Having a sound budget based on an effective school philosophy is one way to provide for quality programming in reservation schools. The Ganado Unified School District, located on the Arizona part of the Navajo Reservation, attempted to decentralize the budget-making process and to study whether the current budget effectively supported the school's programming direction. The district formed a budget task force composed of teachers, staff, and administrators, and adopted a Program Planning Budget System. The task force organized staff-teacher brainstorming sessions focusing on the current curriculum, program strengths and weaknesses, needs, and the school philosophy, which had previously been largely ignored. The task force translated the brainstorming results into a needs assessment, then categorized each needs statement under one of the school's eight philosophical goals, assigning a priority, a monetary commitment, and a time frame to each emerging objective. Consequently, in 3 weeks, the task force established 1-, 3-, and 5-year budget plans geared to the school's philosophy. Using the new budget-making process, the staff gained a better understanding of school budgets, accepted responsibility for effective budget planning, established justifiable budgets, identified alternative financing, considered personnel reassignments, and refined the school's philosophy. (SB)