Several months ago, I wrote about how building a school district budget begins long before our annual budget hearing in October. At that time, many of the numbers we were using were estimates. As we move closer to the final budget, some of those estimates have become actual numbers, while several important pieces remain unknown.

One number we now know is our official Third Friday enrollment. This year, Stanley-Boyd has a headcount of 1,006 students. For school finance purposes, our count is 975.9 full-time equivalent students. As I explained in an earlier article, one reason those numbers differ is that our 4K students count as 0.6 of a student for school finance purposes.

We also now know our final equalized property valuation. The district's 2026 equalized value is approximately $835.4 million. Fortunately, that number came in very close to the estimate we had been using, so there was little surprise in that part of the budget.

State aid remains less certain. On July 1, the state's preliminary estimate projected Stanley-Boyd would receive approximately $9.05 million in state aid, an increase of about $150,000 from last year. We were cautious about relying on that estimate as we developed our budget. Our latest estimate now projects approximately $8.625 million, about $279,000 less than we received last year and more than $400,000 below the July estimate. We are still waiting for the certified state aid amount, one of the largest revenue numbers in our budget.

While much of the uncertainty involves revenue, expenses continue to change as well. We currently have $106,000 budgeted for fuel for student transportation. Based on our actual costs so far this year, I expect that number will need to increase. Substitute costs are also running higher than anticipated because we have experienced more staff absences requiring substitutes than we projected when the budget was developed.

There are other pieces we still do not know. One of the largest is the amount the district will be charged for students participating in Wisconsin's private school voucher programs. Those costs can also have a meaningful impact on the final budget.

This is why building a school district budget is an ongoing process. A budget is our best financial plan based on the information available at the time. As enrollment becomes known, property values are finalized, aid estimates improve, and actual expenses begin coming in, we continually update that plan.

Some numbers will come in better than expected and others will not. Our responsibility is to plan conservatively, adjust as better information becomes available, and consider how decisions made today affect the district in future years.

Over the past several months, I have tried to share some of the many pieces that go into developing a school district budget. We are now getting close to putting those pieces together. The final budget will be presented at our annual budget hearing on October 26 at 8:00 p.m. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the district's finances to attend.

Go Orioles!