Dollars In The Classroom, How Did Your Schools Do?

Did you know?

More efficient districts:
• Monitor performance measures to identify areas for improvement (see textbox below).
• Use staffing formulas.
• Effectively use county services or partner with other local schools or governments.
• Have energy conservation plans and limit excess building space, including closing schools when necessary.
• Monitor food prices, maximize the use of food commodities provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and modify menus appropriately.
• Limit food waste by using student input and daily production and usage information to determine meal production.
• Limit overtime and unproductive time by having employees perform other duties.
• Plan bus routes to ensure, where possible, the buses are filled to at least 75 percent of capacity.
• Ensure fuel pumps are secure, monitor fuel usage, and limit bus idling to lower costs.

Less efficient districts:
• Have costly benefit packages and higher noninstructional staffing levels.
• Operate schools far below designed capacity, fail to close schools when necessary, or close schools but do not fully reduce related positions.
• Fail to adjust staffing and salary levels based on similar districts’ staffing and salary levels and market surveys.
• Spend more on meals and conference travel for employees and governing board members.
• Lack a preventative maintenance plan to maintain buildings and school buses.
• Have poorly written vendor contracts and fail to monitor vendors’ performance and billing.
• Set meal prices too low to ensure program self-sufficiency.
• Fail to identify best prices, including failing to use, or ineffectively using, purchasing consortiums.
• Have excessive food waste due to poor inventory rotation and monitoring or overproduction of meals.
• Operate universal free meal programs without a sufficient number of students eligible for federally reimbursed free and reduced-price meals.

On March 1, the Arizona Auditor General released its annual report on classroom spending. Overall, excluding Arizona’s very small school districts, which have highly variable spending patterns, fiscal year 2017 operational spending by district ranged from $6,175 per pupil to $21,446 per pupil.

Auditor General’s report highlights:

● Although the State’s instructional spending percentage increased slightly in fiscal year 2017, the percentage remains lower than in prior years. Since its peak in fiscal year 2004, the instructional spending percentage has declined 4.8 percentage points. At the same time, the percentage of available operating dollars spent in all other operational areas has increased.

● The instructional spending percentage reached its peak in fiscal years 2003 and 2004, but then, between fiscal years 2004 and 2016, the percentage of resources spent on instruction declined, both during times when operational spending decreased as well as times when it increased. As stated earlier, in fiscal year 2017, districts increased operational spending as well as the percentage of resources spent on instruction. Although districts spent a similar amount per pupil in fiscal year 2017 as they did in fiscal year 2004 when adjusted for inflation, districts spent only 53.8 percent on instruction in fiscal year 2017 compared to 58.6 percent in fiscal year 2004, which was the peak percentage since monitoring began.

● District operational spending increased $341 million between fiscal years 2016 and 2017 with $200 million of the increase spent on instruction.

● The districts with the highest and lowest per pupil spending also differed in certain characteristics, with the highest-spending districts generally being smaller, rural districts with higher poverty rates.

Below find the percentage of dollars spent in the classrooms of school districts. You will also find the dollar amount spent per pupil on administration and instruction (classroom) as well as a comparison of administrative costs compared to peer districts for those districts that spend considerably more or less than peer districts. [To view each district’s full report click on the name]:
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