State Report Card
In$ite Chart #1:
Per Pupil Expenditures by District including Other Commitments
View/download Per Pupil Expenditures
Including the Other Commitments Category (PDF format,
50
KB)
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT
This chart shows each district, or Local Education Authority
(LEA) –
which for these purposes include two state-operated schools, Davies
and the
Metropolitan Career and Technical Center (the “Met”). The bar as a
whole
represents 100% of the expenditures for that LEA broken down by the
five
categories indicated in the legend. The total dollars are divided by
the ADM of
public school students on whom those dollars are spent, to arrive at
a per pupil
expenditure that includes everything. The districts are sorted high
to low by per
pupil expenditure. WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR
We draw your attention to the substantial differences in each
districts’ Other
Commitments category to show how the general per pupil expenditure
masks
unavoidable expenses peculiar to individual districts. These
expenses include
costs for district students taught outside of the district, debt
service for facilities
construction and repair, capital projects, retiree benefits and
community service
operations such as adult continuing education, child care centers
and so on.
(See below for specific examples) Quick Definitions of the other
four major In$ite categories
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. 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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