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In$ite Data: District level school expenditures
Download the In$ite Functions
definitions in PDF (8 KB)
Five years ago and in
collaboration with RIDE, the General Assembly
established a detailed and informative system of
reporting educational expenditures for all school
districts. It selected software called the In$ite
Financial Analysis Model for EducationTM which tracks all expenditures through
the local school district to the school sites. “All
expenditures” includes expenditures from all financing
sources – e.g., federal, state, and foundation grants,
general revenue budget, total food service expenditures
regardless of revenue source, and debt service if part
of the school district’s budget.
For more detail on In$ite, its implementation and the
specifics that define its large categories, please refer
to the Users Guide or the
In$ite section of the
Rhode Island Department of Elementary and Secondary
Education
website. Detailed expenditure
accounts for each school are also available on this
website.
A word of caution: Please be cautious about making assumptions for your
school or district. Often district decisions or other
factors particular to a district easily explain figures
that initially seem unusually high or low. Appropriate
school or district financial managers should be able to
answer your questions or concerns.
Per pupil expenditures
All expenditure dollars on the school and district
charts are expressed as a per pupil figure. These per
pupil expenditures are based on the Average Daily
Membership (ADM) of students and then their full-time
equivalent (FTE) in their respective programs. Per pupil
is not a simple headcount, but a count by FTE. A child
enrolled for an entire school year in a full-day program
equals one FTE. A half-day kindergarten student enrolled
for a full year equals ½ or 0.5 FTE. If a student was
not enrolled for the full year, his or her FTE would
decrease by the time not enrolled. Thus, the half-day
kindergarten student enrolled for only half a year
equals 1/4 or 0.25 FTE.
Each student’s FTE is then divided by the educational
programs provided to that student. A child’s
participation in Special Education Resource or English
as a Second Language is counted only as a percentage of
that child’s day. In a six-period day, a child who
spends one period in a specific program will count as
one sixth for that program. Six such periods a day for
the full school year would account for the full-time
equivalent (FTE) and for a full year’s per pupil
expenditure for that program.
The virtual RI school district
In order to compare one district to a state average,
we’ve created a “virtual” district by adding every
districts’ expenditures and dividing by the total
“Average Daily Membership” enrollment for the state. The
Virtual District does not imply a standard for best
fiscal practices; it merely serves to orient each
individual district’s spending to the current practices
of the state as a whole.
Average daily membership (ADM)
Average daily membership (ADM) calculates an average of
the number of days all students are formally members of
a district and/or school per year.
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