Despite slight enrollment increase this year, the Lawrence school district expects to see a drop in state funding next budget

photo by: Journal-World

Lawrence Public Schools district offices pictured in April 2021.

Despite seeing a slight increase in its in-person enrollment this fall, the Lawrence school district expects to lose millions in funding next year.

Normally, an enrollment increase would have provided a funding increase as well. However, the district in recent years has used a provision outlined in the state’s K-12 funding formula to soften the blow of previous enrollment decreases by stretching out when the funding drops are felt.

But now the district must see some of the ramifications of those prior decreases, which could mean a drop of funding between $2 million and $3.2 million, district finance director Kathy Johnson told the Lawrence school board on Monday.

“At some point you have to catch up with that drop of enrollment,” Johnson said.

According to a report included in the board’s meeting agenda, the district’s 2021-22 enrollment provided a slight increase to the district’s full-time equivalent enrollment, which dictates the general amount of state funding the district receives through the state’s K-12 education funding formula.

The report showed the district’s FTE coming in at 10,027.4 students for the current school year. That is an increase of about 54 FTE students, or a 0.5% increase, from the district’s audited enrollment report from the 2020-21 school year.

However, the 2021-22 school year FTE is still much lower than the school district’s enrollment prior to the pandemic. During the 2019-2020 school year, the district reported an FTE of 10,624.9, a difference of about 597.5 FTE students, or a 5.6% decrease. Additionally, during the 2018-19 school year, the district reported an FTE of 10,793.6, which makes this years enrollment a 7% decrease since then.

The decreases from those two school years could have resulted in a significant funding decrease in the last couple of budgets. But the district used the declining enrollment provision in the state’s funding formula, which allowed for the district to soften the blow of the enrollment decreases.

Johnson said the district will try to use a different provision, the three-year average provision, for the 2022-23 school year budget. But because of the significant decrease over the last three years, that could keep the funding to a decline of about $2 million. However, if the provision is no longer available to the school district, it could see its funding catch up completely to its enrollment declines of previous years, which would be a drop of about $3.2 million.

photo by: Lawrence school district

This graph shows the Lawrence school district’s declines of full-time equivalency enrollment (blue) in recent years and how the district’s state funding dropped with it but at a slower rate (orange). Because of the delay in funding decline, the district expects to see another decrease in funding (shown in the last three dots) despite seeing a slight increase in FTE enrollment this year.

As the Journal-World previously reported, the district saw an overall decrease in enrollment, but a slight increase in the number of students who are learning in brick-and-mortar schools.

The district announced the unofficial count for the 2021-22 school year showed a decrease of 247 students, or about 2.2%. The decrease to the overall K-12 enrollment all came from the district’s virtual school, which dropped by 410 students. Meanwhile, the number of students enrolled in the district’s school buildings rose by 163.

Among the in-person learners, the district’s largest enrollment increase came at the middle school level, which grew by 81 students. The elementary level increased by 73 students, and the high schools grew by nine students.

While the increase to in-person enrollment is good for the district, it was only a little more than 25% of the decline of in-person learners the year prior. That year, the number of in-person learners fell by 589. The district had seen a huge drop in enrollment during the 2020-21 school year because of the coronavirus pandemic and had hoped to see at least 50% of those students return.

Johnson told the Journal-World if the district had seen the 50% it had hoped for, it could have seen a slightly better outcome in its FTE, but still would have seen a decrease in state funding. Regardless, she said the overall picture shows the enrollment in Lawrence is decreasing, and with that comes less state funding.

“It softens it some, but because it was such a dramatic drop, we can only soften it so much, unless all of the kids come back, and it doesn’t appear that is happening,” Johnson said.


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