No matter where you live in the state of Colorado, the only thing you need to know is that schools receive their money on a per-pupil basis. More students bring in more money--fewer students equate to less money. The complexity of the funding model is the model itself, but if you know approximately how many students you'll have in your district in the month of October, the model computes the amount the district should receive that school year.
Student losses are averaged over a five year period--There is not a 1-1 correlation of student loss vs. money loss. In a recent article in the SkyHi News, a district handout said that losing 70 students would equate to a $440,489 loss of revenue to the district. That's a lie. In a call with Mary Lynn Christel, a principle consultant of Public School Finance at the Colorado Department of Education, I was told that the actual loss this year would be $91,000 because of a smoothing formula that averages student population over a five year period.
Why the district would choose to lie about this is beyond me, but it makes me question the entire leadership team when these kinds of misrepresentations are not only handed out, but allowed to be made public in the newspaper without a retraction or correction. Okay, moving on.
In order to calculate how much money East Grand or any other district will be receiving in the coming year, just visit the Colorado Department of Education's website regarding the Public School Finance Act of 1994. There you'll find the Fiscal Year 2011-2012 District Funding Calculation Worksheet. It's an Xcel document, and very easy to play around with.
East Grand Schools are under the BV column on the worksheet. It looks like this:
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Notice the rows on the left. Line 8 shows the expected October Full Time Enrollment (FTE) count of 1192 students. That's already lower than the estimates the district was using as a "Worst Case Scenario" of 1278 students in a handout from a few weeks ago. Keep this in mind for later.
So, with 1192 students expected next year, what does the budget look like? Let's take a look. In the budget, just scroll down to line 290. Here's a screenshot for you:
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Line 290, GT7.1 TOTAL PROGRAM is the number you want. With 1192 students, the Colorado Department of Education says the district will be receiving $8,264,856.02. That's about $2.3 million less than last year, right? NO! There's more.
The voters of Grand County, out of their own generosity, approved a mill levy override so that the school district would be able to receive even more money than that allowed by the 1994 School Finance Act. Referring back to the worksheet, please go to line 79 and 81:
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Lines 79 and 81 are constant. They will not change from year-to-year, so these are essentially guaranteed funds. $784,125 + $1,330,000 gives East Grand an additional $2,114,125 every year. There is other free money that has been coming to the district for the last decade, such as Payment in Lieu and Federal Forest Reserve Funds, but we won't even add those in. So where do we stand for 2011-2012?
Let's add the $2,144,125 guaranteed funds to the $8,264,856.02 the State says we'll receive for a total of $10,378,981.02.
The district budget last year was a little over $10,500,000... that's only $121,000 dollars different--NOT $1.2 million! And that doesn't even include nearly $200,000 in Forest Reserve Funds the county has been handing out over the last few years.
What conclusions can be drawn here? If I were a town or the county, I would probably be wondering aloud why the school closure issue is even on the table right now. I would be wondering why the school district is obfuscating the truth. I would be wondering why the newspaper continues to print absolute rubbish. I would wonder why we're being lied to!
Ok Reggie I think your math is off. I took a look at the CDE state funding worksheets. I took the total funding level line 263(from 2010) then added the same 2 amounts you did.
ReplyDelete9,853,602.45 + 1,330,000 + 784,125= 11,967,727.45
Then took the total from the projected 2011-12 and subtracted.
11,967,727.45 - 10,378,981.02= 1,588,746.43
By these figures it is a difference of 1.5 million.
Hello Darrell, if you go to Page 3 of the East Grand School District #2 Budget, you'll see the district budgeted $10,551,288 for the '10-'11 school year.
ReplyDeleteA surplus between budgeted and actual should add to the general fund. We only have actual figures for the '08-'09 school year in the district website.
Obviously, we need to account for declining revenues in the future, but I'm trying to point out that we're not talking about $1.5 million dollars less than budgeted from last year--rather less than $200,000 as it stands today.
Reggie, as always you do a great job researching, analyzing and writing about your subject to highlight a serious problem with the grand county school district budget. I don't disagree with much of what you are saying, however what is missing from your work is a solution. It's great that you are bringing all of these problems to light and hopefully more than your wife and I are taking notice, but you don't offer up anything that could be done to help resolve the problems you are revealing. Do you want to see these problems resolved or are you just sharpening the sword for the school district to fall on? To highlight a problem without offering a solution is just complaining and it doesn't help anyone especially the most important people which are yours and my children.
ReplyDeleteReggie I used the same lines from the projected 2011-12 work sheet and the 2010-11 work sheet from CDE. I used the same source to figure both numbers. However you are using two different sources to figure yours. Looking at the figures from page 3 of the budget, total revenue for 2010-11 year was $11,578,383 and the total revenue for the 2011-12 year is $10,551,286. The difference of those two amounts is $1,027,097. So again your amount of $200,000 is wrong.
ReplyDeleteDarrell, you made the same mistake I first made with looking at the district budget... The 2011 budgeted figure on page 3 is for the '10-'11 school year, NOT the '11-'12 year.
ReplyDeleteReggie you're right, I misread the budget on which year is which. However you are still using two different sources to come up with your 200k. Case in point on why you can't do that is this. The 2010-11 budget number is $10,551,286 and the total funding from CDE's work sheet for the same year is $11,967,727.
ReplyDelete11,967,727(CDE 10-11) - 10,551,286(Budget 10-11) = 1,416,441
So there is a difference in the funding work sheet to the adopted budget with in the same year. Therefore using the budget to the CDE work sheet is not accurate. However using the CDE funding worksheet for both years (10-11 to 11-12) is more accurate. That difference is 1.5 million.
Hello Darrell... We're getting closer. Go to this link for the FY 2010-2011 vs 2011-2012 fiscal year:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cde.state.co.us/cdefinance/download/spreadsheet/TotalProgramEstimate&Variance2011to2012GovRequest.xls
Go to line 75 for East Grand Schools and compare the actual '10-'11 figure with the projected '11-'12 figure. The actual projected difference is $737,584.42, which is 500k away from my figure and 700k away from yours. That's FUNDING though, not budgeted expense.
Reggie,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, more students means more money and less students would mean less money. But remember, as stated in all the newspaper articles locally and in the denver post, please also mention just as many times it also matters how much the state gives our district and all other district PER PUPIL. It seems like the state keeps reducing this. So, in a way, more students could be less money as well, if you compare what we get next year to maybe what we got two or three years ago. Please do not twist the truth by not mentioning an important fact as much as one you feel agrees with your opinion.
@Anonymous... In my twisting of the truth, I failed to mention that the schools continued to receive more money right up until the last school year, where the declines started to show up and, incidentally, when the district began their closure talks.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I guess in 2008, when the entire world economy fell off of a cliff, it would have been imprudent to make a guess that school revenues would not only decline, but plummet.
Per pupil funding will continue to decline statewide for the foreseeable future. So will property assessments, tax revenues and all else attached to tax-based revenues.
You are correct... Fewer is less and more, eventually, will be less. I'll bend the truth around that.