Clay County Schools officials said Thursday a five percent decline in student enrollment could eventually cost the district millions of dollars in state funding.
School Board Chair Benji Bailey said the district currently down about 50 students, a year-to-year decrease driven primarily by families choosing home school. Bailey said while the drop has not yet forced changes to staffing or programs, future funding is highly sensitive to student counts.
“Any drop in enrollment, especially with the current TISA formula would impact our funding,” Bailey said. “There are mechanisms in place with the state to east the blow of that drop in funding immediately, but over time any drop in enrollment has a significant impact on your funding.”
Bailey said the district budget is approximately 75 percent funded through the TISA formula. Bailey said a five percent decrease in that portion of the budget would be drastic for the system.
“And so it could easily be in the millions,” Bailey said.
Bailey said the state does have mechanisms in place to help school districts ease the immediate blow of a funding drop. The official said the district currently hires staff based on the enrollment numbers from the prior year.
“But as time goes on and enrollment continues to drop then obviously we’ll have to make staffing decisions and things of that sort,” Bailey said. “So currently no, but it will be a consideration in the future.”
Federal Projects Director Misty Strong said the district is required to annually evaluate goals for math, English, graduation rates, and absenteeism to ensure expenditures are producing the desired outcomes for students. Misty said the district saw considerable gains in proficiency at both elementary schools and the high school this year.
“We have some areas that we need to make other gains in and we need to grow, and we’re looking at those areas and seeing what we can do to improve those starting from the ground up with teacher knowledge, teacher training, improving our student attendance, and lowering class size because we know if we give students more attention, they will succeed and exceed,” Strong said.
In other business, the board approved a policy revision to allow school support organizations to accept electronic payments through services like Venmo for donations and fundraisers.
Student Board Member Abigail Shaull said seniors who participated in a recent ACT boot camp saw their scores increase by three or four points.