Projecting District Revenue with Free Resources

By Jim Schiele

MoakCasey Template

MoakCasey has developed a school finance template, created by two school finance experts.

Leo Lopez, Chief Financial Officer at MoakCasey, has more than two decades of experience in public school finance and served as Associate Commissioner for School Finance and Chief School Finance Officer at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). He played a key role in supporting the Texas Commission on Public School Finance and implementing House Bill 3, the historic school finance bill, passed by the Texas Legislature in 2019.

Josh Haney began his career at the Texas Comptroller’s Office, where he led revenue forecasting and fiscal impact analysis. He joined MoakCasey in 2019 during the passage of House Bill 3.

Linebarger’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Appraisal Collection Technologies (ACT) recently partnered with MoakCasey to provide additional services to the firm’s clients through a new teaming agreement.

Omar Garcia’s Template

I recommend downloading and populating both state aid templates with your district’s data since they generally require the same fields. After entering your data, review the results across both. If you see significant differences, check your entries for errors.

Linebarger Revenue Forecasting Template

Once you’ve entered the current data into one or both of the templates above, the next step is to forecast revenue based on projected changes in enrollment, average daily attendance (ADA), special populations.

Historical trends are typically the best predictors of future behavior. However, if you anticipate significant changes—such as new housing developments, shifts in the commercial/industrial base, or other demographic changes—be sure to incorporate those into your projections.

I have developed a new linear forecasting worksheet to help you forecast your district’s future values. Download my sample worksheet here. It includes editable fields, highlighted in yellow, where you can input your district’s data. Future years will auto-populate using linear regression.

Finalizing Projections and Next Steps

Once your future value projections are complete, add them to your preferred template. This will provide a reasonable estimate of your district’s revenue for the next four to five years.

Keep in mind that these projections are based on current law. Any future legislative changes may alter these projections. However, this current data remains valuable as a benchmark.

Once you’re confident in your projections, clearly communicate to your school board, district leadership, and community that the projections reflect the law as it stands today.

Reliable revenue projections are foundational to building a sound budget. In future posts, we’ll explore expense forecasting and how to integrate both revenue and expenditure projections into a comprehensive budget plan.

If I can support you in any way during this process, feel free to contact me for assistance.

Jim Schiele is Linebarger’s School Financial Consultant. He offers free assistance to Linebarger school district clients as they navigate budgets and meet financial deadlines. He can be reached at jim.schiele@lgbs.com.

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