City Council Work Session

Dustin WrightstaffTHE CITY OF FAIRFAC SCHOOLS, I THINK YOU CAN SEE SOME OF THE KEY STATISTICS. WE HAVE ABOUT 5400 STUDENTS THAT ATTEND OUR SCHOOLS. 2900 OF THOSE STUDENTS ARE CITY RESIDENTS AND 2500 ARE COUNTY RESIDENTS. AND I THINK THAT'S ANOTHER GREAT COMPONENT OF OUR PARTNERSHIP. GOVERNANCE IS PROVIDED BY THIS FIVE-MEMBER ELECTED SCHOOL BOARD THAT IS UP HERE WITH ME AND ONE SUPERINTENDENT AND THEN A GREAT CENTRAL OFFICE STAFF. OUR SCHOOL SERVICES AGREEMENT, WHICH WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1962 AND THEN REVISED IN 1978 AND HAS BEEN IN PLACE SINCE THEN, IS WHAT GUIDES THIS PARTNERSHIP AND WILL FRAME A LOT OF THE COMPONENTS OF THE BUDGET THAT WE'LL SEE THIS EVENING. speaking specifically about that school services agreement with fairfax county public schools we'll

membership in september that you were just looking at and something called the adm or the average daily membership and all of this information is important context to helping understand the contract that we have with fairfax county public schools and the tuition bills that we receive THE ADM IS AN IMPORTANT METRIC BECAUSE IT'S NOT A ONE DAY SNAPSHOT. THAT MEMBERSHIP NUMBER IS ON SEPTEMBER 30TH, HOW MANY KIDS WERE IN SCHOOL. THE ADM ACTUALLY REFLECTS STUDENT PARTICIPATION OVER THE COURSE OF THE YEAR. WE GET A FINAL NUMBER ON WHAT THAT IS AT THE END OF MARCH EVERY SINGLE YEAR. THIS NUMBER IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT NOT ONLY IS THE KEY DRIVER OF THE CALCULATIONS IN OUR SCHOOL SERVICES AGREEMENT, but it's also the number they use for state funding, which we'll talk about in a minute.

It's also the number that helps drive the local composite index, which is another key local funding metric from the state. For tuition purposes, we always want to understand how the city's ADM compares relative to FCPS's ADM because if both are going down, our percentage is going to stay relative, but if we see different directions for those memberships, we're going to see impacts on the tuition bill. long-term planning must also account for development trends within the city as it relates to our membership this slide gives an overview historically of the tuition payments related to the school services agreement what you're going to see are that there are two forces consistently at work as this tuition bill has gone up we've seen incremental changes in the city's ADM

THAT ARE IMPACTING THE TUITION BILL, AND WE TALKED ABOUT THOSE PRIMARY FACTORS ALREADY. AGAIN, OUR ENROLLMENT IS A COMPONENT OF THIS, the operating costs are the key driver some of the secondary factors include the proportional enrollment so when we were talking about our ADM's being relative between the city and Fairfax County that's a that's what we're referring to there the grade level distribution there are minor differences between the costs of an elementary middle school and high school student in the school services agreement and then those classroom rental adjustments and year-end true ups the boundary process and utilization IN OUR BUILDINGS CAN ALSO BE SECONDARY FACTORS RELATED TO THIS OVER TIME.