Arizona Public Schools Received $9,707 per student in 2007-08
Arizona’s citizens have been subjected non-stop to the claim that Arizona’s public schools are desperately underfunded. The Superintendent of Public Instruction’s finance report says otherwise.
On page six of that document, you will find a figure for all revenues collected by Arizona school districts from all sources. That number is $9,232,916,095. If you divide that figure by the enrollment number for districts on page nine of the same document, you get $9,707.45 in total revenue per pupil.
For a bit of perspective, the average Arizona private school tuition in 2006 was $4,300 and the average total cost was $5,500. The same revenue per pupil calculation for Arizona charter schools is $7,800.
Some might be inclined (I’m not) to divide the revenue number by fall enrollment rather than average attendance. Doing so effectively gives credit for students that have since dropped out or moved away. Even doing the math this way, this figure is still near $9,000 per pupil.
Facing a catastrophic downturn in revenues, state lawmakers cut 3 percent from the 2009 K-12 budget. The various education associations whipped their members into a frenzy and directed them to send hate emails to legislators. I’ve been getting them myself.
If, however, you go to the JLBC website and look at the budget excel spreadsheet you’ll see a budget line for the Arizona Department of Education of $4,141,201,000 on line 135.
Even if you cut this number by 18 percent, to $3,395,784,820, it would keep state K-12 funding between where it was in 2005 and 2006. Yes there has been some inflation and enrollment growth since 2005, so tightening of belts would be necessary. Average revenue per pupil would remain well above what charter schools receive.
Dr. Matthew Ladner is vice president for research at the Goldwater Institute.
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The Goldwater Institute promotes this statistic to the legislator and the media. Problem is, it isn’t a number that any reputable group uses to determine how much money a school district has to spend in the classrooms.
Here’s why:
1. The $9,707 number is conceived by taking the total amount of revenue received by Arizona district schools and then dividing it by the Average Daily Membership (ADM) for 2007-2008. Although it sounds like a simple way to figure things out, it fails to account for the fact that a lot of the revenue that flows through a district office has nothing to do with educating kids in the classroom…and it isn’t even money that districts can include in their budgets.
Some examples of what’s included in the “$9,700+” revenue number:
•Lunch money. The districts have to account for the lunch money from students and the federal lunch program, but these dollars are spent for (you guessed it!): lunches. In the case of the Foothills, this money channels through the district office and goes to Sodexho for providing the service. This may not seem like a lot of money in the scheme of things, but in FY 2007-2008, food service money accounted for $346 million dollars in the overall Dept of Education revenue total.
•Adjacent Ways. In Arizona, businesses and schools have to pay for certain construction costs whenever the roads or public ways alongside of their properties are worked on. Last year, the Dept of Education spent over $95 million on things like sewer pipes and electrical lines that are off school property.
•Community Schools/Adult Education. The school districts need to account for this money as revenue, despite the fact that the student fees go directly to fee-based programs outside of normal school hours. In my school district, this accounts for a very large sum of money that parents pay for dance classes, chess club and summer camp.
Our state is facing a very serious fiscal crisis – PLEASE insist that we deal with the FACTS and not with a bunch of political spin!!
(The full 2007-2008 Department of Education Annual Report, including the data sheets for the state and individual school districts can be found here:
http://www.ade.state.az.us/AnnualReport/AnnualReport2008/Vol1.pdf)