Budget Basics

Funding Detroit Public School Community District

We take our responsibilities as public servants and stewards of tax payer dollars very seriously. Our students have many needs and our organization is complex, meaning transparency and accountability are critical to showing how we spend the resources we are given to most efficiently meet our students’ and our employees’ needs.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DPS AND DPSCD?

In 2017, Michigan created Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) as a new school district to manage the day to day operations for the 106 public schools in Detroit. Detroit Public Schools (DPS) remains a legal entity to collect taxes and repay the outstanding capital and operating legacy debt.

Unlike other school districts in Michigan, the newly created DPSCD receives its full Foundation Allowance (Per Pupil Funding) from the state. Other school districts receive their Foundation Allowance from local property taxes and state allocations. Proceeds from Detroit’s local property taxes are being used to repay outstanding Operating Debt. The outstanding debt will be repaid in 2027, and the District will revert back to the traditional funding model.

HOW IS DPSCD FUNDED?

Detroit Public Schools Community District is a government organization and receives funding from local, state and federal sources. Together, these streams of income give us the ability to provide our students with the high-quality public education.

HOW IS THE BUDGET CREATED?

Every year, DPSCD designs a budget based on current data, our priorities and our values – what we believe are the most critical areas to meet the educational, physical and emotional needs of our more than 50,000 students and to support our approximately 6,700 dedicated employees. 

We don’t develop this budget alone. The District engages staff, parents and community leaders in an annual budgeting process to determine District and school spending priorities.

LET’S TALK ABOUT DPSCD’s ACCOUNTS

DPSCD’s fund accounts are organized into four separate budgets. You can think of these like four separate bank accounts. Each fund has a separate set of self-balancing accounts comprised of assets, liabilities, fund equity, revenues and expenses. 

• General Purpose: The primary operating fund used to account for daily operating costs, except those required to be in another fund.
• Federal and Categorical Programs: Appropriations of federal categorical grants.
• Food Service: An enterprise fund that covers our food service operations, which are self-supporting.
• Capital Budget: The Capital Budget is a list of projects approved annually by the Board of Education. Depending on many factors, capital fund requests may not be fully funded – or funded at all.

HOW DOES DPSCD USE ITS FUNDING?

Our goal is to create an environment where all students – regardless of where they live, where they go to school and what unique characteristics, they bring with them – have a fair chance to flourish and succeed. And we believe instructional and support decisions should be made by the educators who know students best and see them every day. 

Our budgeting model helps the district achieve both of those goals. Every year more than half of our district’s operating budget is sent directly to our schools to fund the school-level budgets. The remainder of our operating budget is used for district-wide services like transportation, security, textbooks, building maintenance, technology services and more