10 Miss. Code. R. 402-2.3
BALL PARKING A PER-PUPIL AMOUNT
The fastest way to ballpark a per-pupil amount for budgeting purposes is to look at the most recent per-pupil amount spent by the district in which your charter will reside. Look at pages 31-35 of the 2011-2012 Superintendent's Report to get an idea of this figure:
http://ors.mde.k12.ms.us/pdf/a/2013%20Superintendent's%20Annual%20Report%20for%20SY %202011-2012%20version12.pdf. The information below will help you gain a more precise estimate as well as an understanding of where the dollars come from and how your school will receive them.
STATE DOLLARS
All state dollars that support education, with the exception of any state facilities funds, will flow directly to approved charter schools. There are two main categories of relevant state funds: Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) funds and state categorical funding. In 2011-2012, state funds averaged approximately 50% of a school district's total revenue.
MAEP and how to use it for budgeting
MAEP is the state funding formula for K-12 education. The purpose of MAEP is to guarantee a minimum amount of funding for every public school child in the state. The share of MAEP dollars that a school district gets is based on a formula in law. Because charter schools are their own local educational agencies (LEAs), MAEP will be calculated for you separately from the district in which you reside. Your school's share of MAEP will flow directly from the Mississippi Department of Education to your school in the same manner in which school funding is distributed to traditional public schools.
The formula is as follows:
Average Daily Attendance x Base Student Cost + At-Risk Component - Local Contribution + 8% Guarantee = MAEP Formula Allocation
* Average Daily Attendance (ADA) is the number of student who, on average, attend your school every day. For MAEP, this number excludes students who are in self-contained special education classes. ADA is different than a school's enrollment, which is the number of children signed up to attend your school. Since MAEP is lagged a year, your ADA for the previous school year will be used for your current year calculation. However, in the first year, your projected enrollment will be used initially and then your second year payments will reflect a reconciliation up or down between the projected enrollment and your first-year ADA. For a conservative budgeting estimate for your first year, you may want to assume your first-year ADA will be 10% lower from your projected enrollment. For a conservative budgeting estimate for each year thereafter, estimate that 95% of your enrollment excluding estimated self-contained special education students will attend your school everyday.
* Note: There is a special "high-growth component" to ADA for districts with rapidly expanding enrollments. This may apply to many charter schools. However, the current law requires that a district have rapidly expanding enrollments for the three preceding years in order to qualify. In the first three years, there is no provision for charters to qualify for the high-growth component.
* Base student cost is the number calculated by the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) to reflect the minimum amount of money required to adequately educate a child in the state of Mississippi. MDE has a formula it uses to determine the base student cost each year. For the 2014-2015 school year, the base student cost is preliminarily calculated to be $5,054.97. However, the legislature rarely appropriates enough money to meet the full estimate of the base student cost. For a conservative budgeting estimate, you should estimate that the appropriated base student cost will be at least 12% lower than the calculation, which is approximately how much lower the base-student cost appropriation was from the calculated base student cost in FY 2014. For future budget years, you should estimate that the base student cost will not increase by more than 1-2%.
* The At-Risk Component is additional 5% of base student cost funding for each child a district serves who qualifies for free lunch. A school's free lunch count on October 31 of the preceding year is used. For a charter school's first year, the projected free lunch count would be used. For a conservative budgeting estimate, you should estimate that you will serve at least 80% of the percent of students qualifying for free lunch in the district in which your charter resides.
* The Local Contribution is the amount of local tax dollars a district must pay towards the guaranteed state minimum per-pupil expense. This money is not transferred to the state, only taken into account when calculating the state's share of the minimum per-pupil amount. The local contribution is somewhat tricky to calculate because it includes a few different types of local funding sources: ad valorem tax reduction grants, in lieu payments, and the value of 28 mills. It also looks at data from the second preceding year rather than the prior year like other components of MAEP. Furthermore, the local contribution is capped at 27% of program costs. This means that in school districts where the value of 28 mills is very high, the local contribution will be a maximum of 27% of the total base student cost and at-risk component. Most districts are not at the 27% cap. Every year, the Mississippi Department of Education calculates what the local contribution is that each district must make towards MAEP based on all of these rules. It then tells each district how much its local contribution will be. A charter school's local contribution will be equal, on a per-pupil basis, to that of the district in which the charter resides. For a conservative budgeting estimate, you should use the most recent local contribution for your first year budget and then use the percent of the contribution in future budget years. The Charter School Authorizer Board will provide you with the most recent local contribution per-pupil for the relevant district once you turn in a letter of intent.
