CASPER, Wyo. — The Natrona County School District Board of Trustees approved a $394 million budget for fiscal year 2024, about $39 million over last year’s appropriations. The largest revenue increase can be found in local sources, which are almost $23 million higher than last year’s estimates.
The majority of local revenue received by the district is based on the assessed property values and levied taxes in the county, according to the district’s budget.
Trustee Thomas Myler, Board of Trustees treasurer, emphasized that the NCSD Board does not set the mill levies; those are set by the legislature. Natrona County, he says, is an entitlement district, meaning that local resources do not cover the entire budget and the district gains state funds redistributed from other districts, called recapture districts, where levies provide more than the budgetary formulas allow for their school district funding.
The State of Wyoming funding model is based primarily on student average daily membership, or ADM. According to the budget documents, ADM is a measurement of student enrollment. The mathematical calculation for ADM is described in the Wyoming Department of Education’s Administrative Rules, Chapter 8.
Funding ADM is the larger of the actual prior year ADM or the average of the three prior years’Â ADMs, meaning that if there is a sudden or large drop in enrollment it can provide some cushion to allow time for needed changes, said Myler.
The chart below illustrates the relationship between enrollment and ADM:
The school district is required by state statute to levy a 25 mill tax on the property within the boundaries of the school district and its share of a 6 mill tax on the properties within the boundaries of the county. For NCSD, the boundaries of the school district and the county are the same.
NCSD receives the following types of local revenue that are counted as local resources.
- 25 mill school district levy
- 6 mill countywide levy
- Railroad car company taxes
- Motor vehicle taxes
- Delinquent tax penalty and interest
- Taylor Grazing Act funds
- Fines and forfeitures
NCSD also receives the following types of local revenue not counted as local resources:
- Interest income
- Indirect costs
- Facility rents
- Private donations
- Student fees
- Sale of assets acquired before 1997
Major appropriation categories in the new budget include:
- General Fund: $245,957,794
- Special Revenue Fund: $74,331,049
- Capital Projects Fund: 58,641,580
- Food Service Fund: $8,612,229
- Custodial Fund: $7,061,139
Custodial Funds are simply being held in custody for the new charter school Wyoming Classical Academy, which follows the same ADM funding procedures, Myler said.
Further details about how the district is funded and how it plans to spend the money it expects to receive are detailed in NCSD’s proposed budget, which can be reviewed below:
