I'm glad that NJSpotlight has covered the release of the new Taxpayer Guide to District Spending, but I wish it had done a better job of explaining the difference between Budgetary Cost Per Pupil and Total Spending Per Pupil.
Budgetary Cost Per Pupil includes all the spending a district has under its direct control.
The NJDOE does helpfully explain this in its introduction:
The Budgetary Per Pupil Costs Indicators (1 through 15) have historically excluded certain expenditures, some of which are funded by entities other than the school district and/or taxpayers. The Budgetary Cost measures are considered to be more comparable across districts for local budgetary considerations because they generally measure annual recurring costs incurred for students educated within district schools, using local taxes and state aid. In contrast, “Total Spending” includes the omitted categories to represent all costs. These categories include transportation, special revenues (including federal funding), pension and benefits paid by the state, facilities (including debt service), equipment, total food services, judgments against the school district, and tuition/costs for students sent out of district (except payments to Charter schools). Consistent with the decision to include tuition payments for students sent out of district for preschool, special education, or other programs, the number of students sent out of district is added to the district’s enrollment denominator for the calculation of Total Spending Per Pupil.
In addition to the all-inclusive total spending measure, the Budgetary Per Pupil Cost Indicators continue to be included to allow districts to review and compare various components of a school district's annual budget data with other districts in the state. The Budgetary Per Pupil Cost and its subcomponents match the amounts districts publish in their User-Friendly Budgets prior to the school election. Unless otherwise noted in the indicator descriptions, districts are ranked from lowest to highest costs. Districts that did not report any values (N.R.) and those that moved from a different enrollment group (N.A.) are excluded from the rankings.
Total Spending Per Pupil is the more inclusive measure and includes payments the state makes on behalf of districts:
Total Spending Per Pupil was first developed in 2010-11 to provide a more comprehensive representation of school district expenditures, since the budgetary per pupil measures excluded some significant cost categories. This variable also uses a larger enrollment number, including all students for which the district is financially responsible. The Total Spending measure adds the following items to the costs already included in the Budgetary Cost (Indicator 1): 1) state payments on behalf of districts for pension, social security, and post-retirement medical; 2) transportation costs (including students transported to nonpublic and charter schools); 3) judgments against the school district; 4) all food service expenditures (including those funded by school lunch fees); 5) capital outlay budgeted in the general fund (facilities and equipment); 6) special revenues supported by local, state, and federal revenues (i.e. preschool, IDEA, Title I); 7) tuition payments by the district to other private and public school districts for the provision of regular, special, and preschool education services (charter school students and their associated costs are only included in the charter school in which they are being educated). 8) debt service for school debt; and 9) an estimate of the district’s share of the debt service the state is paying for school construction bonds issued for school construction grants and School Development Authority projects.
I disagree with this commentary by Colleen O'Dea, "A better measure for comparing district spending is the report’s 'budgetary cost per pupil,' which excludes those extraordinary costs, officials said."
Total Spending Per Pupil and Budgetary Cost Per Pupil are equally valid. Total Spending Per Pupil reveals what New Jersey is really spending on education and is what you should use for discussions of the total New Jersey budget and in interstate comparisons. Since TPAF, Social Security, debt servicing, and post-retirement healthcare are essential education spending, they should be included in our measurements of education spending. Budgetary Cost Per Pupil reveals what districts are spending.
Since NJ school districts are funded by taxpayers, in their local, state, and even federal capacities, the Total Spending Per Pupil is appropriate and necessary.
No comments:
Post a Comment