* The 8% Guarantee is a provision added by the legislature to guarantee that all districts receive at least as much MAEP funding as they did in 2002 plus 8%. This provision impacts very, very few districts. The Charter School Authorizer Board will alert you as to whether the district in which your school will reside will receive 8% Guarantee funds.
State Categorical Funds
Charter schools are entitled to state categorical funds as are traditional school districts. There are five categorical funds: transportation, special education, gifted education, alternative education, and vocational education.
* Transportation-If a charter school chooses to take state transportation funds, it must abide by the reporting requirements for the program. For those rules, see http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/safe-and-orderly-schools/pupil-transportation. [File Link Not Available]
* Special education-In order to receive federal special education funds, a charter school must accept state funds for special education and follow the rules and regulations for both. To learn more about special education, refer to the Special Education Office at MDE:http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/special-education. [File Link Not Available]
* Gifted education-If a charter school chooses to take gifted education funds, it must abide by the reporting requirements for the program. For more information, see http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/curriculum-and-instruction/advanced. [File Link Not Available]
* Alternative education-If a charter school provides alternative education and accepts alternative education dollars, it must abide by the reporting requirements for the program. For more information, seehttp://www.mde.k12.ms.us/dropout-prevention-and-compulsory-school-attendance/alternative-education-ged. [File Link Not Available]
* Vocational education-If a charter school chooses to offer vocational education courses and take vocational education dollars, it must abide by the reporting requirements for the program. For more information, seehttp://www.mde.k12.ms.us/career-and-technical-education. [File Link Not Available]
Note on Lump Sum MAEP Allocations
In years in which the state legislature does not fully fund the MAEP formula (which is nearly every year), school districts are given their dollars in a "lump sum" to be used as they see fit, within the law. The one exception is that school districts must still spend an appropriate amount of state funds on special education, as this is required to receive federal dollars and to maintain compliance with federal law.
FEDERAL DOLLARS
Federal dollars flow directly from the state to the charter school based on the eligibility of children enrolled in the charter school for the various federal programs. These federal funds would include, for example, Title I and IDEA. The Mississippi Department of Education administers all federal funding sources based on the rules attached to each program. Since charter schools are their own local educational agencies (LEAs), they will need to apply for federal funds in the same way that traditional school districts do. Please refer to the Mississippi Department of Education's Office of Federal Programs for more information: http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/federal-programs. [File Link Not Available] In 2011-2012, an average of approximately 18% of a school district's total revenue came from federal sources. Please note that this number could be a lot higher for school districts with very high populations of economically disadvantaged students.
LOCAL DOLLARS
For each student enrolled in a charter from a local district, the legislature intended for money to follow the child from the local school district to the charter. This means that the local district will divert to the charter a proportionate share of the local funding. Charter schools will not receive any amount of the local taxes that were levied for bonded indebtedness, short-term notes, or vocational-technical programs. In 2011-2012, an average of approximately 31% of a school district's total revenue came from local sources.
Only the local school board will make a request to the appropriate municipal or county board for an amount to fund all public school students (traditional and charter) in that district. The local board can only ask for the amount of last year's aggregate receipts plus the allowable percentage increase already in state law; it will not be able to ask for an additional percentage increase due to the presence of a charter in the district. The district will transfer to the charter a proportionate share of the actual receipts each month.
Since the school district typically bases its request to the taxing authority on its previous budget, it does not necessarily calculate a local "per-pupil" amount each year. To estimate how much local funds a charter may receive, you can estimate a per-pupil amount based on the district's enrollment and its local revenue (see pages 37-39 in the Superintendent's Report:
http://ors.mde.k12.ms.us/pdf/a/2013%20Superintendent's%20Annual%20Report%20for%20SY%202011-2012%20version12.pdf). Remember that this figure will include not only the local contribution to MAEP but also the operational taxes levied above 28 mills. It may also include revenue resulting from taxes for short-term notes, bonded indebtedness, or vocational-technical programs to which a charter is not entitled. To determine whether a school district may be taxing its residents for these additional expenses, refer to pages 45-49 of the Superintendent's Report to see if additional mills are being levied:
http://ors.mde.k12.ms.us/pdf/a/2013%20Superintendent's%20Annual%20Report%20for%20SY%202011-2012%20version12.pdf . For a conservative budgeting estimate, you should determine whether your local school district raises revenue that charters are not entitled to before using the most current local revenue per-pupil estimate in your budget.
10 Miss. Code. R. 402-2.3