The chapter on Career Technical Education Districts (CTEDs) in the School Finance Manual has been updated. It is now available on the School Finance webpage under School Finance Guidelines & Manuals. 

The School Finance - Operations Support Team is hosting a webinar to review updates and upcoming changes to guidance. If you would like to attend, please register using the following link: School Finance End of Year Updates. 

The webinar is on Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 10:00 AM. 

The chapter on Defining Excused Absences in the School Finance Manual has been updated and is now available on the School Finance webpage under School Finance Guidelines & Manuals. Along with the updated guidance, a resource video has been added to clarify the new sections concerning non-fundable intervals. 

Budget forms for the upcoming fiscal year are typically published shortly after the State budget passes to incorporate any changes in State law. Since the FY 2026 State budget has not yet passed, School Finance and the Auditor General's Office are planning to publish preliminary budget forms to allow districts and charters to plan budget preparation processes and governing board meetings.

The Auditor General's Office expects to publish preliminary budget forms for use in budget proposal and adoption by Thursday, May 22nd if the State budget has not passed and does not appear likely to pass the following week. Please note that preliminary budget forms will not account for routine annual changes, such as inflation, and will not anticipate any other changes to State law. Therefore, any district or charter that proposes its budget using the preliminary budget forms must also adopt the preliminary forms, then revise its budget in early FY 2026 using the final budget forms to incorporate any changes in State law. Districts in which the qualifying levy is greater than the equalization base (non-State-aid districts), in particular, should be aware of the impact of preliminary forms on the budget and discuss property tax rate considerations with counties if preliminary budget forms are used with revisions expected. We will provide a timeframe for final budget form issuance once final changes in State law are known.

If the State budget passes before May 22nd, or appears likely to pass the following week, the Auditor General’s Office will not publish preliminary forms and will instead publish the final budget forms as soon as possible after the budget passes. The final forms will account for all changes in State law, and it may not be necessary to revise the budget in early FY 2026.

School Finance will continue to provide updates via Hot Topic when more information is available.

Thank you!

The application window to submit the Transportation Vehicle Inventory is available until 07/15/2025. 
The following resources have been created to assist in submitting transportation data: 

• Transportation Manual
• Transportation Data Submission Video

The FY 2026 calculation of Transportation Support Level (TSL) dollars is dependent on Vehicle Inventory data submitted for FY 2025.

Reminder: When entering vehicle mileage data, do not enter a date in the Meter End Date field. Adding an end date will cause the vehicle to be marked ‘retired.’ Vehicles accidentally retired can be corrected by editing the mileage and removing the Meter End Date. 

For questions regarding Vehicle Inventory and Mileage, submit a School Finance - Account Analyst Support Request via HelpDesk.

The FY 2024 Open Enrollment Participation Report is now available on the School Finance webpage under the Data Collection & Reporting for School and Student Membership Data section. This report provides open enrollment participation rates by school district, school, county, and specific related data. 

For questions, please email School Finance at [email protected].

*** IMPORTANT *** Cover Pages and Audit Files will no longer be accepted via email.

School Finance has made an update to allow users to upload their PDFs directly to the Budget System.

The following Files should be uploaded via this tab:

• Audit PDFS
• Budget/AFR Cover Pages
• Budget/AFR District Website Link (Upload as PDF under Cover Page)

Uploading the Cover Page:

STEP 1

In the Budget System, navigate to the “PDF Upload” tab on the top right. (Note: this tab has changed names from “Audit PDF Upload” to “PDF Upload”)

STEP 2

To upload a file, click on “File Upload” located on the left of the screen.

STEP 3

Select the appropriate fiscal year and "Cover Page" as the document type.

***In the document description, make sure to reference which file type and version cover page is being uploaded (i.e., proposed, adopted, revision, original, corrected).

Uploading an Audit file:

Follow Steps 1-3 above, but select the “Audit File” document type.

***In the document description, make sure to note which type of audit file is being uploaded.

Uploading the Website Link:

STEP 1

Open a blank document in Microsoft Word (or another similar application).

STEP 2

Copy and paste the link to your posted Budget/AFR in the blank document.

STEP 3

Save the file as a PDF.

Step 4

Follow the steps in the Cover Page section and upload the website link with “Cover Page” as the selected document type.

***In the document description, make sure to note what the website link is for by including the form and version.

Externally view and download the Audit PDFs and Cover Pages uploaded tothe  Budget System

LEAs can access the uploaded PDF files from the School Finance Reports Website:

• Click on “File Submission Status Report” on the top right of the screen

• On the top right corner of this page, click “PDF Uploaded Files” and you should see the uploaded files in the dashboard.

• On the dashboard, you can filter and view the data by fiscal year, entity, and document type. A file can be downloaded by clicking on “Download” and a link to the file can be copied by right clicking on “Download" and clicking "Copy link."

If you have questions after reviewing the information above, please email the School Finance Budget Team at [email protected].

Average Daily Membership (ADM) is calculated using data submitted in the Arizona Education Data Standards (AzEDS) system. Data capture stores a static copy of ADM every month on the data capture deadline. ADM is the basis of state aid funding. Monthly state aid payments are a percentage of the annual equalization assistance less previous payments year-to-date.

Ensure data is reconciled and free of integrity errors before the monthly data capture dates. Reports are published at School Finance Reports. 

The FY 2026 API is available from 06/01/2025 to 07/15/2026.

*Alternative to FY 2026 AzEDS data available for the first two payments only. Districts will be paid based on AzEDS prior-year student counts, which do not apply to Charters. Charter will be paid based on estimated counts submitted via the ADEConnect Charter Estimated Counts application.

BUDG-25 reports for all school districts have been posted to the School Finance website.  FY 2025 April BUDG-25 reports have been calculated using the FY 2025 April BSA-55 information.

• District BUDG-25 reports are available to download from this School Finance website. For further instructions on how to navigate the website, please view this Hot Topic.

• District BUDG-75 reports are available to download from the School Finance website

• District BSA-55 reports are available to download from the School Finance website

Please contact the Budget Team ([email protected]) if you have any questions.

Thank you!

To help districts and charters finalize their May 15th Expenditure Budget revisions, School Finance has put together updated preliminary annual FRPL, DAA, and CAA one time funding apportionment amounts. The data that was used for these values comes from the preliminary data for the FY25 May state aid payments that uses the AzEDs data capture date of 4/15/2025.

Please note that these values are not the final values that will be used for the second payment of these apportionments. Data based on the FY25 June state aid payments that use the 5/15/2025 data capture date will be used to finalize payment 2 for each of the supplemental fundings. As a result, the finalized data is subject to change compared to the values provided in the spreadsheet.

For school districts, please review this Hot Topic for more information about how to include these supplemental apportionments in your Expenditure Budget.

Please see this spreadsheet for the updated preliminary values: FRPL, DAA, CAA One Time Funding Update