Revenues and Expenditures for Public School Districts in 2018-19

 

The national median of total revenues per pupil and expenditures per pupil increased across all public school districts between budget years 2018 and 2019.  A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides information about revenues and expenditures in the nation’s public school districts for school year 2018-19. The report uses provisional data from the School District Finance Survey (F-33), which state education agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia submit each year. The national median of total revenues per pupil across all LEAs was $14,347 in FY 19, which represents an increase of 1.2 percent from FY 18, after adjusting for inflation. The national median of current expenditures per pupil among all LEAs was $12,162 in FY 19, an increase of 2.1 percent from FY 18. On a national basis, in the absence of any geographic cost adjustment, in FY 19 median current expenditures per pupil were $11,460 in cities, $13,622 in the suburbs, $11,172 in towns, and $12,375 in rural areas. In FY 19, current expenditures per pupil in the 100 largest public school districts by enrollment ranged from a low of $7,005 in Alpine School District, Utah to a high of $28,004 in New York City School District, New York. The report also provides information on a regional basis, although a geographic cost adjustment was not applied. In FY 19, current expenditures per pupil from the two largest school districts within each state by region were highest in: Northeast: New York City Public Schools, New York ($28,004); and Boston City Schools, Massachusetts ($25,653);  South: Christina School District, Delaware ($22,578) and District of Columbia Public Schools, District of Columbia ($22,406) Midwest: Cleveland City School District, Ohio ($19,355) and Columbus City School District, Ohio ($16,259); and West: Seattle School District 1, Washington ($16,543) and Hawaii Department of Education, Hawaii ($16,132). Median current expenditures per pupil in independent charter school districts were lower than median current expenditures per pupil in noncharter and mixed school districts in 23 out of the 31 states that met reporting standards for reporting finance data for independent charter school districts. On a national basis, there was a 0.1 percent difference in FY 19 between total revenues per pupil (combining federal, state, and local revenues) in high-poverty districts and low-poverty districts, based on quartiles calculated by ranking LEAs by poverty rate (i.e., the percentage of children ages 5-17 in families living below the poverty level) weighted by the number of children in poverty.