These are a few of the key action steps we are focused on for this school year. Why do we do this work? As is tradition, our sweet kindergartners will be leading the Fall Festival parade on September 19 in their T-shirts that read “Class of 2039.” The changes and innovations we put in place now and through our next strategic plan (and the next few after that) ensure a bright, supportive educational journey for all of our students through 2039 and beyond.

You can view the current strategic plan on the district website here:

When we talk about paying teachers, paraprofessionals, custodians, administrators, utilities, classroom supplies, and most of the day-to-day costs of operating our schools, we are generally talking about the General Fund.

The General Fund is the district’s main operating fund—the money that keeps the day-to-day work of our schools going. It pays for things like salaries, classroom supplies, utilities, and other everyday costs. Montana law sets a minimum and a maximum for how large that budget can be, and the money comes from both state and local sources. One important thing to understand is that not every local dollar comes from a voted levy. Local revenue can also include property taxes required under the state funding formula and other revenue the district receives locally.

The important thing to understand is that we don’t simply sit down each year and decide how much money we would like to spend. Montana law determines how much General Fund budget authority a school district can have, and student enrollment is a big part of that calculation. In simple terms, the number of students we serve helps determine how much money we are allowed to budget for day-to-day school operations.

Montana school funding is tied closely to student enrollment. The state uses a count called ANB, or Average Number Belonging, to help determine how much General Fund budget authority a district receives. In simple terms, fewer students usually means less General Fund budget authority.

When students are healthy and able to attend, families can help by making regular attendance a priority, particularly around our fall and spring count dates. For the 2026–27 school year, those dates are October 5 and February 1, so go ahead and feel free mark your calendar now. Those counts matter because they help determine future funding. Making sure the students we serve are actually counted is one more way families can support our schools—not just at the ballot box, but throughout the school year.

For FY27, Belgrade’s elementary ANB decreased from 2,390 students to 2,323, a loss of 67 students. High school ANB decreased from 992 to 967, a loss of another 25 students. Because enrollment is tied to the funding formula, lower ANB means lower allowable General Fund budget authority.

On paper, it sounds like a nice, tidy package: fewer students should mean fewer expenses. Unfortunately, school finance does not usually come wrapped up with a bow.

If a classroom goes from 22 students to 18 students, we still need a teacher. We still heat the classroom, turn on the lights, maintain the building, run the software, insure the district, and operate the bus routes. Many of the costs of running a school district do not shrink at the same pace as enrollment.

Unfortunately, the electric company does not look at our ANB and offer us a discount. If only.

That is why enrollment declines can be difficult for school districts. Funding can decrease faster than expenses do, and because more than 85% of the General Fund supports personnel, changes in budget authority almost always become staffing conversations.

Another important piece of the funding puzzle is taxable property value, which brings us to one of everyone’s favorite school finance buzzwords: mills.

A mill is simply a way of calculating property taxes. One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of taxable value. The important thing to understand is that a mill is not a fixed dollar amount. How much revenue one mill generates depends on the taxable value of the district.

Between FY26 and FY27, Belgrade’s taxable value increased significantly. Elementary District taxable value grew from approximately $102.7 million to $116.4 million, while High School District taxable value increased from approximately $105.4 million to $119.2 million.

Because the taxable value increased, each mill now generates more money than it did the year before. That means fewer mills are required to collect the same amount of revenue.

As a result, total operating mills decreased from 81.33 mills to 58.49 mills in the Elementary District and from 46.72 mills to 31.22 mills in the High School District. Debt Service mills also decreased.

A simple way to think about this is splitting a dinner bill. If four people are splitting a $100 dinner, each person pays $25. If five people are splitting the same $100 bill, each person pays $20. The cost of dinner did not change—there are simply more people sharing the bill.

Taxable value works in a similar way. When the district’s total taxable value grows, the tax burden is spread across a larger tax base. Each mill therefore generates more money, which means fewer mills are needed to raise the same amount of revenue. It can feel a little backward at first because people often hear “taxable values increased” and assume that must mean higher taxes. From the district’s perspective, however, a larger tax base generally means we need fewer mills to collect a set amount of money. An individual property owner’s bill may still change depending on how the taxable value of their property changed compared with the rest of the district.

When we look at FY26 and FY27, two things are happening at the same time.

First, enrollment decreased, which reduced the amount of General Fund budget authority available to the district. At the same time, taxable property values increased significantly, which meant each mill generated more revenue and fewer mills were required.

Both can be true at once.

That is also why looking at just one number, whether it is the budget, the mill levy, enrollment, or property taxes, rarely tells the whole story. School funding has a lot of moving parts, and sometimes those parts are heading in completely different directions.

I am fairly certain Montana designed it this way just to make sure school business officials would always have something to explain. I suppose that is one form of job security.

School finance will probably never qualify as light reading, but understanding these few pieces makes it much easier to follow district budget discussions and understand why certain decisions are made.

At the end of the day, I am not trying to turn everyone into a school business official, although Montana could definitely use a few more of us. The goal of Straight Talk on School Finance is much simpler: keep the communication lines open, make school finance less intimidating, and help start conversations about where the money comes from, where it can go, and why the numbers do not always behave the way people expect.

My true hope is that these articles help someone feel more comfortable asking a question, joining a budget conversation, or understanding why a school finance issue may be more complicated than it first appears.

And if there is a school finance question you would like to see covered in a future Straight Talk, send it my way. If one person is wondering about it, there is a pretty good chance someone else is too.

Thank you for taking the time to read and engage!

Finance Director/District Clerk

cfisher@bsd44.org

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