My calculator won't go that high!
 

A front page story in today's OREGONIAN, which is a pulitzer prize winning liberally biased newspaper, reveals that there are 562,828 students enrolled in Oregon Government schools, K-12.
The state government schools superintendent is presenting a $6.3 BILLION budget.

How much is that expressed as cost per pupil?

6.3E9 / 562828 = $11193.47296

$11, 193.47 per kid per year? Sounds a mite high to me.

$11,193.47 per

Thanks! I knew you whiz kids wouldn't let me down. These figures are rarely published here. Any "official" cost per pupil figures released are far below that. I wonder how they cook those books? But these figures were hidden in an article proclaiming that the Hispanic student population number has made dramatic increases while the white enrollment is dropping. Me? I prefer to follow the money...;)

Sometimes the cost per pupil is related to actual expenses directed to teaching. The budget should break down the expenditures and then you can see where it all goes.

Based on local budget committee numbers, you can figure over 90% for payroll...including benefits. (edit) The state budget doesn't include new school construction, buildings, etc. That tab is picked up by local district property tax payers.

Thats not high - in 1980, my home town was 3rd in CT with $9,200 per student. Our town here is higher.

yes its kinda like this Porsche story
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/01/25/porsche-denies-optimistic-earnings-per-car-report/
as they didnt make all their profit just from the 96,000+ vehicales they sold

Fairfax County, Va., will spend $12,917 per pupil in 06-07. That's the cost of doing business. Big public districts will have overhead that private schools won't, but public schools don't have wealthy donors or endowments.

Who expects private schools to be less expensive, and what leads you to believe that?

Ummm. The fact that many are?

That's because Sister Mary makes $4K a year.

Wow, the last time I saw that statistic for students in Alabama it was around $6k/student. Y'all must be rich up there. :>)

Mike

Don't confuse the budget of a public school with the tuition of a private - big accounting differences. Plus, private schools do not have to have 'special' programs and transportation like public schools do.

That was my point. $11-13k seems high when compared to the (supposedly) superior education a child can get at a $5-8k private school. The two shouldn't be compared as apples-to-apples.

Another data point:

"According to recent data from the 2004 Madison County Families and Children Report Card, the annual expenditure per pupil for the Huntsville City, Madison City, and Madison County school systems was $6,994; $5,704; and $5,615, respectively. All three totals were well below the national average; public school systems in the U.S. spent an average of $8,745 per pupil on K-12 education in 2004. "

No that really doesn't sound all that high when you factor in salaries and operating costs (facilities, utilities, etc.)

That's about $1,000 a month - not all that much more than day care. Even cheaper in some cases.

You must be mistaken, Jeff. And several others. Some guys on this Board know that public schools are horribly inefficient. So....your data needs to be consistent with that.

Hehehe. . . The old "provide data to validate 'conclusions'" problem, eh?

:)

I don't doubt there's still room for improvement and that there's still a lot of misuse of funds that SHOULD go to students, programs, etc. that gets sucked up by fat cat bureaucrats, but in this particular case $12k a year per student really doesn't sound that much. Consider liability and it actually starts to sound rather attractive. . .

Yeah, but that's not a problem here. If the conclusions come first and then the data, you have no problem.

Making the results fit the anticipation.

Here's the entire story. Make your own conclusions.

One in six students is Latino
Enrollment - The state superintendent points to a need for more resources as diversity grows Thursday, February 01, 2007STEVEN CARTER
Nearly one in six students in Oregon public schools this year is Latino, while the number of white students continues to decline, the Oregon Department of Education reported Wednesday.

The annual statewide student count shows an increase of 6,117 Latino students, or 7 percent, to 90,363 students. That's in addition to a 10 percent increase from the 2005-06 school year.

Overall, Oregon enrollment grew by 2 percent to 562,828 students in kindergarten through high school. But the big increase in Latino students made up for a drop in white enrollment of nearly 5,000. The number of white students has dropped by 32,106 statewide since 2001-02.

The statewide enrollment report, which tallies students each fall, is a snapshot of population trends in Oregon. The report shows:

Urban districts and districts with high housing costs continue to lose enrollment -- Lake Oswego schools dropped almost 3 percent this year. Portland, Eugene and Medford also declined.

Most suburban Portland districts continued to grow, led by Beaverton's 3 percent increase.

Enrollment in small, remote school districts continued to decline, reflecting the loss of family-wage jobs in rural areas.

Growth of other minorities -- African-American, Native American and Asian-American -- continued, but at a slower pace than Latino students.

Demographer Charles Rynerson of Portland State University's Population Research Center said the Latino surge will continue, largely because of an influx of Latino families of child-bearing age and a high birth rate among Latino women.

The birth rate among white women peaked in 1990, and the children of the baby boom "echo" are nearing the end of their high school careers, Rynerson said.

Rynerson, who does population forecasts for Oregon school districts, said the birth rate among Latino women is declining, but not as fast as whites and other minorities.

Latino children are concentrated in large numbers in early grades, while white student numbers are biggest in upper grades.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates there may be as many as 175,000 illegal immigrants in Oregon, the majority of them from Latin America. Rynerson has no idea how many Latino students might be illegal. Neither the U.S. Census nor schools tracks that.

"Schools don't ask the immigration status of students -- that's illegal under federal law," said Gene Evans, Department of Education spokesman. "We take whoever shows up at the door."

State school Superintendent Susan Castillo said the growing diversity of Oregon's school population underscores the need for more resources -- bilingual teachers, more training and more money. She is asking lawmakers to increase Gov. Ted Kulongoski's proposed $6.06 billion school budget to $6.3 billion to provide more full-day kindergarten, early childhood education programs and smaller classes.

Latino enrollment in the Hillsboro School District has swelled to nearly 29 percent of the district's 20,077 students, said Saideh Haghighi, Hispanic outreach director.

The district has responded by adding more translators, parent nights in Spanish for Latino parents and training teachers in how to teach academic subjects to students with limited English. The district plans to address teacher requests for classes in conversational Spanish so they can better communicate with their students. Under a federal grant, Haghighi's office has added three people to work directly with Latino families to help them adapt to school.

The North Clackamas School District, which grew 2.7 percent this year, is using some proceeds from a $230 million bond to build two new schools and buy land east of Interstate 205, where all the growth is occurring.

The Beaverton School District grew to nearly37,500 students this year, more than administrators projected. And new subdivisions stacked with single-family homes promise more in the years to come.

At Findley, the district's largest elementary school with almost 900 students, all kindergarten classes were moved to portables at a nearby campus this year. Findley is in the Bethany area, one of the area's slated for development with the expansion of the urban growth boundary.

Jennifer Garland, the Beaverton district's facilities planning coordinator, said she expects home-building to continue to drive growth.

Amy Hsuan and Suzanne Pardington of The Oregonian staff contribute to this report.

Steven Carter: 503-221-8521; stevencarter@news.oregonian.com