Funding changes could spell trouble for school district

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

By Sam Petri

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Janine Teske, chairwoman of the Teton County School Board of Trustees, warned fellow board members at last Wednesday’s board meeting that proposed changes in the way the State of Wyoming distributes funds to school districts could spell trouble for the Teton County School District.

On Sept. 24, Teske attended a Joint Education Interim Committee meeting in Casper where she said she learned that the committee “wants to take away the grant they give to us in the beginning of the year and give it to us on a monthly basis.”

Such a change would mean the loss of a significant amount of money the school makes in interest – “Probably to the tune of $400,000 to $500,000,” Teske said.

The Teton County School District currently gets its state school funds in one lump sum, called a block grant, at the beginning of the fiscal year in June. This large sum of money earns a significant amount of interest over the course of the school year, a source of revenue TCSD has come to rely upon.

If the state were to change the policy and pass legislation to distribute funds on a monthly basis, TCSD would lose that interest revenue as well as their control over the block grant.

“How can they do monthly payments?” asked shocked School Board Clerk Zia Yasrobi. “Number one, our expenses are not the same every month.” Expenses such as fuel, power and transportation fluctuate month to month. “This is not only going to cost us interest income, but it’s going to be another budget item – interest expense!”
He mused about a possible scenario in which the district would have to establish a line of credit to pay its bills until it got the money to supplement it from the state. “Ludicrous,” he said.

The rest of the board appeared to agree that the ramifications of such a change could be significant.

Teske also announced to the board that the Joint Education Interim Committee also discussed changing the way the state funds schools via enrollment. Currently, the state funds school districts through a formula called Average Daily Resident Membership (ADM). The formula tracks the number of children enrolled in a district’s public schools on an average daily basis over the course of the school year, then funds the school district accordingly. At the Sept. 24 meeting, however, Joint Education Interim Committee members discussed changing the formula to Average Daily Attendance (ADA).

“Let’s say we have a student who only attends school for six periods out of the day,” Teske said. “We only get money for those six periods of the day. There could be a huge impact upon us in terms of what dollars we get per person, as well as some of the record keeping that may be required to keep that process up.”

The ADA formula has been enacted in several other states, including Idaho, and is designed to put fiscal incentive on high attendance rates, something most school districts already emphasize. Under the current ADM formula, if a student does not attend school for the day, the school still receives the same funding if the student is enrolled in the school full time. Under the ADA formula, however, funding is distributed according to how long each individual student is in class.

“It was very disheartening,” Teske said of the Joint Education Interim Committee meeting. “I heard very, very little about student achievement and how the new finance model has allowed us to keep our class sizes down and helped us with student achievement.”

The Teton County School Board holds its next meeting at 6 p.m. on Oct. 10 at Colter Elementary School.
PERMALINK:
Funding changes could spell trouble for school district | Planet JH News Article: Jackson Hole High School

Leave a Comment