Over 20 years ago, Stride was founded on the premise that students and families should have a choice in their education.
Total support for School Choice has increased to almost 75% of the population.
We are seeing well over 1 million unique visitors to our websites each month and growing.
This fall, our Stride career programs for middle and high school students enrolled 42,000 students, a 36% increase from last year.
We recognize the particular difficulties in this age group, even prior to the pandemic and have been working on an entirely new design for our K-5 course catalog.
Revenue for the quarter was $400.2 million, an increase of almost 8% over the same period last year.
Adjusted operating income was $4.5 million, down significantly compared to the prior year, which I'll discuss in few minutes, and capital expenditures were $15.4 million, an increase of $2.6 million over last year.
Driven by strong demand in Career Learning and a recovery and revenue per K-12 enrollment, we expect to grow revenue and profitability this year compared to prior year.
Q1 revenue from our General Education business decreased $7.5 million to $306.3 million.
General Ed enrollments decreased to 147,600 from 164,600 last year, during the height of COVID.
Revenue per enrollment in General Education increased 9.7% in Q1 compared to the same quarter last year.
Career Learning revenue grew to $93.9 million, an increase of 64.4%.
Within our Career Learning business, our middle and high school Career Learning revenue was $71.4 million, up 46.4% from last year.
This was driven by 36.4% increase in enrollments, and an 8% increase in revenue per enrollment.
Like our General Education K-12 business, we expect revenue per enrollment and Stride career prep programs to improve significantly over last year.
Our adult learning business had another strong quarter, finishing with revenue of $22.5 million.
This puts us on a great trajectory for the full year and we expect adult learning to contribute almost $100 million in revenue during fiscal year 2022.
Gross margins for the quarter were 31.6%, down 340 basis points compared to the same period last year.
Selling, general and administrative expenses for the quarter were $133.4 million, up $15.6 million from the first quarter of fiscal 2021.
Stock-based comp was $8.3 million for the quarter.
We anticipate that we will finish the year with stock-based compensation in the range of $29 million to $31 million.
Adjusted operating income for the quarter was $4.5 million, adjusted EBITDA was $25.5 million.
Interest expense for the quarter was $2 million.
Our effective tax rate came in at 33%.
For FY '22, we believe we will finish the year, with a tax rate in the 28% to 30% range, mostly due to an increase in non-deductible compensation, above FY '21.
Capital expenditures in the quarter totaled $15.4 million, up $2.6 million from the prior period last year.
Free cash flow in the first quarter, defined as cash from operations less capex, was negative $146.9 million as compared to the prior year's $127.3 million.
We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $218.5 million.
Turning to our guidance; for the second quarter of fiscal year 2022, the company is forecasting revenue in the range of $390 million to $400 million, adjusted operating income between $55 million and $60 million, and capital expenditures between $14 million and $17 million.
For the full year, we are forecasting revenue in the range of $1.56 billion to $1.60 billion, adjusted operating income between $165 million and $180 million, capital expenditures between $65 million and $75 million, and lastly an effective tax rate between 28% and 30%.

Summary:
Revenue for the quarter was $400.2 million, an increase of almost 8% over the same period last year.
For the full year, we are forecasting revenue in the range of $1.56 billion to $1.60 billion, adjusted operating income between $165 million and $180 million, capital expenditures between $65 million and $75 million, and lastly an effective tax rate between 28% and 30%.