State Report Card
District level school expenditures – In$ite® data
View/download In$ite Functions (PDF format,
13
KB)
Six 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 Education™ 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.
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.
|
