Declining enrollments led both Gilbert Public Schools and Higley Unified School District to slightly revise their 2023-24 school year budgets this week.
Both districts have seen a greater than anticipated drop in “average daily membership,” an enrollment-based figure that is a key part of the state’s education funding formula.
Average daily membership, or ADM, is the total enrollment of fractional students and full-time students, minus withdrawals, of each school day through the first 100 days in session.
Prior year ADM is used in funding unrestricted capital budgets, but the current year ADM is used on maintenance and operations, making in-year revisions necessary.
Despite the enrollment losses, both districts ended up with revised budgets that are larger than their originally adopted budgets from last June.
Gilbert Public Schools typically has budgeted for a loss of about 400 ADM each budget year, a figure Associate Superintendent Bonnie Betz has considered conservative and has proven to be so outside the COVID year of 2020-21.
But in 2023-24, the loss in ADM is at 561.39 students. That represented a loss of an additional 23.31 since a first revision earlier in the year captured most of the decline.
GPS’ second revision shows a maintenance and operations budget of $292.1 million and an unrestricted capital budget of $55.27 million. It was $292.24 million in M&O and $55.26 million in capital at the first revision.
Still, that is better than the originally adopted budget from last June when M&O was projected at $286.23 million and capital at $52.78 million.
The M&O budget pays for the day-to-day operations of districts, including most salaries. The capital budget pays for items like buildings, buses, textbooks and technology.
The reason on the M&O side is that the budget balance carry forward proved much healthier than anticipated after an encumbrance period passed and the district resolved all its outstanding invoices, Associate Superintendent Bonnie Betz told the board.
The district also had anticipated the need to transfer some money from capital to M&O to balance its budget, but that proved unnecessary, helping boost the capital budget.
The GPS Governing Board passed the revision 3-0 with board members Lori Wood and Ronda Page absent at its May 7 meeting.
Higley had not revised its budget thus far this fiscal year. But similar to GPS, Higley made conservative estimates on its budget balance carry forwards in both maintenance and operations and unrestricted capital funding, offsetting the loss of ADM.
Higley’s ADM dropped 226.5683 from its estimates to start the year.
Its revised M&O budget is for $126.12 million, up from the adopted budget of $124.79 million, mostly on budget balance carry forward but also some of it based on higher weighted counts among some special education students, Chief Financial Officer Tyler Moore said. Those students bring more funding to the formula.
The capital budget went from $23.7 million at adoption to $26.07 million at revision, again mostly off budget balance carry forward but also a little from interest earned.
The board passed the revision 4-0 May 8 with Board Member Kristina Reese absent.
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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