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In$ite Chart #1: Per
pupil expenditures including the Other
Commitments category
Download chart in PDF (49 KB)
What you are looking at:
This chart shows each district, or Local
Education Authority (LEA) – which for these purposes
include two state-operated schools, Davies and the
Metropolitan Career and Technical Center (the “Met”).
The bar as a whole represents 100% of the expenditures
for that LEA broken down by the five categories
indicated in the legend. The total dollars are divided
by the ADM of public school students on whom those
dollars are spent, to arrive at a per pupil expenditure
that includes everything. The districts are sorted high
to low by per pupil expenditure.
What you are looking for:
We draw your attention to the substantial differences in
each districts’ Other Commitments category to show how
the general per pupil expenditure masks unavoidable
expenses peculiar to individual districts. These
expenses include costs for district students taught
outside of the district, debt service for facilities
construction and repair, capital projects, retiree
benefits and community service operations such as adult
continuing education, child care centers and so on.
Quick
Definitions of the
other four major In$ite categories
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Instruction includes
all face-to-face teaching, substitutes and all
instruction-related classroom materials.
-
Instructional support
refers to pupil support such as guidance, library,
extracurricular and health services; teacher support,
which includes professional development; and program
support which refers to evaluators, therapists,
psychologists and so on.
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Operations includes
transportation, food service, safety, facilities and all
business services. Leadership includes principals,
superintendents, costs associated with school
committees, legal and secretarial.
Examples of Other
Commitments
The inclusion of Other Commitments presents the full
picture of district costs even though the expenses in
this catch-all category have little to do with one
another. For example, certain small towns (Little
Compton and Jamestown) do not have high schools of their
own. Their older students are counted as “out of
district” because they are bused to other public schools
to whom the district pays a tuition. Some districts
carry sizable debt for the building of school
facilities, and these costs increase the per pupil cost
ranging from $23 to $1,051. Two districts could each
spent about $1.2 million for debt service, yet a larger
district’s debt service per pupil cost could have been
$189 compared to the smaller district’s $738. Major
repairs or capital improvements in any given year will
drive up any small district’s per pupil cost.
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