DEARBORN HEIGHTS DISTRICT 7: HOW DOES A BALANCED BUDGET BECOME A $6 MILLION DEFICIT?
Well, this started with a comment from a reader.
I checked it.
Then I checked a little more.
And now there's a new page in the ledger. 📜
Dearborn Heights School District 7's most recent audit was clean. No material weaknesses. No significant deficiencies reported. No audit scandal hiding in the footnotes.
But what happened after that audit caught my attention.
Here's the timeline.
📌 JULY 2025
D7 adopted its 2025–26 General Fund budget:
Revenue: $43.02 million
Expenditures: $43.02 million
Planned deficit: $0
The district expected to preserve roughly $8.1 million in General Fund balance.
Essentially balanced.
📌 FEBRUARY 2026
The financial picture had changed.
The district was publicly discussing declining enrollment, state funding changes, rising costs and reduced at-risk funding.
For perspective, enrollment fell by roughly 148 students, about 6.2% in one year.
📌 MARCH 2026
The Board approved an amended budget and authorized up to $7 MILLION in short-term borrowing for operational purposes.
For comparison, the district's entire originally adopted General Fund budget was about $43 million.
📌 SPRING 2026
The Board began approving staffing reductions.
By the time those actions were completed, approximately 35 full-time positions had been approved for reduction, including teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators/support staff and maintenance.
📌 FINAL 2025–26 AMENDED BUDGET
Revenue: $40.70 million
Expenditures: $46.78 million
Projected deficit:
🚨 $6.08 MILLION
Beginning General Fund balance: $8.13M
Projected ending balance: $2.06M
That's approximately 75% of the General Fund balance projected to disappear in one fiscal year.
But here's the part of the ledger I found particularly interesting.
Compared with the budget originally adopted:
Revenue came in about $2.31 million below projection.
At the same time, projected spending increased approximately $3.76 million ABOVE the original budget.
Put those two movements together and you get almost exactly the $6.08 million deterioration.
D7 has offered explanations for its financial pressure, including declining enrollment, the expiration of federal ESSER funding and increasing retirement costs.
Those are real factors and they belong in the discussion.
But ESSER's expiration wasn't an unexpected event when the district adopted its 2025–26 budget.
And declining revenue alone doesn't explain the entire change.
So the question I'm left with isn't whether D7 faced financial pressures.
Clearly, it did.
The question is:
How did a balanced $43 million budget turn into a $6.08 million projected deficit, a $7 million short-term operational borrowing authorization and roughly 35 position reductions, all within the same fiscal year?
That's why Dearborn Heights District 7 just earned a page in the ledger.
Not because somebody made a Facebook claim.
Because I followed the numbers behind it.
📖 Sources: Dearborn Heights School District 7 audited financial statements; original and final amended 2025–26 General Fund budgets; D7 Board of Education records; Wayne RESA enrollment data.
With receipts and respect.