Date: March 11, 2024
To: Michael Green, Superintendent
Subject: Financial/Enrollment Report
From: Stacy Brown, Director of Business Services
I have finally had time to prepare the spreadsheets for review of the line-by-line revenues and expenditures to project the year-end fund balance. It is quite a job since I haven’t had to use these spreadsheets since I implemented the Forecast5 software. I also had to build new reports in the new Skyward system so this also took quite a bit of time. It will be much easier moving forward. I plan to update the full “sources and uses” spreadsheet every 2 months each year. I will start in December and report in February, April and June. I will use the monthly projections each month to keep up to date on the off months.
I am caught up with all entries for January and have the January reports up to date for all funds. I have compared the monthly revenues and expenditures to projected revenues and expenditures for January, based on the budget (page 2 of the presentation). Each month the total revenues and total expenditures are compared to projected and also compared to percentages of the prior year. Each month the cumulative revenues and expenditures will be compared to projected and to the prior year to identify anomalies.
January Monthly Actual Compared to Projected (page 2)
Revenues were $130,000 higher than projected. In January 2024, we received ESSER reimbursement of $330,000, compared to very little in previous years. One thing that resulted in less revenues than projected is that I did not claim the Federal Title grants this month, but did in previous months. These were the only items where I noticed large differences. Per the projected year-to-date amounts, we have received 3.94% more revenues than expected. This time last year, we were 1.09% less than projected. The difference is that we have collected almost all of our tax revenue for this year, whereas last year, we had only received half at this point.
Payroll was approximately $43,000 more than projected. As mentioned in previous months, the KWRL increases were about 3% greater than budgeted and this will affect all months. We are also still short on drivers (so we are paying less driver contracts) but we are paying office staff and mechanics extra hours and OT to drive which costs more than paying drivers. In previous years we had budgeted unfilled positions, but most of the budgeted positions have been filled. In some cases (a couple of special education paras) we have added more staff than budgeted. Certificated salaries are greater than budgeted, due to movement on the salary scale that was not budgeted and we have one teacher out on paid sick leave, so we are paying the teacher and the sub for the remainder of the year.
Accounts payable was $92,000 less than projected. Last year, we paid about $237,000 for HVAC projects and the pcard was $50,000 greater for the same period. With the levy failure this year everyone is aware and not spending unless it is necessary. This is good, since payroll costs are consistently coming in greater than budgeted.
The percentage of expenditures paid year to date is almost exactly what was projected. This is compared to spending about 1% higher than projected at this time last year. Based on what I know about the expenditures this year, this is reasonable.
Projected Revenues, Expenditures, and Ending Fund Balance (pages 3-6)
The report here provides the projected funding, and projected expenditures and identifies the levy and miscellaneous revenues necessary to support the various programs. In the past, this has been referred to as the Sources and Uses report and you will hear it referred as such moving forward. The report is organized in the same order as the monthly apportionment (revenue) report from the state with the applicable expenditures and the difference identified as levy/miscellaneous revenues. The negative numbers identify areas that are underfunded based on expenditures and positive numbers identify areas that have more funding than expenditures.
I would like to take some time at the board meeting to go over the various parts of the report and how they all work together. The summary on page 6 shows the total projected revenues, projected expenditures, and projected fund balance. The ending fund balance is projected to decrease by roughly $600,000. The budgeted decrease was $700,000, so we have made up a small part of the decrease. I listed a couple of the bigger reasons for the difference from budget. On page 7 I included a chart identifying levy and miscellaneous revenue amounts by category.
January Budget Status Reports (7-11)
I included the Budget Status Reports for all funds for January. If you look at the expenditure balances, you will see that program 00 (Regular Instruction) shows a negative balance of ($1,305,743) and a total balance remaining for the year of $557,414. This is not correct. It was my understanding that once the payroll encumbrances (4th column) (“Encumbrance” is an accounting term that represents a commitment to spend money for a particular purpose at some point in the future), were set up so that they automatically updated each month once payroll was completed. I have since learned that this is not the case and I have to run a process to update the encumbrances after payroll is completed. This process also needs to be run each month. I did not realize this until after I ran the encumbrance process after the February payroll. So, the encumbrances you see here are the November encumbrances and include 2 months too much. When the February reports are posted, they will be correct and provide a better picture of projected payroll costs for the rest of the year.
Status reports for the remaining funds are also included. Revenues received in the Capital Projects fund (page 8) for the year consist of investment revenues and some impact fees. The majority of expenditures are for the electric car and charger for KWRL. In the Debt Service Fund (page 9) we have collected about half of the tax revenues for the year, but paid the bond principal and half of the interest for the year, so the fund balance is at the low point for the year. This will build back up in the next couple of months with the second half of taxes coming in. The ASB Fund (page 10) revenues are about $48,000 greater than the expenditures so far for the year. They have collected the majority of their revenues for the year, but still have a few months of expenditures, so I expect that balance to decrease some by the end of the year. Transportation Vehicle Fund (page 11) has a current balance of almost $4,150,000. We will receive about another $1.5M this year in state depreciation and Woodland’s portion of new buses for the year. Encumbrances of almost $2M consist of buses that have been ordered, but it sounds like only a couple of them will be here before the end of the year, so the fund balance as of the end of the year will be up over $5M.
Enrollment
The first enrollment document (slide 12) shows a comparison of average FTE compared to budgeted FTE. Funding is based on FTE (not headcount) so this is the important document. Funding is based on our average annual FTE (which includes September through January at this time). For March we are 37.14 below budget and the average for the year is 26.89 below budget. The decrease between February and March was .97 FTE. Enrollment has been more stable over the past couple of months, even with the decrease at TEAM due to early graduations and withdrawals. However, we are still approximately 27 FTE below budget. This will definitely have a negative effect on the ending fund balances. You also see the Special Education enrollment numbers and how they compare to budget. Special Education enrollment average is figured from October through May. The numbers you see here are for 6 months and we are 4.00 over at PK and just 1.83 below budget at K-21. I will let you know how this affects the district projections starting with January data in February.
The second document (page 13) is a summary by headcount for March, with a comparison to February. The counts by grade level include the Yale, LRA, and TEAM High numbers (all totals for the district). The section below shows the total March headcount for those buildings compared with the previous month's headcount. Overall, we are down only 3 students from February.
Please let me know if you have any questions.