To: Asha Riley, Superintendent
From: Stacy Brown, Director of Business Services
Date: January 16, 2025
Subject: December Financial/January Enrollment
I received some great news this week! For those of you who were on the board, you may remember that the fiscal year 21-22 audit (performed in March-May 2023) resulted in a finding that had $217,000 in questioned costs attached to it. The program that received the finding was part of the erate program and was part of the large amount of covid funds that we received. The WA State Auditor’s Office wrote the same findings for almost every district in the state that received the funds, so Woodland was not alone (95% of the findings that were written on this program came from WA and this was a multi-billion dollar national program). Once the Auditor’s identify the issues and calculate the questioned costs, it is up to the Federal program administrator (in this case it is the FCC) to determine if funds should be owed back. We have provided lots of documentation to the FCC in our fight regarding this finding, and I got a letter this week that the finding is closed, and they will not be recouping any of the funds. This has been hanging out for 2 years, and it is really great to have some closure. I attached the letter from the FCC (pages 1-2).
As required by RCW, I have attached the December Budget Status Reports for all funds. I am (still!) working with the software team and waiting for them to get all of the models set up for this year that will give me the ability to project monthly revenues, expenditures ending fund balance and cash flow. I will have projected amounts for you with the January financial information in February. Had I know it was going to take this long to set everything up for this year I would have taken the time to set up my spreadsheets and run my own projections. Here are a few things of note:
General Fund (page 3):
This report shows a month by month total of the percentage of budgeted revenues received and the percentage of budgeted expenditures spent. In a normal year, we could then compare these percentages to prior years to ensure we are on track. On the revenue side, by December, we had collected 33.57% of the total revenues for the year compared to 26.42% collected this year. This is due to the fact that the majority of property taxes in the last fiscal year were due in October (second half of the 2024 calendar year levy).
On the expenditure side, it shows the total percentage of budgeted expenditures. The expenditure side includes encumbrances. The encumbrances represent any outstanding Purchase Orders for projects and also the amount owed at this time for all of the base salaries and benefits (this does not include amounts paid for subs, OT, additional time, winter/spring coaches, etc…). Through December this year, we are at 84.74% compared with 91.28% last year. This looks like we’re spending much less than last year, but with the new system last year I had not quite figured out the encumbrance process and they were higher than they should have been. For that reason, I compared the actual expenditures for the year and compared to the budgeted expenditures and compared to last year. Last year we spent 34.6%, and this year, we have spent 34.5%, so our expenditures are very much in line with where we were last year.=
Capital Projects Fund (pages 4-5):
There still hasn’t been a whole lot of activity yet in the Capital Projects Fund, but thai time I included the second page of the report so you can see the fund balance in the separate project accounts. We have a balance for impact fees, for district projects and for the KWRL projects. As you can see from the report, we have a balance of $79,550 for district projects, $255,000 for impact fees, and $200,000 for the KWRL projects. The amount owing on the portable as of the end of December is $60,500 and $12,000 on the roof project.
Debt Service Fund (page 6):
December is the month when the annual bond payments and the semi-annual interest payments are due, so you can see that we spent $2.6M this year. One good piece of news is this was the last payment on the 2005 bonds that were passed to pay for the property that was purchased for the new WHS. There are now only two bond issues remaining (2012 and 2013 bond for WHS). The next payment is not until June, so we have lots of time to build the balance back up since taxes are due again in April.
Associated Student Body (ASB) Fund (page 7):
Fall and winter are busy times for the ASB fund as the fall sports bring in the majority of gate receipts received for the year, and the clubs are busy fundraising and running concessions as fundraisers. As of December, the fund balance increase is $68,000 (down slightly from $72,000 last month).
Transportation Vehicle Fund (page 8):
This fund can only be used to pay for school buses or debt related to purchasing school buses. The balance in this fund is at a level where we will not ever need to go into debt. However, if you look at the encumbrances, you can see that we currently have more encumbered than our current fund balance (by almost $3M. We have outstanding PO’s for $1,050,000 for buses that were ordered last year but have not yet been received or paid for and we issued PO’s (ordered) 8 diesel buses and 14 electric buses. We will be receiving $2.8M from the EPA for the electric buses and we do not expect to receive or pay for all of these buses this year. Sometimes, it takes upward of 2 years to receive a bus after it is ordered, so we will have more funds deposited to the account by the time the buses need to be paid for (this year, we will be receiving approx $1.6M in depreciation and even more the years after that. Shannon and I are keeping an eye on the balance.
I have attached the enrollment reports for January. The FTE count for January is 6.92 greater than budget. This is up 12 heads and 10.98 FTE from December. The average for the year is still 9.3 above budget. If you look at the headcount sheet you can see we are up 12 students at K-8. Plenty of the discussions at the board workshop were centered around K-8 class sizes, and this is one of the reasons why. With the semester change coming up at the end of the month, we could see a shift (never knowing which way), but if the activity in the Registrar’s office since the break is any indication, I expect enrollment to increase over January. I also included the Special Education numbers. As of December, we are down 2.25 in PK, but up 6.25 (up from 4 over budget last month). Special Education historically increases throughout the year, so I expect these numbers to increase even more (pages 9-10).
Please let me know if you have any questions on the attached Budget Status or enrollment reports.