From left, Gilbert Public Schools Budget Manager Lauren Torska, Associate Superintendent Bonnie Betz and Finance Director Jackie Mattinen share a laugh as they prepare to discuss the budget with the GPS Governing Board.
Gilbert Public Schools is estimating a loss of 1,200 students for 2024-25, a factor in why its proposed budgets for the fiscal year are smaller than its current revised budget.
The governing board approved on a 4-0 vote at its June 11 meeting a $269.62 million maintenance and operations budget and a $50.62 million unrestricted capital budget. Board Member Chad Thompson was absent for the vote.
The budget was completed without the Arizona Legislature having passed a state budget, a fact that district officials acknowledged may require an early revision to it in the fall.
“We don't think we're shooting in the dark, but at the same time, I think it's a very educated guess, but anything can happen when the final budget comes down from the state,” Superintendent Shane McCord said.
Associate Superintendent Bonnie Betz said it has been a rough year for budget planning.
“We've had very limited, even less information coming from the legislature than we've had in the past, so there's arguably probably more risk associated with the budget proposal,” she said. “Fortunately though, we are in a pretty solid place financially to be able to mitigate any unforeseen additional reduction. So we feel like this is a pretty good proposed budget.”
The budget will go before the governing board for final adoption at a public hearing June 25.
The budget discussion is driven by student count, and Betz said the district has been seeing smaller kindergarten classes each year, leading to smaller cohort sizes going up through the elementary schools.
That made the estimated loss in average daily membership, an enrollment-based number that is a key figure in the state’s education funding formulas, to be 1,200, Betz said. ADM is the total enrollment of fractional and full-time students, minus withdrawals, of each school day through the first 100 days.
However, Betz said district marketing efforts may help keep the loss under that.
“We are tentatively feeling fairly positive that it may only be a thousand student loss, but we're watching it closely,” she said. “There's always that fear of what happens in July when we didn't hear from any families and then all of a sudden they're not showing up and we have to withdraw them.”
The maintenance and operations budget, which covers day-to-day operations of the district including most salaries, would fall $4.45 million from fiscal year 2023-24's second revised budget, mostly on the loss of ADM.
It also includes a slightly smaller amount, about $670,000, from the district’s 15% M&O override as a result of the smaller revenue control limit. The projected budget balance carry forward is about $2.93 million less than the current budget, but the district at present plans to transfer $2 million from its unrestricted capital budget to maintenance and operations to help balance the budget.
The budget includes $8.01 million for pay increases, representing a 2% increase for most employees. The average teacher salary is calculated at $68,393.
The capital budget shows a small decrease in “district additional assistance” from the state for capital projects, based on the ADM decline offsetting an estimated 2% increase in DAA from the state.
Also gone would be the one-time $8.76 million payment from the state for capital improvements that was part of the fiscal year 2023-24 budget. But a larger budget balance carry forward keeps the overall decrease in the unrestricted capital budget to $4.65 million.
The combined primary and secondary property tax rate would fall by $0.2437 to $5.4518 per $100 assessed valuation, a decrease of 4.28%. As most properties valuations increase by 5% annually, as capped by state law, it means homeowners will see little increase in their overall tax bill attributable to the district.
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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