Round Lake Area School District 116
Department of Professional Learning
Procedure:
Requesting, approving, and reimbursing expenses for offsite professional development
Effective Date:
07/01/25
Revised Date:
NA
Type of Process:
☒ Internal Procedure
☐District Procedure
Authority
Executive Director of Professional Learning
Purpose
To organize and track offsite professional learning paid for by district funds
Description
The procedure to request, approve, and be reimbursed for offsite PD, including conferences and workshops.
The word “automatically” here refers to a non manual electronic transmission of a Google Form.
Steps
Action
Who’s Responsible
1
Any employee who wishes to attend an offsite PD fills out the Professional Development Conference Form, located on the Department of Professional Learning’s website. This should be submitted digitally at least 30 days prior to the requested event. Employees’ request forms are automatically sent to their direct administrative supervisor, whom they select on the electronic form.
Employees should read our Conference Guidelines for Attendees and Administrators before submitting a request.
Employees must complete this form even if their supervisor instructed them to attend a conference.
All principals and cabinet members who are evaluated by the superintendent should select the superintendent on under “School or Department Supervisor.”
Employees requesting to attend offsite PD
2
Supervisors review the request forms.
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Supervisors confirm the time away from work.
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Supervisors confirm the funding source and requested expenses.
If the supervisor controls the funding source, they may approve, at their discretion, all, some, or none of the requested expenses on their employees’ forms.
If the supervisor does not control the funding source (for example, a teacher wants to attend a conference using Title II funds), the supervisor reaches out to the manager of that funding source and the two administrators jointly decide which requests to approve.
If only some expenses are approved, the supervisor will deny the form, and the employee must re-submit the Professional Development Conference Form listing only approved expenses.
When time off, funding source, and requested expenses are confirmed, supervisors click “approve” on the digital form.
Supervisors
3
Forms approved by supervisors are automatically sent to the Executive Director of Professional Learning.
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The director reviews each form:
The director approves all requests in which a supervisor is spending his or her own funds.
When a supervisor is spending someone else’s funds, the director confirms the expense with both parties before approving.
When the director clicks “Approve” on a form, a completed copy is automatically sent to the requestor.
Executive director
4
Staff member requesting to attend offsite PD digitally forwards the approved request form to the secretary responsible for purchasing from the funding source. This is not done automatically. It must be completed by the conference attendee.
Employees requesting to attend offsite PD
5
The secretary responsible for purchasing from the funding source makes the approved purchases (i.e., conference registration, hotel reservation, etc.)
Secretaries responsible for purchasing from the funding source
6
After the offsite PD, employees who attended submit expenses for reimbursement in accordance with the Business Office’s guidelines.
Employees requesting to attend offsite PD
7
Budget managers who approved the requested expenses confirm that all reimbursements entered in Skyward align with the initial request by comparing the reimbursement with the original PD request form.
Budget managers