The Carson City School District’s first-quarter average daily enrollment rose from 6,935 to 7,001 students and will help boost its general fund revenue by about $600,000, Chief Financial Officer Spencer Winward told trustees Dec. 10.
The district is required to adopt an amendment to its final budget by the end of the end of the year as final enrollment counts are determined. Officials follow by making changes to the average daily enrollment (ADE) estimate and revenue increases to align with its financials from the previous fiscal year.
Winward reported December 2023’s amended budget total general fund expenditures stood at approximately $82.9 million for fiscal year 2025, which now have been amended to $83.6 million, an increase of $684,000 for staffing and non-staffing costs and transfers.
The deficit in May was about $2.1 million and remained about the same with only an $18,000 increase, but changes continue to remain fluid as operational needs carry on into the spring.
Board members were pleased with Winward’s projections.
Related to categorical funding, Trustee Mike Walker, also a member of the Nevada State Board of Education, asked about potential changes from the state to school districts affecting money for at-risk students. He sought suggestions from Winward and Superintendent Andrew Feuling.
Winward called it a “two-edged sword” as the district works with data from last year.
“If you improve your at-risk students so they get out of that category so you no longer receive funding for them, but maybe what keeps them out of that category was the services you were providing for them so it’s very difficult to say, ‘Yeah, we’ve succeeded, we’ve moved X number of students out of at-risk,’” Winward said.
Services, however, might need to remain in place in case of the possibility those students end up backsliding, so a steady stream of funding should remain and some districts, such as Elko County, lost a great deal of the funding last year, Winward said.
Adding to the challenge is Nevada’s school funding remains well under where it should be to provide the educational results expected through the per-pupil formula. The change to the Pupil Centered Funding Plan, with its targeted demographics on at-risk, English learners and gifted and talented students, that could have received special funding can only receive funding for the category providing for the greatest amount of dollars.
But Feuling explained the arbitrary use of a “grad score” from 50 to 150 — a range determining how likely a student is to graduate — to show whether a student is at risk, for which Nevada is the only score to use Infinite Campus’ complicates the issue.
“We are the only state that uses to determine any kind of funding allocation, which gives me pause as to, you know, the idea of you wanting to be transparent with how this is all allocated and that this machine learning algorithm is churning out these numbers, and we really don’t know exactly how it’s happening is a little bit of a concern,” Feuling said.
Trustees approved its amended budget in a 7-0 vote.