A Parent’s Guide to D20’s FY2026-27 Budget Numbers

When a school district talks about a budget, most parents hear one thing.

A very large number.

That is understandable. Public school budgets are built around accounting rules, state formulas, fund structures, grant restrictions, bond obligations, salary schedules, charter transfers, and board procedures. They are not built for the parent at the kitchen table trying to answer the obvious question.

Where is the money going?

Academy District 20’s proposed FY2026-27 budget gives families a useful place to start. It also gives them a warning: if you only look at the headline number, you will miss the story.

Budget status: These are proposed FY2026-27 budget figures, not audited actuals and not final year-end results. The May 14, 2026 action concerned the proposed budget, with public hearing and final adoption scheduled for June 11, 2026.

This Is a Proposed Budget, Not the Final Record

At the May 14, 2026 Board of Education regular meeting, the proposed FY2026-27 budget appeared in the May 14 board packet as a decision item: Resolution 201-26, approval of the proposed budget for FY26-27.

That wording matters.

The May 14 action was not final adoption of the district’s full FY2026-27 budget. The record describes it as accepting or acknowledging the proposed budget, with the public hearing and final adoption scheduled for June 11, 2026.

So parents should read these as proposed budget figures.

• Not audited actual spending.
• Not final year-end results.
• Not the last word.

That is not a technicality. It is the difference between a plan, a legal budget, and what the district actually spends.

The Big D20 FY2026-27 Budget Numbers

The proposed FY2026-27 budget reports:

Two things jump out.

First, “all funds” is not the same thing as classroom operating money. A bond fund, capital reserve fund, food service fund, and general fund do not all mean the same thing. They have different purposes and different restrictions.

Second, enrollment numbers are not interchangeable. The proposed budget projects 26,344 PK-12 students, but uses a funded pupil count of 25,450.8 for school-finance calculations.

That is not a typo. It is how school finance works.

Convenient? No.

Important? Yes.

Parent translation: “All funds” is not the same thing as classroom operating money. It includes separate buckets with separate rules.

Spending Is Higher Than Revenue

The proposed FY2026-27 all-funds budget shows $430.8 million in revenue and $442.9 million in expenditures.

That means proposed spending is about $12.1 million higher than proposed revenue across all funds.

That does not automatically mean the district is bankrupt, reckless, or “overspending” in the household-budget sense. School district funds include beginning balances, reserves, restricted money, capital projects, transfers, and timing issues.

But it does mean parents should ask better questions.

Which fund balances are being used? Which funds are drawing down? Which expenses are one-time? Which are recurring? Which items are required, and which reflect board priorities?

A district can be financially responsible and still spend more than current-year revenue in a particular fund structure.

It just needs to explain that clearly.

The gap to ask about: Proposed all-funds expenditures are about $12.1 million higher than proposed all-funds revenues. That does not prove a problem by itself, but it does require a clear explanation.

Larger Budget, Slightly Lower Funded Pupil Count

The FY2025-26 adopted budget showed:

Compared with those adopted FY2025-26 figures, the FY2026-27 proposed budget is larger on both sides:

So proposed revenue rises. Proposed spending rises. Funded pupil count is slightly lower.

That does not prove mismanagement. It does not prove waste. It does not prove anything dramatic by itself.

It does show why budget conversations should not be reduced to applause lines about “supporting students” or “fiscal responsibility.”

The numbers deserve explanation.

Total Program Funding Is the Core School-Finance Number

The proposed budget lists Total Program Funding at $289,224,429.

That is a key Colorado school-finance figure. The proposed budget ties it to a funded pupil count of 25,450.8, including 4,105.0 charter school students.

This matters because families often hear “per pupil funding” as if the money simply lands in a classroom.

It does not.

Money moves through formulas, funds, required services, staffing costs, charter allocations, transportation, special education, security, benefits, buildings, debt, reserves, and board decisions.

“Per pupil” sounds simple.

The route is not.

Classroom Spending and Administration Need to Be Separated

Parents also need a clean view of what the proposed budget does for classroom and instructional spending, and what it does for administration.

Those are not always easy categories to read from the outside. “Instruction” can include teachers, classroom staff, instructional materials, special programs, and school-level academic supports. “Administration” can mean different things depending on whether the budget is talking about school administration, central office leadership, business services, human resources, communications, technology administration, legal costs, or other support functions.

That is exactly why the distinction matters.

A district can say it is focused on students while moving costs through categories most parents will never see. It can also carry real administrative costs that are necessary to run a large public system. The accountability question is not whether administration exists. Of course it does.

The question is whether the public can tell how much of the budget is actually reaching instruction, how much is tied up in central administration and support systems, and how those shares are changing over time.

Parent translation: Do not let “student support,” “district operations,” “school administration,” and “central services” blur together. Ask for the line-level view that separates classroom instruction from administrative and support costs.

Before final adoption, parents should ask D20 to show the proposed FY2026-27 budget by function in plain language: instruction, instructional support, school administration, general administration, operations, transportation, security, capital, debt, and charter-related transfers.

That would not answer every question. It would give the public a better map.

Security Services Is a Real Budget Line

One of the clearest security-related figures in the proposed budget is the General Fund Security Services line: $4,844,790.

The budget also identifies several security-related items:

The access-control and burglary-system items are described as planned for a midyear Capital Reserve budget transfer, not simply as already-funded General Fund security spending.

That distinction matters.

If everything with the word “security” gets lumped together, parents lose the ability to see what is operating cost, what is capital equipment, what is planned, what is already budgeted, what is recurring, and what may return later for a transfer.

Security is not one number. It is a stack.

Security is a stack: Operating costs, salary schedules, school resource officer contracts, capital equipment, access control, alarms, and planned transfers are not the same budget category.

