Board Reviews Long-Range Planning, Budget Impacts

At the January 5 Focus on Achievement session, school board members discussed the district’s long-range financial forecast, including factors such as projected enrollment and anticipated cuts in state funding.They also heard from a panel of school leaders about budget flexibility and discussed allocation of 2016 mill levy override dollars.

Among the highlights of the financial forecast:

• Thanks to additional revenue from the 2016 voter-approved ballot measure and strong financial management, DPS has the opportunity to make several critical investments to better support students and teachers in the coming year and to maintain a prudent financial reserve.
• But funding at the state and federal levels is growing even tighter with cuts projected in both state and federal dollars in the coming year and future years.

For more details, see slides 1-10 of tonight’s comprehensive presentation to the board by Chief Finance Officer Mark Ferrandino and his team.

Slides 11-13 provide a new spending summary of district dollars, an effort to improve understanding about how DPS allocates its funds. As shown, DPS continues to maintain a very lean central operation with central spending at only 5% of overall expenditures.

The full presentation also includes detailed information on how the district is funding work to achieve its Denver Plan 2020 goals, including mill levy allocations.