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State Report Card
In$ite™ Financial Data
Seven years ago and in collaboration with RIDE, the General Assembly established a detailed and informative system of reporting educational expenditures for all school districts. It selected software called the In$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 – i.e., 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 ¼, 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 and for a full year’s per-pupil expenditure for that program. The virtual Rhode Island school district In order to compare one district to a state average, we’ve created a “virtual” district by adding every district’s expenditures and dividing by the total ADM 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 Average daily membership calculates an average
of the number of days all students are formally members of a district
or school per year.
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