Attendance Projections for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 School Years

The Attendance Projections module in the Foundation School Program (FSP) application will open on Tuesday, October 15, 2024. Attendance projections are estimates of student average daily attendance (ADA), enrollment, or full-time equivalent (FTE) counts by program or instructional setting. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) develops these attendance projections and will provide them to the Legislative Budget Board by March 1, 2025. The Legislature then uses these projections to determine the cost of public education for the next biennium (school years 2025–2026 and 2026–2027).

Methodology

The Attendance Projections module is preloaded with TEA’s projections, which are developed using historical data and growth assumptions. Historically, TEA has used a five-year growth rate for projections. However, due to the pandemic, we only have two school years (2022-2023 and 2023-2024) of reliable data. Statewide ADA growth from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024 was 0.55%.

The Texas state demographer estimates a significant decline in the number of four-year-olds in Texas, with a loss of over 40,000 from 2020 to 2025. The TEA has incorporated this anticipated decline into the attendance projections. Each year, all school systems are projected using their individual ADA growth rate and then adjusted to reconcile to TEA’s statewide cohort projection. This results in an overall statewide ADA decline of -0.31% in 2025-2026 and -0.38% in 2026-2027. TEA’s statewide ADA projections for 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 are 5,009,942 and 4,990,784, respectively. TEA’s ADA projections by school system are listed on the Attendance Projections webpage.

For other instructional settings (such as special education, bilingual education, etc.), the TEA uses a combination of the school system’s individual ADA growth rate and the state growth rate for that instructional setting.

Please note: The 2024-2025 projections that appear in the attendance projections module will not change the ADA and FTE data in the 2024-2025 Summary of Finances (SOF) reports. They are solely being used as a baseline to project the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 school years.

Next Steps (action required)

School systems may enter their own projections or accept TEA’s projections. School systems should examine local factors that may result in different estimates than the preloaded projections to avoid larger-than-needed settle-up issues. The Attendance Projections module will close at midnight on December 16, 2024. Failure to submit the required attendance projections data by the deadline will result in TEA using its own projections as part of the appropriations process for state aid calculations during the next biennium.

Impact on School Districts

For cashflow purposes, the payments made to school systems during the upcoming biennium will be based on final attendance projections submitted to the Legislature. These ADA and FTE estimates will ultimately be shown in the Legislative Payment Estimate (LPE) column of the SOF reports and are not subject to revision. Final earnings will, as always, be based on actual ADA and FTEs submitted to TEA at the conclusion of a school year.

Please note: This submission impacts the data for fiscal years 2025–2026 and 2026–2027 used in the Financial Integrity Rating System of Texas (FIRST). FIRST Indicator 15 measures the difference of the school system’s attendance projections compared to the actual ADA reported to TEA. It also measures if a school system certified its projections. Please contact financialaccountability@tea.texas.gov if you have additional questions regarding FIRST.

Impact on Charter Schools

Final attendance projections for school years 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 submitted to the Texas Legislature are not the basis of LPE payments to charter schools. FSP payments continue to be based on attendance submitted in the Charter School module of the FSP system. Annual attendance estimates approved in the Charter School module impact Charter FIRST, Indicator 16, and not the attendance projections submitted to the Texas Legislature. Charter FIRST Indicator 16 compares the charter school’s annual estimated ADA from the Charter School module’s Estimate Data Report to the actual ADA reported to TEA via the TSDS PEIMS. Please email CharterSchoolFinance@tea.texas.gov with any questions.

Technical Assistance, Resources and Contact Information

The FSP application in TEAL requires that a designated district approver, usually the superintendent, submit the attendance projections data to the TEA. If you already have a TEAL account but do not have access to the FSP application, please apply for access by clicking the My Application Accounts button found in the upper-left corner of the Self-Service menu in TEAL. If you already have access to the FSP application, please check that you have the appropriate role assigned to submit the data. You will need to select either the role of pupil projections user or district approver (usually the superintendent).

Your school system’s Service Account Manager must approve all requests for access to the FSP application and modifications to access via TEAL. (Note that Service Account Manager is a role within the TEAL system. Each employing organization must have at least one employee with a Service Account Manager status.) If you have submitted a request for access to modify access and it has not been granted, please consult with your superintendent or district approver or check with your school system’s Service Account Manager to check the status of the request before contacting the TEA.

For more information on the FSP System, including information on applying for specific roles in the system, please see the TEA FSP System webpage. For help accessing the FSP application or submitting attendance projections data, please email ADAprojections@tea.texas.gov or call 512-463-9622.