Missouri’s School Funding Formula
By Courtney Vahle, Ed.D.
To calculate school funding, Missouri currently uses a model that estimates the cost of adequately educating a child and subtracts out what can be raised locally through taxes to arrive at the total aid provided to a school. The current model was developed nearly 20 years ago in 2005. There is contention with a few key pieces of the funding formula, some of which were addressed this year with the passage of Senate Bill 727, and some that persist.
Missouri’s School Funding Formula
Weighted Average Daily Attendance
Currently, Weighted Average Daily Attendance (WADA) helps the state make adequacy decisions based on how many students attend school, not how many students are enrolled in a school. With chronic absenteeism rates at all-time highs, Senate Bill (SB) 727 made adjustments to the calculation of WADA for funding purposes, so that it may be based more equally on enrollment and attendance moving forward.
The exact language of SB 727 is as follows:
WEIGHTED AVERAGE DAILY ATTENDANCE (Section 163.011)
This act modifies the definition of "weighted average daily attendance" as used in the education funding formula by adding to such definition a weighting factor relating to school district enrollment.
"Membership" is defined in current law as the average number of students enrolled in a school district who attended school at least one day during ten days at the end of January and September.
The act defines "weighted membership" as the current law definition of "membership" multiplied by certain weighting factors relating to the number of students who fall into certain population groups, such as the number of students who receive special educational services above a certain threshold number that is determined in a manner provided for in current law.
Weighted membership shall be included in the calculation of a school district's weighted average daily attendance beginning in the 2026 fiscal year. In 2026, a district's weighted average daily attendance shall be calculated as the sum of 90% of such district's weighted average daily attendance as calculated in current law, plus 10% of such district's weighted membership. The percent of weighted membership included in such calculation shall increase by 10% each year until 2030, when a district's weighted average daily attendance shall be calculated as the sum of 50% of such district's weighted average daily attendance as calculated in current law, plus 50% of such district's weighted membership.
Over the next five years, weighted average daily attendance will gradually shift to be a factor of BOTH attendance and enrollment, as follows:
FY 2026 WADA = 0.9 (weighted attendance) + 0.1 (enrollment)
FY 2027 WADA = 0.8 (weighted attendance) + 0.2(enrollment)
FY 2028 WADA = 0.7 (weighted attendance) + 0.3 (enrollment)
FY 2029 WADA = 0.6 (weighted attendance) + 0.4 (enrollment)
FY 2030 WADA = 0.5 (weighted attendance) + 0.5 (enrollment)
Local Effort Calculations
Local Effort determines the amount of money that can be raised locally. The calculation of local effort each year, however, has used the 2004 property values from the original formula.
The use of fixed, outdated property values leads to inequities in state funding allocation as it will continue to favor school districts who have grown since 2005 and are therefore bringing in more local effort funds than the state is estimating. These higher growth districts tend to be already wealthier districts .
In a recent publication from the PRiME Center, Shuls demonstrated how using updated, dynamic property values in the calculation of state aid would increase equity among school districts. Moreover, a February 2024 poll indicated that a majority (62%) of voters would support using more recent property values.