Attendance vs. enrollment - so what's the big deal?

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.

Take the Boise School District. It reports enrollment of 21,331 students for 2026. But its average daily attendance, or ADA, is 19,742.9. That’s a difference of nearly 1,600 students. Meanwhile, Boise’s ADA declined by another 574 students from the previous year.

West Ada, the state’s largest school district, reports enrollment of 37,622 but average daily attendance of 35,623.2 — a gap of nearly 2,000 students. Its ADA dropped by another 401 students from 2025.

The story repeats itself around the state. Nampa reports enrollment of 12,179 and ADA of 11,566.5, while losing nearly 257 students in ADA from the previous year. Pocatello has 11,304 students enrolled but ADA of 10,538, with an annual decline of nearly 256. Twin Falls reports 8,681 enrolled and ADA of 8,082, while its ADA fell by more than 352 students.

Those aren’t small differences when translated into taxpayer dollars.

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.

Consider Boise. Its enrollment exceeds average daily attendance by about 1,588 students. At $9,000 per student, that difference is the equivalent of roughly $14.3 million. In West Ada, the nearly 2,000-student difference equates to approximately $18 million. Nampa’s gap of about 613 students represents roughly $5.5 million, while Pocatello’s gap of 766 students represents about $6.9 million.

To be clear, that doesn’t mean those 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.

A difference of 10 students may look like an accounting technicality. A difference of 1,000 students is a $9 million policy question.

That’s why the distinction between enrollment and attendance matters so much as Idaho debates how public schools should be funded.

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.

School administrators like enrollment-based funding. It’s easy to understand why. If a district has 20,000 students on its enrollment rolls but only 18,500 regularly showing up, wouldn’t you rather have the state fund you based on the larger number?

From the perspective of the institution, absolutely. From the perspective of the taxpayer, the answer isn’t nearly as obvious.

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.

But attendance still matters.

And it should.

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.

Think about that for a moment. A family can consider itself a homeschool family. The parents can provide the child’s academic education themselves. The child may never sit in a public school classroom for math, English, science or history. Yet participation in a public school activity can result in the child appearing on the public system’s enrollment rolls.

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.

But the episode exposed something important about the broader funding debate.

Enrollment is not necessarily synonymous with a school educating a child full time. And that is precisely why lawmakers should be skeptical when they’re told enrollment is inherently a better basis for distributing taxpayer dollars.

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.

If a district loses students, government shouldn’t pretend those students are still there simply because the district built its budget around having them. That’s particularly important when Idaho is spending billions of dollars on K-12 education and every education constituency is competing for limited taxpayer resources. Money allocated to students who aren’t actually being served is money that can’t be spent elsewhere — including on students who are sitting in classrooms every day.

And again, we aren’t talking about rounding errors.

Boise’s enrollment exceeds its ADA by nearly 1,600. West Ada’s difference approaches 2,000. Nampa’s exceeds 600. Pocatello’s exceeds 750. Twin Falls’ is nearly 600.

The Department of Education’s own numbers demonstrate that enrollment and attendance can be significantly different measures. Boise reports 21,331 enrolled students compared with ADA of 19,742.9. West Ada reports 37,622 enrolled compared with ADA of 35,623.2. Nampa reports 12,179 compared with 11,566.5; Pocatello 11,304 compared with 10,538; and Twin Falls 8,681 compared with 8,082.

That doesn’t mean those children don’t exist. It doesn’t mean every absence represents waste. And it certainly doesn’t mean schools should lose funding every time a student stays home with the flu.

It does mean we should stop pretending that enrollment and attendance are the same thing. They aren’t.

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.

Schools understandably want budget stability. Every government agency does.

But budget stability cannot become a guarantee that taxpayers will indefinitely fund students who are no longer there, students who rarely attend, or students whose connection to the district may be considerably more limited than the word “enrolled” suggests.

We shouldn’t fund ghost students simply because doing so makes a school district’s budget easier to balance.

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.

At roughly $9,000 per student, every 1,000 students matter to the tune of about $9 million. Taxpayers deserve to know whether that 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.