Finance: My District Budget

From my research, Indiana does not have a Maintenance and Operation fund so I will use this week’s lecture to provide information on the source of funding for the maintenance and operations fund.  The Maintenance and Operation’s fund is supported through property taxes and general revenue funds from the state.  This happens to help make sure that school districts have sufficient funds for the M & O.  The lecture made the point that the amount of money a school district has to spend is based on the total WADA. 

As I review the artifacts presented I would say that there is a lack of relationship to the source of funds and the final allocation.  Although, it appears that effort was made to develop this relationship through WADA.  The intent, at least in the examples I had to review, did not seem to play out as the calculations were applied. 

Looking at Indiana’s budget, we fund our programs using an ADA that is not weighted.  I have a attached a copy of the 2012 State Tuition Support Worksheet and other documents related to determining the amount of funding for our district.  I have also included a worksheet to help district’s calculate FY2014 Tuition Support.  As you can see, there are no less layers in the Indiana system of finance.  I am not sure that either system has managed to accomplish the lofty goals of providing sufficient support to ensure districts have the funding necessary to meet the demands of student need.  We also have allocations for Federal Programs in addition to basic allotments.  Two such examples are special education and compensatory education.

To access documents for Indiana, I have included a link to our  Indiana Department of Education.   The documents can be found in the Learning Connection in the Finance Community in the Files and Bookmarks section.