PCE | Per Student Spending

School Facts

Per Student Spending

In 2008, Utah will spend $7,500 per
k-12 student.

The Utah Taxpayers Association estimates that taxpayers will be spending more than $7,500 per student in 2008. This figure includes operations, facility construction, and interest. It does not include non-K-12 programs.

How does this compare to Government figures like the U.S. Census Bureau's?

The most current Census Bureau spending per student figure for Utah is $5,437 for 2006, not 2008. The $7,500 figure is for 2008, and it includes expenditures that the Census Bureau does not include.

The Census Bureau figure excludes facility construction and interest. The Utah Taxpayers Association's figure (actual, not estimated) for 2006 excluding facility construction and interest is $5,424, which is within 0.3% of the equivalent Census Bureau figure.

The Association suspects the very small difference is due to certain operating expenses that show up in Fund 32 which is normally where capital expenditures are recorded. Since the Census Bureau excludes capital altogether, that may be excluding operating expenditures that show up in Fund 32.

Including facility construction and debt service, the Association calculated that Utah spent $6,529 per student in 2006 (again, actual not estimated).

According to the most recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (which is a part of the US Department of Education), Utah spent $6,301 per student in the 2004-05 school year. This figure accounts for all K-12 spending, including school lunch.

When the Utah Taxpayers Association includes school lunch in their figure for the same year, they calculate that Utah spent $6,309 per student, which is within 0.13% of the NCES figure.

How did we arrive at $7,500 per student for 2008?

The Utah Taxpayers Association recently released its Utah School District Spending Report for 2006. You can view this report here. The spending figures in this report are actual expenditures, not estimates. In 2006, Utah school districts spent $6,529 per student. Again, this includes facility construction and interest.

The actual figures for 2008 won't be available until 2009, but we can safely estimate that 2008 per student spending in Utah will be at least $7,500 because the increase in Minimum School Program (MSP) spending per student from 2006 to 2008 is about $1,000. Adding the MSP increase to the 2006 actual expenditure yields more than $7,500 per student for 2008. This is a conservative estimate because it assumes that facility construction, interest, and non-MSP operating costs per student will not increase from 2006 to 2008.

The Association's calculations are based on Annual Financial Report data from the Utah State Office of Education.

By the way, facility construction and interest are not fixed costs in a state where enrollment is projected to grow by about 3% annually for at least the next decade. There are no fixed costs associated with buildings that have not yet been built. As long as Utah is expected to experience enrollment growth of about 3% annually, Utahns can expect to continue spend more than a $500 million per year on facility construction and interest.

However, Utahns can spend less if vouchers divert a portion of enrollment growth to private schools at a lower cost per student.

What about the WPU?

The WPU, or Weighted Pupil Unit, is not the same as "per-student spending" despite the fact that many elected officials, reporters, and education advocates treat it as such.

The WPU is simply a figure that the state uses to distribute only a portion of its k-12 education funding to school districts. Although WPU distribution is based on student enrollment, it accounts for less than 50% of actual per student spending.

The following items – based on 2008 appropriations – are not included in the WPU:

Social Security, Medicare, and retirement: $333.3 million
Pupil transportation: $70.9 million
Teacher compensation increase (beyond steps and lanes): $68.7 million
Various block grants: $113.7 million

In total, about $1.2 billion Minimum School Program expenditures are excluded from the WPU. On top of that, there are local expenditures for capital and debt service.

In 2008, WPU expenditures will be about $1.75 billion out of a total of $4.1 billion K-12 expenditures, or about 43% of the total.

The reason for this is that over half of public education education expenditures are not included in the revenues that are doled out to school districts by the state government.

Again, WPU is not a per student amount although there is a correlation between student enrollment and number of WPUs. Statewide, there are about 1.29 WPUs per student (based on anticipated enrollment of 540,190 as stated in the LFA's Appropriations Report). About 50% of the difference between the number of WPUs and the number of students is attributable to special education.

More questions about the $7,500 estimate:

Answers provided by the Utah Taxpayers Association.

Does your $7,500 estimate include “one-time” money?
Yes it does, as it should. Those who want to minimize the amount taxpayers spend per student try to exclude all sorts of things, such as facility construction, interest, “below the line” items such as Social Security, Medicare, retirement, block grants etc. Now, some want to exclude so-called “one-time” expenditures.

Here’s why one-time expenditures should be included:

- One-time expenditures are still expenditures of tax dollars. These are real tax dollars, not pretend tax dollars.

- One-time expenditures will be replaced in succeeding years by additional one-time revenues or by ongoing revenues.

- To exclude one-time expenditures would be to assume that per student spending will be DECREASING in 2009 because the one-time money would not be replaced. History strongly indicates that FY2009 spending per student – which will also include one-time funds -- will be even higher than 2008. Only once in the past twenty years has nominal per student spending decreased from one year to the next.

- If these one-time expenditures had been diverted to higher education which would have then diverted general funding to transportation, then the opposition would not be dismissing these expenditures as “one-time”.

- One-time expenditures in the Minimum School Program are less than 4% of estimated school district expenditures in 2008. Therefore to reach $7,500 per student in 2009, the legislature would have to add an additional 3% for enrollment growth and 4% to replace one-time funding.

- All budgets have one-time money. A lot of the current one-time money is from budget surpluses, and these budget surpluses are the result of conservative revenue estimates by the state. If the state were less conservative in estimating revenue, then a lot of the one-time money in the 2008 budget would automatically become ongoing money. During recessions, one-time money comes from transfers from the Rainy Day Fund and the “working” Rainy Day Fund (cash for capital projects).

What about federal money?
Our estimate includes federal money, as it should. Afterall, Utahns pay federal taxes just like everyone else. A voucher program that results in educating students at a lower cost to federal taxpayers makes sense just as a voucher program that educates students at a lower cost to state and local taxpayers.

Besides, most federal dollars are driven by poverty levels. Therefore, if voucher opponents are going to argue that vouchers are going to result in “loss” of federal dollars, then they must be assuming that low income students will be using vouchers. Besides, federal dollars for K-12 education are generally allocated to the states based on Census Bureau poverty levels.

What about adult education?
No, our estimate does not include adult education or fund 23 expenditures. Even though these are tax dollars, this would not be an appropriate inclusion in the voucher debate.

In the context of vouchers and tuition tax credits, how much of these costs are variable?
Considering that Utah’s enrollment is expected to grow 3% annually, virtually all K-12 costs are variable. There are no fixed costs associated with teachers that have not yet been hired, buildings that have not yet been built, or equipment that has not yet been purchased. Even districts that have experienced declining enrollment have demonstrated that costs are largely variable by redrawing school boundaries. They can also convert underused traditional district schools to charter schools.

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