By KARI BLURTON
Hays Post

At Monday’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Dean Katt said while the latest unaudited enrollment numbers for Hays USD 489 are good, legislative funding changes leave the district more than $75,000 short of the working budget.

Katt said changes made in worker compensation insurance has already made up for more than $60,000 of the loss in funds, but said the state funding formula is troubling.

“Overall, I am not discouraged with the total headcount numbers, but I am discouraged with the formula and what we ended up with full-time equivalent per students per funding,” Katt said.

The latest unaudited enrollment figures list a total of 3,067 students receiving services from USD 489, up from the 3,010 students served in USD 489 last year.

However, the state funding formula counts just 2,863.6 students as full-time-equivalent (FTE) students.  The FTE is a funding formula the state uses when determining how much funds-per pupil go to the district.

State funding changes made in April’s school funding compromise left USD 489 with a total loss of 43 full-time equivalents resulting in a loss of $14,400 for the general fund.

Katt said the loss of 32 of the 43 FTE numbers came from the Legislature’s funding changes regarding new facilities weighing.

“That is something we really fought to try to get them to change the wording back to where we would qualify with Hays Middle School to get new facilities weighting,” Katt said, regarding the new addition at HMS that had been budgeted to receive the weighting funds.

Additionally, Katt said legislative changes to the Local Option Budget added to an increase of state aid, but changed which students could be counted as FTE, such as students enrolled in the virtual high school. That change resulted in a funding reduction of $61,968.

The unaudited enrollment numbers also list an increase in classes sizes from grade levels K through 4 and grades 6 through 9.