Poudre School District’s budget director, Brian Gustafson, briefed the board on the district’s FY27 budget process on Dec. 9 and stressed that declining enrollment and changes to the state school finance formula are the dominant fiscal challenges for the coming year.

Gustafson described the student-based budgeting cycle the district follows: enrollment projections arrive in January, allocations to schools are typically calculated by mid-February, and schools complete comprehensive planning by March. He said the October enrollment count for FY26 shows a net loss of about 513 district non-charter students compared with the prior year, a decline that compounds concerns because the state is phasing out pupil-count averaging that has smoothed funding for districts with declining enrollment.

Gustafson summarized the new state formula’s features that may reduce PSD’s per-pupil increase compared with the governor’s statewide proposal: differentiated factors (at-risk counts, cost-of-living adjustments, and a locale factor) produce variances across districts. He noted PSD’s cost-of-living factor in the new formula is smaller than the district’s local perception of living costs and that PSD receives limited locale or size-factor funding in the new structure. Gustafson and board members discussed how losing averaging will accelerate funding declines over the next several years and estimated averaging was providing funding for roughly 595 pupils this year.

District leaders said staff will incorporate the demographer’s updated projections and the workforce analysis into the FY27 enrollment and revenue modeling. Gustafson asked the board for guidance on priorities (literacy, mental health and belonging, “graduating with options,” safety, and competitive compensation) as staff build allocations and trade-off scenarios for spring budget decisions.

What happens next: Staff will publish revised FY26 numbers in January, run enrollment projections for FY27 using the demographer’s inputs, provide allocations to schools in February, and bring multi-year forecasts and budget options to the board during the spring budget cycle.