TASBO recently updated the 2015-16 Pupil Projection Template. Why should school officials engage in pupil enrollment projection activities? Enrollment size for the current school year and estimates for trends for future school years represent one of the primary cost drivers for a school district. Strategic planning activities and all areas of school district day-to-day management and administration are directly affected by pupil enrollment levels and trends.
Accurate projections help ensure estimated available resources will be effectively used to deliver the locally desired level of education-related programs and services under a balanced budget. Per pupil based allocations built on accurate projections help ensure sufficient resources are provide across all of the function and operational areas that directly delivery programs, services and activities from the time in the morning that the student boards a bus until the student is transported back home in the afternoon.
Pupil projections are also critical to a school districts’ cash flow because the Legislature uses these projections in making funding decisions for the General Appropriations Act for the Legislative funding biennium. For this reason, best estimates for pupil projections are pivotal to prompting the Legislature to appropriate funds for TEA to distribute to school districts that will closely align with future enrollment trends. If ADA projections are too low and lead to Foundation School Program cash flow issues, school administrators must still deliver programs, services and activities and meet all compliance requirements, like maintenance of effort. School districts will want to avoid having to take out a cash flow loan or deplete fund balance reserves in order to meet maintenance of effort spending requirements in addition to covering overall budgetary and operational cash flow needs.
The TASBO Pupil Project Template provides several approaches to forecasting pupil attendance for future years. With the recent update, the template now contains school year 2014-15 enrollment and the 2014-15 Near-Final Summary of Finances attendance data for enrollment and average daily attendance projections for school year 2015-16 and future school years.
To access the TASBO 2015-16 Pupil Projection Template, click on the link below.
http://www.tasbo.org/resource/tools-templates/pupil-projection