Eatonville School District reports $2.4M projected fund balance, warns enrollment dip could reduce next year’s funding

District finance staff presented the March budget and an enrollment update at the Eatonville School District board meeting, saying the district remains favorable to adopted budget but warned of ongoing risks.

Krista (finance staff) said revenues and expenditures were each roughly 54% through March and that the district projects an ending fund balance of about $2,400,000, equating to roughly 6.78% of expenditures. She cautioned that some of the favorable variance could be one-time savings and that the district projects a fund-balance drawdown of about $365,000 by year-end.

Krista said revenue increases were driven in part by higher-than-expected special-education and basic-education enrollment funding, and food services revenues were about $118,000 higher than budgeted to date. She noted some savings in benefits tied to state retirement contribution changes and warned that some of these savings may not be permanent.

On enrollment, Krista reported a net drop of about 20 students between March and April. The bulk of the loss was in grades 1–3; grades 5–6 lost five students and grades 9–12 lost six. She attributed the change mainly to families moving and to shifts in homeschool reporting and said the drop will likely affect next year’s basic-education apportionment funding.

Board members asked for follow-up on school-specific enrollment questions and for staff to track whether the $2.4 million projection holds given the enrollment trend. No budget decisions were taken at the meeting; staff said they will continue to monitor revenues, expenditures and enrollment.