Sun Prairie budget forecast shows short-term balance, warns of post-referendum gap

Phil Fry, director of business and finance for the Sun Prairie Area School District, told the school board the district’s five-year budget forecast projects a roughly $511,000 surplus for fiscal 2025-26 but shows a potential large deficit after the referendum dollars end in fiscal 2028-29.

The forecast is built on a set of stated assumptions, Fry said, including University of Wisconsin Applied Population Laboratory enrollment projections, a $325 per-pupil state funding increase carried forward from recent years, and salary and health-insurance cost assumptions. "Nothing's—it's not an exact science at all," Fry said, describing long-range budgeting as necessarily assumption-driven.

The baseline enrollment model from the University of Wisconsin APL projects the district will decline by 208 students over five years and by eight students in the first year; Fry noted the district had gained 22 students since the third-Friday count but called overall enrollment "very volatile." Senior leaders recommended using the UW APL baseline model as their planning assumption because it has been the most accurate…