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Selma City Schools is looking at a $41.09 million budget for fiscal year 2025, which begins Oct. 1. 

That’s a decrease of about $13 million dollars from 2024, but chief schools financial officer Grindal Harris said that is due to the ending of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program in 2024.

Now that those one-time federal funds are gone, funding levels will be returning close to where they were before the pandemic. The district is receiving $35.13 million in total funding, which mirrors the funding for 2020 and 2021, which did not include any of those ESSER funds. The last three years have ranged from $66 million in 2022 to a low of $52 million in 2024.

During those years, federal funding ranged from $39 million in 2022 to $22 million in 2024.

Harris said the district made the change last year to not pay salaries out of the ESSER funds to prepare for having to pay for all of the salaries on their own this year. Those funds are typically based on the student population from last year’s average daily membership.

Selma averaged 2,462.3 students last year, which was a decrease of 14.3 students from 2023. Selma actually gained 180.7 students from 2022 to 2023, which gave the district a big increase in state funding not only due to the population increase, but Harris said the system got extra funding due to growth of the district. The growth funds are not available for FY 2025.

Due to the decrease in students, Selma lost 1.25 teaching units and one principal, but it gained a full assistant principal position.

Of the schools that saw a big change, the Saints Virtual Academy gained six teacher units while Sophia P. Kingston, Edgewood and Meadowview elementaries all gained about two teachers each. School of Discovery Genesis Center lost 8.46 teacher units while RB Hudson lost 2.66 teacher units and Selma lost 2.05 teacher units.

While it appears that Selma’s student population has begun to level off, the district still has lost 25.03 overall teacher units since FY 2020 representing a loss of 444.85 students.

The district will be spending more than its anticipated revenues, which will draw down the district’s resources from $26.4 million projected to end FY 2024 to $20.8 million to end FY 2025. The largest hit will come from the general fund, as it will decrease from $8.56 million to $2.5 million. 

However, Harris said the district will still be in compliance with state law, which says the district must keep at least one month of expenditures in reserve.