community
School Enrollment and Funding
my mind that’s a very positive thing for
the district and it’s a very positive thing
for the community.”
In 2014-15 the Oregon schools
across the state received $6,947 per
student from the State School Fund
(SSF). An increase of twenty-eight
students would therefore appear
to be a significant boon to the ever
tightening budget of the cash strapped
Vernonia School District, which has
been struggling to make ends meet due
to cuts in state funding, their declining
enrollment, and expenses related to the
construction of the new campus.
And, it is a boon. More students,
means more money, right?
The short answer is yes. But the
long answer is much more complicated.
What’s the problem?
The increase in students can be
seen as both a positive and a negative.
The growth in enrollment could be a sign
that things are finally turning around for
the school district and for the community,
and obviously means more funding. The
flip side is that extra students also put a
strain on the resources the district is
currently able to provide.
Comprehending the impact of
the increase in enrollment is trickier
than one might think. First of all, school
enrollment is an ever changing number,
with families and registered students
coming into, and moving out of the
district constantly. The exact number of
students enrolled can change from week
to week, even day to day.
Secondly, the amount the
school district receives is initially based
entirely on estimates, and involves a
complex process of reconciliations
throughout a school year to adjust the
amount of payments the district receives
from the state. District officials and the
district budget are constantly in flux and
in the dark about the actual amount of
funding they will receive from the state
during any given school year; which
makes planning a budget somewhat
challenging.
Thirdly, what makes figuring the
numbers so convoluted is that the final
numbers involve enrollment statistics
and funding for parts of at least three
fiscal school years; the previous year, the
current year and the upcoming year.
How does the state figure funding?
The state has developed a
formula they use to take the Average
Daily Membership (ADMr), which is
the number of students attending the
school full time, and turning it into the
Extended ADM (ADMw), the figure the
state uses to calculate the amount each
school district will receive from the SSF.
Without getting into all the nitty gritty
details, here is a brief summation of how
the state and the district figure out school
district funding.
They start with school district
local revenue, which is an estimate of all
the money the school district will receive
from local property taxes, the Common
School fund, the county school fund, and
state managed timber. For the 2014-15
school year Vernonia estimated Local
Revenue at $2,900,161.
For the most
part, the system
does work. But
there are several
holes in the
system, some
of them more
gaping than
others.
Next they figure the district’s
Extended ADM. Taking the initial
ADM, (the number of students the
school district estimates they will
have enrolled for the school year) they
multiply by a number of factors that
increase costs to the district to provide
services, to calculate the final Extended
ADM. Among the weighted factors
are: students in an English as a Second
Language (ESL) program, students
in Pregnant and Parenting Programs,
students in Special Education programs,
and students in poverty and foster care
programs. Vernonia also receives extra
factors for the students enrolled at the
remote Mist School and extra factors for
being a small high school.
As an example, students in an
ESL program count as an additional
factor of .5, students in poverty count
as an extra .25 and a percentage of high
school students count as an extra 1.0.
Those extra factors give the district
additional funding and resources to help
compensate for these special issues and
student needs they must meet.
Remember, these are all
estimates that needed to be included in
and are part of the school district 2014-
15 budget process, which took place in
the spring of 2014. With all the weighted
factors, Vernonia’s ADM went from an
estimated 550 students for the 2014-15
october16
2014
continued from front page
school year to an Extended ADM for
2014-15 of 756.24.
The state then takes that
Extended ADM and multiplies it by
their basic grant funds and several other
ratios and then adds in some additional
costs (remember, we’re trying to make
this easy to understand) to come up with
a total formula amount. For 2014-15 that
number for Vernonia was $5,773,657,
which includes an additional call-out
Transportation Grant of $520,000.
They then subtract the Local Revenue
($2,900,161 from above) to get a final
SSF estimate of $2,873,495.
This is the amount that should
be paid to the District in monthly
installments. The state begins making
those payments in July and they are paid
through May.
Because these Local Revenue
and ADM amounts are estimates, the
state has built into the process several
opportunities to adjust numbers. The
district has a chance to revise their
number in the fall based on changes
that have occurred, like the unexpected
increase in enrollment they experienced
this year. There is also an opportunity
to make changes in December. A final
reconciliation for estimated payments
versus actual data happens in May.
Does this system really work?
For the most part, the system
does work. But there are several holes
in the system, some of them more gaping
than others.
One hole is that it is all guess
work. A school district’s SSF payments
for the next year could be impacted if
they over or under estimated enrollment
or local revenue. This is what happened
at the Vernonia School District during the
last several fiscal cycles. According to
Superintendent Miller, district officials
expected to see an upswing in enrollment
when the new school campus opened
in 2012 and made modest increases in
their estimates. When those increases
in enrollment failed to materialize, the
district found themselves in the position
of owing back to the state some of the
funds they had already budgeted and
even spent, which impacted future
payments. In the 2013-14 budget cycle,
the District estimated for 540 students
and ended with a reconciled number of
532.
The reverse is true this year,
at least so far. For 2014-15 the district
estimated 550 students and currently
have 560 enrolled; which means the
district has not yet received funding for
students they have to provide resources
Publisher and Managing Editor
Scott Laird
503-367-0098
scott@vernoniasvoice.com
Contributors
Chip Bubl
Tobie Finzel
James T. Ferguson
Karen Kain
Dr. Carol McIntyre
Grant Williams
Photography
Karen Kain
Scott Laird
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for and teach. The five K-2 blended
classrooms were expected to have
twenty-three students in each class when
the idea was proposed and implemented
this past summer; because of the influx
of young families into the district over
the summer, those classes have twenty-
seven and twenty-eight students each.
Without funding in the budget to hire
additional teachers, class sizes have
turned out to be larger than anticipated
throughout the school system.
“As we see needs, we can move
forward and address those issues in
some cases with extra employee hours,”
explains Miller. “And we did that this
past summer when we saw a need in
the size of the incoming kindergarten
class; we hired an additional teacher
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503-429-5841
continued on page 17
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Cedar Side Inn
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