What factor drives state funding in Idaho?

The primary factor which drives the amount of state funding each school district receives is average daily attendance. If you have an enrollment of 300 students and, on average, 15 students are absent daily, then you have a 95% ADA. This means you only get paid for having 285 students even though you still need to provide teachers, classrooms, textbooks, supplies, utilities, busing and more for all of those enrolled; attending or not.

Some have argued that funding should be based on enrollment, not attendance since schools have to prepare for the maximum number of students enrolled. That actually makes a lot of intuitive sense. We can't remove a desk, return a textbook, fire a teacher, or sell a bus in the middle of the school year. If Idaho switched to an enrollment-based system, some districts would lose money and some would gain. While it may not make a lot of economic sense to fund schools based on ADA that is the system used in Idaho.

Three-fourths of our funding is based on the first attendance reporting period from the start of school until the first week in November. The remaining funding is based on our best 28 weeks of attendance. Even though we certify our budget in June, we will not find out until November how accurate our attendance estimates were for the largest portion of our funding. And we won't know for sure until July 15 of the following year how well we estimated our best 28 weeks!

In addition to the obvious educational reasons for students to attend school regularly, the financial impact of poor attendance patterns effects all students regardless of how well or poorly they may attend. The Genesee School District has historically had a 95% attendance rate. Given our current enrollment, that means we lose out on $96,000 worth of potential funding. That is $536 per day or $36.75 for each day a student does not attend school.