User's Guide: Field 8
In$ite Financial Information

Special to the district report

What you are looking at
The In$ite Finance Analysis Model for Education^TM described above in 'In$ite comes on-line' is being used to view district level expenditures for the first time this year. The pie chart on the upper left represents the most comprehensive Per Pupil Expenditure number. Total expenditures (all funding sources) were divided by the average daily membership (ADM) of pupils served both in the district and out of the district to arrive at a gross or unadjusted Total Per Pupil Expenditure. (Also see "Per pupil expenditures explanation" shown above.) The pie is sectioned into the five major categories of expenditures: Instruction, Instructional Support, Operations, Leadership, and Other Commitments.

The pie chart on the right removes the Out-of-District Students and the "Other Commitments" category. Other Commitments include such expenditures as costs for district students taught outside of the district, debt service for facilities or large repairs and other sorts of costs that vary a great deal between districts because of peculiarities of circumstance. This pie chart represents the Per Pupil Expenditures that are comparable district to district, just as they are school to school (Instruction, Instructional Support, Operations, and Leadership).

The center row of pie charts are details of the large pie at the top right, showing details for three of the major sections: Instruction, Instructional Support, and Leadership. (Please note that definitions for the detail categories in Instruction are shown above just before the district finance charts in this user's guide.)

The table at the lower left shows per pupil expenditures by educational program and includes all costs (including Other Commitments) and all students (including Out-of-District placements). Please note that the per pupil is not based on a simple headcount, but on a student count according to the full-time equivalent (or FTE) of time spent by students in the various programs. The per pupil expenditure is calculated by the costs of each major program divided by the FTE (full time equivalent) of all students in each program. (Please see earlier FTE explanations in "Per pupil expenditure explanation" section.)

What you are looking for
You are looking to get a sense of how your district allocates its resources to provide the educational opportunities for its students. Since this is the first view of district expenditures categorized in this way, it should provide another basis of discussion about the district. Expenditures might reflect the especially high or low challenges of the children in the district or educational decisions that require a different-than-average investment. District expenditures should not necessarily be the same. District leaders make many policy and educational program decisions in the best interests of their particular student body using those resources available to them. In$ite allows us to examine the investments associated with those decisions and policies in an entirely new way.

Sources of revenue
This pie chart on the lower right of the district expenditure page shows a break-down of where the overwhelming majority of the money for this district's schools comes from, based on the district's Form 31 report. The state contribution, known as state aid, is calculated by a formula that was signed into law as Article 31, the education portion of the State's Budget for fiscal year 1998-99. The local revenue is the support raised by the city or town through property taxes. Federal support might be money from the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA) and individual grants. Working Wonders grants, for example, are competitively awarded by the State Department of Education, but the grants are funded by federal Goals 2000 money. Some districts may have additional monies or derive benefits from corporations or foundations that may not show in this pie chart. (The two items not included in the revenue chart that are included in the In$ite expenditure data are debt service and food service. The supporting revenues for these two categories and the related expenditures have historically not been reported in Form 31.)

Return to top || Return to the Information Works Home Page