Salary Schedules Are Not the Same as Total Cost

The proposed budget includes compensation schedule entries for security-related positions:

These figures are useful. They show position categories and salary schedule amounts.

They do not show total cost.

They do not show the full benefit load, overtime, equipment, training, software, vehicles, radios, dispatch costs, or exact staffing count inside the $4.84 million Security Services line.

So the fair conclusion is narrow: the proposed budget identifies security as a real operating program and shows related salary structures. A complete cost picture would require more detailed object-code, payroll, FTE, contract, and equipment records.

That is not nitpicking.

That is how public finance works when the public is allowed to ask complete questions.

Capital Reserve Is an Early-Warning System

Capital Reserve is where families should look for building systems, equipment, and major facility needs that do not behave like ordinary classroom expenses.

In the proposed FY2026-27 budget, the security-related Capital Reserve line for Security Equipment & Vehicles is $300,000.

The same May 14 packet also identifies several capital-security needs, including audible lockdown alarms, access-control replacement, burglary-system replacement, and bond-related building security projects.

This is where D20 parents should pay attention over time.

A capital item can look manageable in one year and return later as a larger transfer, bond item, deferred-maintenance issue, or emergency replacement. The budget is not just a spending document. It is an early-warning system.

If parents want to know whether the district is maintaining buildings responsibly, Capital Reserve is one place to look.

Charter Transfers Belong in the Public Conversation

The proposed budget lists FY2026-27 charter school expenditures and transfers at $47,099,466.

That figure matters because D20 is not only a district-operated school system. It also has charter-school finance obligations and authorizer responsibilities.

Parents do not need to be accountants to understand the basic point: when a district budget includes charter transfers, security buybacks, facility obligations, and authorizer services, the money story is not limited to neighborhood schools.

The proposed budget also includes charter-related security service details, including The Classical Academy buyback charges for school security officers and New Summit Charter Academy security-service terms. For related local context, see the D20 Accountability Project’s earlier article on D20 security budgeting and board accountability.

Again, this does not prove anything improper.

It does show that an honest public conversation about the D20 FY2026-27 budget has to include charter finance, not just district-run buildings.

Questions Parents Should Ask Before Final Adoption

Before D20 adopts the final FY2026-27 budget, parents should ask clear questions:

1. Which proposed expenditures are recurring, and which are one-time?
2. Which funds account for the gap between all-funds revenues and all-funds expenditures?
3. How much fund balance is being used, and from which funds?
4. What explains higher proposed spending alongside a slightly lower funded pupil count?
5. What share of the proposed budget is classified as instruction, instructional support, school administration, general administration, and central support?
6. How did those classroom and administrative categories change from the FY2025-26 adopted budget and any midyear revisions?
7. What exactly is included in the $4.84 million Security Services line?
8. How many security FTE are budgeted?
9. What are the salary, benefit, overtime, training, equipment, and contract assumptions for security services?
10. Which capital-security items are already funded, and which are expected to return as midyear transfers?
11. How much of the charter transfer total is formula-driven, contract-driven, facility-related, or service-related?
12. What changed between the FY2025-26 adopted budget, any midyear adjustments, and the FY2026-27 proposal?
13. When will actual FY2025-26 line-level financial data be available?

These are not hostile questions.

They are normal questions for a public institution spending hundreds of millions of public dollars.

Credit Where It Is Due

There is useful detail in the proposed budget.

The document separates funds, identifies major revenue and expenditure categories, gives funded pupil count, shows Total Program Funding, includes security-service lines, and provides compensation schedules.

That is better than forcing the public to guess.

But public accountability is not satisfied by publishing a PDF and hoping nobody reads it closely. A budget is transparent only if ordinary people can understand what the categories mean, what changed, what is recurring, what is one-time, and what decisions are still ahead.

The district has provided numbers.

Now it owes the public plain explanations.

The Bottom Line

D20’s FY2026-27 proposed budget is not a scandal in spreadsheet form. It is not a simple morality play. It is a large public-finance document with real choices embedded in it.

The proposed budget shows $430.8 million in all-funds revenue, $442.9 million in all-funds expenditures, $289.2 million in Total Program Funding, a funded pupil count of 25,450.8, a $4.84 million Security Services line, and significant capital and charter-related obligations.

It also raises a basic parent-level question: how much of this budget is reaching classroom instruction, and how much is assigned to administration, support systems, facilities, security, capital, and charter obligations?

Parents do not need to master every accounting code.

But they do need to know the difference between proposed and adopted, revenue and expenditure, operating and capital, funded pupil count and projected enrollment, salary schedule and full cost.

That is where accountability begins.

Not with slogans.

With numbers the public can actually read.

Source Documents and Further Reading

Primary source records on d20kids:

• Academy District 20 FY2026-27 Proposed Budget
• Academy District 20 May 14, 2026 Regular Meeting Board Packet
• Academy District 20 FY2025-26 Adopted Budget
• Academy District 20 FY2025-26 Midyear Adjusted Budget
• Academy District 20 Legal Department Update and Legal Services Budget Report

Related D20 Accountability Project reading:

• Academy District 20 district profile
• CORA Request Guide
• Why Did Susan Payne Vote on a D20 Budget That Funds Her Husband’s Department?
• D20’s Superintendent Fight Is Also a Taxpayer Story
• The Hidden Financial Costs of Extremist D20 School Board Members
• D20 Candidates Must Prioritize Deferred Maintenance Over Culture Wars

External public finance links:

• ASD20 District Adopted Budgets
• ASD20 Financial Data Files
• ASD20 District Salary Schedules
• ASD20 Colorado Open Records Act requests
• Colorado Department of Education Financial Transparency for Colorado Schools
• CDE Public School Financial Transparency Act resources

Featured image: Photo by Cht Gsml on Unsplash.