From local government observer Steve Willson:

How Much is Too Much at D155?

The Northwest Herald recently ran a story saying D155’s budget for FY2022 will be $118 million. 

Clearly, that’s not the whole budget, as D155 spent $151 million in FY2020.

Here are some other interesting facts.

Enrollment

The highest enrollment in D155 was 7,003.  In FY2020, it was 5,777.  The District projects enrollment will fall to around 5,200 in three more years and flatten. 

But D47 and D26, the feeder districts, only had 1,006 fourth graders last year, and 952 first graders. 

There are about 65 eighth graders in private schools, and about 20 can be expected to go to Faith Lutheran High School.

That implies the total number of incoming freshmen in D155 could be fewer than 1,000 in only eight years, or a total enrollment of about 4,000.

Where will the extra 1,200 students come from?

Cost per Student

But don’t expect expenditures to drop if enrollment declines further.  Ten years ago, D155 spent $14,430 per student.  Last year it spent $26,200!  That’s an increase of 81.6%. 

During that same period, the Consumer Price index increased 14.4%.

And despite declining enrollment, staffing today is higher than it was ten years ago.

How Much for Education?   How Much for Overhead?

Cost per student isn’t very intuitive, so let’s consider the average cost per class, which is average class size (22.8 students) times average expenditure per student.

The total is about $600,000!

In other words, the question is, if you had $600,000, could you rent space, fill it with what you need, pay for a teacher and buses and lunch, and still have money left over?

Let’s run the numbers!

The average teacher salary two years ago was almost $100,000, which is far higher than the average for high school teachers in the suburban area.  But let’s use that number. 

The District certainly isn’t going to reduce salaries!

Add benefits, and the total is probably around $150,000 to have a teacher in the classroom.

That means 75% of the District’s budget goes for things other than teachers.

How much should their physical plant cost? 

Commercial rates are good proxies for what the District should spend on their buildings.

Locally, a commercial space rents for $1.00 to $1.50 per square foot per month.  With gymnasiums and locker rooms and cafeterias and auditoriums that are used only a handful of times each year, school average about 100 square feet per pupil. 

With 22.8 students per class, the cost should be $28,000 to $41,000 per year. 

Utilities should be around $5,000 per year.  Commercial cleaning services are around $3,000 per year for that much space. 

College students spend around $1,200 on textbooks each year. 

They use them once. 

High schools use the books for at least four years. 

So books should be perhaps $7,000 per year. 

Desks cost $150 to $200 each.

That’s around $4,000 for one classroom, and desks last for many years.

So, in total, space should cost around $50,000 to $60,000 per year per class.

How close is that to what the District spends? 

If you add the Operations and Maintenance Fund, and the Debt Service Fund, and the average for capital expenditures over the last several years, the average is about $85,000 per classroom.

Transportation and food add about $19,000 per year.

Add it all together — teachers and a place to teach with desks and books and labs and food and buses — and you get about $255,000 per year.

That still leaves about $345,000 per class for overhead, or 57% of the money they spend.