Archived Information

School Finance: Statistical Comparisons

FY06 Expenditures Per Pupil, All Funds

Explanatory Notes

This release of FY06 expenditures per pupil continues the effort to present Massachusetts school spending data in a way that is comprehensive, comparable, and transparent to the general public.

These calculations show all school operating expenditures including those outside the general fund such as grants, private donations, and revolving accounts. They include payments for local resident pupils who are being educated in schools outside the district. As well as showing the overall cost per pupil, they provide detail about how much schools spend in specific functional areas such as teaching, maintenance, and administration.

Data Source and Timing

Per pupil expenditures for Fiscal Year 2006 are calculated from information provided on each district's End of Year Pupil and Financial Report (EOYPFR). The document is a comprehensive report of revenues and expenditures that occurred during the 2005-2006 school year.

Districts are required to hire auditing firms to verify the accuracy of the data on the EOYPFR. In addition, the Massachusetts Department of Education (DOE) conducts a careful review of the data during the months following the report's submission. If any changes are necessary, districts must file amendments.

Spending from all funds

The following funding sources are all included in the functional expenditure per pupil measure.

• school committee appropriations
• municipal appropriations outside the school committee budget that affect schools
• federal grants
• state grants
• circuit breaker funds
• private grants and gifts
• school choice and other tuition revolving funds
• athletic funds
• school lunch funds
• other local receipts such as rentals and insurance receipts

Typically, school committee and municipal school appropriations, approved annually by town meetings and city councils, account for seven out of every eight dollars spent upon education.

Functional categories

Categories of spending reported in the Expenditure Per Pupil calculations follow the order of the DOE chart of accounts:

Within these eleven functions, 63 sub-functions provide further detail. For example, "pupil services" can be broken down into spending on attendance, medical/health services, transportation, food services, athletics, student body activities, and school security.

The eleven functions match those incorporated in the changes to the Chapter 70 foundation budget calculations that occurred in FY07. This direct correspondence should facilitate current and future analysis of the validity of the foundation budget.

Categories of spending that are not included in the Expenditure Per Pupil are:

These categories are normally excluded from per pupil expenditure comparisons. There is so much variation in districts' building programs that counting these large expenses in the total would unfairly skew the results.

In-District And Out-of-District Spending and Pupils

Most school spending goes toward educating local resident pupils in local schools. However, about five percent of the nearly one million public school children in Massachusetts are enrolled in publicly-funded settings outside the district. School districts pay tuition for pupils at special education schools, charter schools, and other placements. Transportation costs often add to the expense.

The first ten functional categories are for services provided within the school district. In those categories, per pupil calculations are limited to the pupils enrolled at the district.

For the eleventh category (programs with other school districts), tuition and transportation outlays are divided by the number of pupils they pay for.

The "total per pupil expenditure" includes all eleven categories of spending, and combines both groups of students.

Measuring enrollment: the concept of full-time equivalent average membership

The per pupil spending calculations published here compare spending, which occurs throughout the school year, to the average number of pupils, which normally fluctuates throughout the school year. The enrollment statistic used is called "full-time equivalent average membership."

Full-time equivalency refers to the percentage of time that students are enrolled during the school year. A pupil who arrives on November 1^st and is still enrolled at the end of the year, for example, would be assigned full-time equivalency of somewhere in the range of eight-tenths.

District spending requirements

The Commonwealth does impose a strictly enforced total spending requirement called "net school spending" which is an integral component of the Chapter 70 state aid formula. Net school spending includes local appropriations, Chapter 70 aid, and special education circuit breaker monies, but not grants or revolving funds. Because of this, what qualifies as "net school spending" is slightly lower than a district's total expenditure. Each district's actual and budgeted net school spending, compared to what is required, is available on the DOE web site:

Detailed compliance reports: http://finance1.doe.mass.edu/chapter70/compliance.html

Net school spending trends: http://finance1.doe.mass.edu/schfin/Chapter70/profile.aspx

Otherwise, aside from one maintenance spending provision administered by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, there are no spending requirements for specific functional areas imposed by the Commonwealth.

Comparisons with day program per pupil expenditure

For decades, DOE published a "day program" per pupil expenditure which distinguished costs per pupil in regular, special, vocational and until recently, bilingual programs. The "total" day program per pupil expenditure added these categories together using the same basic methodology used as far back as 1976.

Although statistically sound, the day program measure was less comprehensive than the functional spending measure shown here. It did not count spending from most "outside" funding sources. It did not reflect tuition for pupils being educated at private special education schools, charter schools, or other settings outside the district. As a result, the total per pupil expenditure now in use tends to be at least one-sixth higher than what the old one would have been in any given year.

Because current per pupil expenditure is a more comprehensive perspective on spending, comparisons to previous years' day program numbers will not be valid. Although DOE has discontinued publishing the day program calculations for years after FY05, current data are still available upon request.

Contacts

Questions and comments can be addressed to any of the following School Finance staff: