Why do Arizona districts reapprove budgets after the school year is complete?

PHOENIX — Many districts across Arizona are working to approve their budgets for the current school year for a second time.

One is the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD), which unanimously reapproved its 2024-2025 budget on Tuesday.

Schools have to approve their annual budget before every school year. But the reapproval is also necessary toward the end of the school year to account for finalized funding data.

“Our budget is based off what’s called current year enrollment, or ADM,” SUSD Chief Financial Officer Shannon Crosier said. “You don’t know what that is necessarily in July. We’re making our best guess estimate on what our ADM will be for the following year.”

How has the budget changed over the course of the school year?

Crosier said the plan the district re-approved is also based on state and federal money that carries over year-over-year. The extra money was spent on maintenance and classroom funding, all voter-approved expenses.

“We know that we carried over $2.5 million more within our capital budget, and that comes in two ways,” Crosier said. “We have a capital override, which provides us some additional dollars, and then we have dollars that come from the state.”

Those additional dollars have already been spent. The initial approval of the SUSD budget, which was set at $437 million, took place last June.

Tuesday’s reapproval of the budget reset the final amount to $439 million.

Crosier said now that the current year’s budget process is complete, district leaders are now moving to finalize next year’s plans.

“Our history has been that we always carry over dollars within M&O (maintenance and operations) capital grant those areas,” Crosier said. “So, it’s really already been factored in as we look at the budget for next year.”

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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