Tech Budget Fueled by Energy Drinks

SCHOOL TECH DEPT RELEASES EERILY COMPLEX BUDGET EQUATION FUELED ENTIRELY BY ENERGY DRINK CONSUMPTION

MAPLE STREAM, AR —The Maple Stream School District's Technology Department, in an unprecedented move, has unveiled its 2025-26 budget with a multi-variable calculus equation scrawled on a whiteboard. The equation, which district officials say "guarantees fiscal efficiency," appears to be directly correlated with the department's collective consumption of Monster Energy drinks.

"This isn't some back-of-the-napkin estimate," declared a wild-eyed Tech Director Gary Henderson, holding up a half-empty can of Monster "Ultra Sunrise" and a permanent marker.

"This is the culmination of three late-night budget cycles, a multi-phase system migration, and a server room with no windows. This equation is our Apollo 11. Except instead of the moon, we’re aiming for a new fleet of laser printers and maybe a projector that actually works."

Henderson then walked a reporter through the formula, which he said was developed over several sleepless nights. The equation, presented as:

Bn+1​=i=1∑m​(Ci​⋅Mi​)+Tv​−τ(So​⋅1.5)​

According to Henderson, the variables are as follows:

• Bn+1​ is the total budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

• Ci​ is the number of cans of Monster consumed by each tech team member, i.

• Mi​ is a subjective "Monster-fueled Motivation Multiplier," a coefficient that increases based on the tech staff's perceived caffeine-induced genius, ranging from 1.0 (grumpy) to 4.2 (transcendent).

• So​ represents "School-wide Tech Support Overload," a variable measured in hours and multiplied by 1.5 to account for the emotional labor of explaining how to restart a computer for the 700th time.

• Tv​ is a "Teacher Vindictiveness" coefficient, which represents how many times teachers have sent passive-aggressive emails about Wi-Fi performance.

• And finally, τ, which is the "Taurine Constant," a non-zero value that ensures the final budget number is always, according to Henderson, "just enough to keep the lights on and buy more Monster."

  
  

When asked about the formula's accuracy, Henderson leaned in conspiratorially. "The logic is unassailable," he whispered, his eyes darting around the room. "The more tired we are, the more Monster we drink. The more Monster we drink, the more brilliant and slightly manic our ideas become. The more brilliant our ideas, the more we can justify spending money on shiny new things that no one will use correctly. It's a closed-loop system of perpetual fiscal stimulus and a testament to the human spirit's ability to run on caffeine and sheer spite."

District Superintendent Ally Joinkins, who approved the budget after a brief 15-minute presentation that she says “moved too quic

kly to question,” was a bit more reserved. "The numbers came out... high," she admitted. "But when Gary showed me the equation on the whiteboard, it just looked so official, you know? It had a summation sign and everything. It's like, you can't argue with that. It's science. Or... a beverage-related approximation of it."

The budget, which includes line items for "Cloud-based Teacher Sanity (Projected)" and "Emergency Power Over Ethernet (PoE) Switch Replacement (Likely)," is now heading to the school board for final approval. The board, having just come from a long meeting about school lunch debt, is not expected to question the methodology. One board member was heard muttering, "If it gets the damn Wi-Fi working for more than two periods in a row, just buy the entire Monster factory."