(The Center Square) – Hoping to avoid another financial crisis, the Moses Lake School Board discussed preparing for another dip in enrollment this year before voting on the 2025-2026 budget on Thursday.
The Moses Lake School District slashed $10 million in materials, supplies and operating costs last year to offset a shortfall after taxpayers rejected two levies in 2024. More than 250 employees lost their jobs, in addition to those other cuts, since staffing accounts for the vast majority of district spending.
Taxpayers approved the third go-around in Feb. 2025, but MLSD can’t collect that revenue until 2026.
Superintendent Carol Lewis said Monday that MLSD will continue to operate frugally and wants to plan for every dollar spent. Rather than allocating it all, she wants to budget as if MSLD would receive less state funding than expected due to unforeseen dips in enrollment; in this case, a roughly 1% to 2% drop.
“If you had $30,000 saved up to buy a car,” Lewis said, “but you got to the dealership and it was only $25,000, you wouldn’t just go ahead and say, ‘Oh, well, I wanted to spend $30,000, so here you go.’ You would take it for $25,000 and then find something hopefully meaningful to do with” what’s left.
MLSD Business Manager Ruby Perez presented data showing total enrollment for Kindergarten through 12th grade at 8,607 in 2023-24, which fell to about 8,424 in the 2024-25 school year. She budgeted for around 8,243 students over the upcoming year, but is confident that more will re-enroll in the near future.
Projected revenues include $5.9 million after MSLD starts collecting levy revenue in January, $4 million from fees, donations, etc., $33 million from the state for specific purposes and then $10.7 million from the federal funding. Another $90 million, the biggest chunk of revenue, will also come from the state.
That portion comes from state apportionment and local effort assistance funding. Perez said that both are based on her enrollment projections. If MSLD has fewer students than expected, it will receive less funding. However, if enrollment exceeds Perez’s expectations, Moses Lake could receive more revenue.
“Once we come in and we figure out what our dollars are actually going to be, we might have to come back in and maybe have to cut back on some of those expenses if it’s less,” Perez said.
Staffing eats up about 84.5% of the budget, with salaries and benefits costing MLSD $122.2 million.
The rest of the budget covers materials, supplies, and operating costs, which they decreased by about $10 million last year. Lewis said MLSD is budgeting a similar amount for those this year, $19.3 million.
Perez said her goal is to start and end the upcoming year with a general fund balance of $18.9 million.
“Next steps is we gotta finalize our revenues and expenditure estimates,” she said. “We will have the final [budget] for you on Thursday, but we just kind of wanted to give you an idea of where we are right now.”
