July 28, 2009

07.28.09: Top 10?

North Carolina is the 10th largest state in the US. According to a recent study, conducted by the US Census Bureau, North Carolina also ranks even higher in another statistic - #8 - in low funding for public schools. (We also fund at less than half the per pupil number as the top state, New York).

In funding of schools, we're #44, in 2006-2007, by the amount of money public schools spent per pupil during the 2006-07 school year. The study was of 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

"According to the report, public schools in North Carolina spent an average of $7,883 per pupil during the fiscal 2007 school year. That’s nearly $2,000 below the national average of $9,666. New York came in first with average spending per pupil of $15,981. Utah took last place on the list at $5,683." (Source: Charlotte Business Journal, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 11:31am EDT)

In less than one month, I will have two children in the North Carolina public school system. They, their classmates and the teachers deserve better from our county, our state and our friends in Washington.
Posted by Winn Maddrey at 7/28/2009
Labels: , , ,

2 comments:

  1. So in your opinion, how much $/year is enough?
    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry for the tardy reply. I have tried to get at the 'real' numbers from the state, which, of course, are hard to find. My math of their reported gross budget is not clear about what money goes to charter schools vs. public, so my math gives me a different per pupil number than the one they released.

    At any rate, to try to answer your query, I think that we should set a number as a per pupil number and work towards that over a 3-5 year window. If that's the case, we need to both project the growth in population within the schools and plan for that.

    So, to me, the per pupil number is the measure of how we are investing both in our students and our teachers. Historically, we've been terrible and we've been getting worse. So I think one measure to shoot for is to be in the top ten, which means that the number will be more reflective of the US education market than a random number.

    The number they disclosed this year -- $7,883 -- does not match the $7,890,264,888(gross budget, including salaries, benefits, expenses, etc.) /1,444,867 (number of students) = $5,461 per pupil that my math achieves. So I would like to see an annual increase of whatever the real number is to get us in the top 25 in five years and top 10 in ten years.

    So I think the number goes up by $500/pupil per year, meaning next year that would increase the overall budget by $722,433,500 or 9%. That figure of $500/pupil increase per year, seems to, within 10 years get us into the game we should be in -- which is developing 21st century skills.
    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)