didn't give me a set budget so I had no idea what we could and couldn't get. I'd have liked it if they had a set system and budget where I could easily list the cost of the items I sought within a budget.
Your inventory is very organized. A small budget is a problem that many teachers deal with. It appears that you will be able to make some good improvements since most of your equipment is still in great shape. Nice Job!