Editor’s note: This op-ed is by George Cross, a former representative from Winooski.
There is a constant barrage of opinions about school spending in Vermont. The Picus study and the Dover-Wilmington study are the most recent iterations of these opinions.
It is important to note that tracking school expenditures in Vermont is difficult at best and almost impossible at worse. This is due to the fact that 250-plus school districts in Vermont use a variety of accounting programs and diverse charts of accounts. Further, each district typically reports its data via one of the 61 supervisory unions to the state Department of Education. While the data collection has improved over the years it is a long way from total standardization. The need for one accounting system and a standard chart of accounts for all districts, web based and easily understood, has been recognized for years. However, every attempt to move in that direction has been thwarted at one juncture or another usually around financial or territorial issues.
The Picus study has indicated that Vermont spends $17,447 per student annually. For those of us who have spent years in Vermont schools this number was a big surprise. The facts found on the Vermont.gov website under the Department of Education tab do not support this per pupil expenditure. The latest fiscal year with complete data is FY ’10. Table 7 Current Expenditures in the SASRS Report for FY ’10 states that the expenditures for all schools totaled $1,356,911,686. This number is an unduplicated expenditure total.
The Average Daily Membership Report for FY ’11 charts a FY ’10 average daily membership of 91,308. (The FY ’10 report is not in an Excel format thus the columns cannot be easily totaled.) Dividing the total expenditures for FY ’10 by the average daily membership for the same year yields a per pupil expenditure for that fiscal year of $14,861. This is 15 percent or $2,586 per student less than Picus reports.
A per pupil cost of $14,861 is still a high cost. If we are ever going to understand why the cost is higher than other states, we need to at least begin from the real data. We also need to be careful about making those comparisons. There is no national curriculum, no national set of standards, no national assessment program, and no way to track students as they move from school to school or even state to state. Other countries have all four.
Do we really want a national program? Or do we want to exercise state rights? We really cannot have it both ways!
