Chandler schools budget revision leads to hot topics
Independent Newsmedia/Jason W. Brooks
Chandler Unified Governing Board member Ryan Heap speaks during a recent meeting. Heap and another board member had questions before a 4-1 vote to approve a third budget revision for the 2025-26 school year.
Whenever Arizona school districts make in-year budget adjustments, enrollment figures tend to be part of the discussion.
Chandler Unified’s Governing Board approved, by a 4-1 vote, its third and final budget adjustment of the 2025-26 school year May 6. Board member Kurt Rohrs’ protest vote against the adjustment was, he said, because he didn’t get the information he sought a few days before the board meeting.
The board discussion involving the district’s chief finance officer, Lana Berry, was centered not only on enrollment, but also on career and technical education capital funding.
As is often the case with school district budget revisions, offsetting changes meant a very slight overall change to CUSD’s overall budget this time. The district’s fiscal 2026 budget was reduced from $637.2 million to about $636.85 million — a reduction of only about $350,000.
Since many state funding mechanisms use a per-student formula, each district’s average daily membership is one of the most-mentioned statistics.
ADM is an Arizona-specific formula that involved enrollment data from a few designated dates in each school year.
Berry said the drop from the board-approved December budget revision in funding is about $1.48 million. Also, in that six-month span, the ADM special-education decline has cost the district about $1.56 million in weighted funding.
Chandler’s ADM has fallen consistently over the past six school years, declining from about 43,000 students to the most current total of 38,592. That’s down 215 students from CUSD’s second budget revision in December and is almost 1,400 students fewer from the final revision of the 2024-25 school year.
The district’s ADM, which Board member Ryan Heap asked if the accuracy of the projections made by Applied Economics, the East Valley demography service that contracts regularly with CUSD and other districts.
“I’d like to see some campus comparisons,” Heap said. “I don’t believe it’s uniform and I don’t think reasons for leaving (or district parents who never enroll their children in a CUSD school) are uniform, either.”
Berry said she could easily provide historical enrollment data to the board on all 46 schools in the district.
Berry said while CUSD elementary enrollments have been dropping since about 2015, the combination of private and charter vouchers, COVID-19 disenrollees who didn’t return to the district and lower Arizona birth rates have all affected enrollment.
Rohrs voted against the second budget revision in December after in-meeting dialogue with Berry over various aspects of flow of funding through the East Valley Institute of Technology, the Mesa-based career and technical-ed district, just after CUSD and about nine other districts filed suit against EVIT over proposed funding changes after a state audit of EVIT.
He voted no again May 6 after pressing Berry on assuring the board on whether there were any funds in the “596” fund that should be in a different fund.
“We spent $13 million last year on the CTE programs at our high schools,” Berry said. “And since I’ve been here, we’ve never had an audit finding for CTE funds moved improperly.”
Berry pointed out one of the main contentions from the lawsuit is a dispute over how EVIT partner districts are supposed to cover capital expenses for CTE classes that have soared in recent years. Examples would be the expensive improvements approved this spring for CUSD culinary programs, along with the startup hardware needed for Hamilton High School’s semiconductor program.
“Sometimes, those big capital projects require money from more than one budget year,” Berry said.
Rohrs said that wasn’t what he asked about. Sounding frustrated, he asked if funds that used to be kept elsewhere were now in the 596 fund and if any 596 funds were used for any non-CTE expenses.
Jason W. Brooks News Editor | Chandler Independent
Jason W. Brooks joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in July 2021 as an associate editor. After a year covering Buckeye, he has covered Chandler since the fall of 2022, in addition to assisting the Daily Independent throughout his time at INI.
Education: University of New Mexico, bachelor of arts in journalism and mass communication, print emphasis, English minor.
Random Fact: He and his siblings witnessed a Space Shuttle launch and landing in the same year in person, on opposite coasts.
Hobbies: Karaoke, bicycling and American Sign Language.
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