For several years, Idaho’s public school establishment has pushed lawmakers to make a seemingly simple change in the way taxpayers fund public education: Stop funding schools based largely on the students who actually attend and start funding them based on the students who are enrolled.
It sounds like an accounting change. It isn’t.
New numbers from the Idaho Department of Education help illustrate just how significant the difference can be. Idaho currently provides about $9,000 in state funding per public school student. At that level, every 1,000-student difference between enrollment and actual attendance is the equivalent of roughly $9 million.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean districts are currently receiving an extra $9,000 for every student in the gap. Idaho’s school funding formula is considerably more complicated than simply multiplying a headcount by a dollar amount. But it illustrates the potential magnitude of the policy choice lawmakers are making when deciding whether funding should be driven by enrollment or actual attendance.
For decades, Idaho has largely based its school funding formula on average daily attendance. During COVID, that temporarily changed. With schools closing, quarantines occurring and attendance becoming wildly unpredictable, the state allowed enrollment to substitute for actual attendance in the funding calculation.
There was a reasonable argument for doing that during an unprecedented disruption. But temporary government policies have a funny way of acquiring permanent constituencies. The debate really comes down to a basic question: What are taxpayers funding? Are we funding students who are actually being educated in a public school, or are we funding names on an enrollment spreadsheet?
Idaho’s ADA system isn’t as unforgiving as critics sometimes portray it. For funding purposes, the state can use the 28 weeks with the highest average daily attendance. There are also protections for unusual attendance disruptions. In other words, a flu outbreak, a terrible snow week or a child staying home sick for a few days doesn’t automatically blow a hole in a district’s budget.
There is another reason Idaho lawmakers should be cautious about turning enrollment into a blank check. We recently discovered that the definition of “enrolled” can be considerably more expansive than many parents realize.
During implementation of Idaho’s new Parental Choice Tax Credit, some homeschool families were surprised to discover that their children were considered enrolled in public schools because they participated in activities such as sports, cheerleading or after-school clubs.
Some families didn’t even know their children were considered enrolled until it suddenly mattered. That became an issue because Idaho’s original parental choice law generally prohibited families from receiving the credit during a semester in which their child was enrolled in a public school. Lawmakers wisely corrected the problem in 2026, clarifying that participation in nonacademic extracurricular activities does not make a student “enrolled” for purposes of the parental choice program.
Supporters of enrollment funding make a legitimate argument: Districts have fixed costs. They hire teachers, operate buildings and plan budgets based in part on how many students they expect to serve. A child who misses school on Tuesday doesn’t make the electricity bill disappear.
Fair enough. But taxpayers also have a legitimate expectation that education funding bears some relationship to actual education being delivered.
Average daily attendance attempts to measure the students schools are actually serving while smoothing out ordinary fluctuations. An enrollment-based model moves in the opposite direction: toward funding institutions based more heavily on how many students they can keep on their books.
If enrollment or attendance declines, budgets eventually have to adjust. That’s true for businesses, nonprofits, universities and virtually every other organization. Public school districts shouldn’t be uniquely entitled to have taxpayers preserve a budget built for a student population they no longer serve.
Idaho should absolutely provide the resources necessary to give every public school student a quality education. And policymakers should design a funding system that recognizes legitimate attendance fluctuations and gives districts reasonable predictability from year to year.
But predictability cannot become an excuse to disconnect funding from reality. Taxpayers deserve to know whether money is following students who are actually being educated or simply protecting an institution from having to adjust its budget.
We should fund real students receiving real education — not ghost students created by an accounting formula designed to protect a budget. The purpose of Idaho’s education system is to serve students. The purpose of students is not to fund the system.
