Little change in enrollment forecast in Quincy School District 2024-25 budget
Newly graduated Quincy seniors exchange a handshake after the June ceremony. The class of 2024 was larger than the incoming kindergarten class, and enrollment in primary grades is trending down, which were among the factors that led Quincy School District officials to project little change enrollment for the 2024-25 school year.
FILE PHOTO
QUINCY — Quincy School District officials are estimating enrollment will not change much between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. The 2024-25 QSD budget estimates enrollment at the equivalent of about 3,100 students.
“We are projecting a flat enrollment,” said Quincy Superintendent Nik Bergman. “We have a large senior class going out, some smaller classes, we thought budgeting conservatively was the best financial scenario.”
Enrollment for 2024-25 was projected at the equivalent of 3,147 students, below the actual average enrollment of the equivalent of 3,199 students for the 2023-24 school year.
“(Enrollment) is pretty steady with what we’ve had in the past couple years. We feel pretty confident about it,” Director of Business Services Tia Stoddard told Quincy School Board members during a presentation July 23.
Average enrollment was about 30 students over the budget projection in 2023-24, Stoddard said.
But over time enrollment has been declining at the elementary level (kindergarten through fifth grade), Bergman said. In 2024-25, the largest classes will be at the secondary level.
“(Enrollment) goes up and down, depending on the month, but it ended up being okay (in 2023-24),” Stoddard said. “This year I’m budgeting a little bit lower than last year, because we are seeing a lower (kindergarten) enrollment than we had anticipated from prior years. Plus, our senior class is smaller than last year’s senior class.”
There are housing developments under construction in Quincy, Bergman said, and district officials expect enrollment will be higher than the budget projection.
“But you can’t budget on anticipation,” he said.
The district’s general fund, which pays most salaries and for most school operations, was budgeted at $58.87 million.
School funding in Washington is based on enrollment, but budgets must be prepared before school starts. As a result, districts estimate the number of students and are paid on the estimate until January; after that, funding is based on actual enrollment.
Public school districts nationwide received large grants during the COVID-19 pandemic, but that money ran out at the end of the 2023-24 school year. Stoddard said QSD also lost some additional federal funding.
Bergman said district officials adjusted the budget to accommodate the loss of federal funding, among other things restricting summer school to children in the QSD multilingual program.
“Even in that case we still had over 200 students enrolled,” he said.
The transportation vehicle fund was budgeted at about $698,300. That money can only be used to buy vehicles. Bergman said district officials plan to buy three new buses this year, with an estimated cost of $634,090.
The district’s capital projects fund was budgeted at $1.31 million. Expenditures from the capital projects fund are restricted to construction or repair projects. Bergman said no major construction projects are anticipated in 2024-25, but there are some maintenance projects scheduled.
The Associated Student Body fund is budgeted at $1.19 million. That's money raised by students and used for student activities.
The debt service fund is projected at $7.75 million. That fund pays back bonds issued to fund district construction projects.