Revenues and Expenditures for Public School Districts in 2022-23

 

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 2022-23. 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.  In FY 23, school districts received $126.4 billion from the federal government for public elementary and secondary education, which is a decrease of 5.5 percent from the federal revenue received in FY 22 after adjusting for inflation.   The national median of total revenues per pupil across all LEAs was $18,715 in FY 23, which represents an increase of 1.8 percent from FY 22, after adjusting for inflation (table 3). The national median of current expenditures per pupil among all LEAs was $15,684 in FY 23, an increase of 0.7 percent from FY 22.   On a national basis, in the absence of any geographic cost adjustment, in FY 23 median current expenditures per pupil were $16,181 for LEAs with schools in cities, $17,476 for LEAs with schools in the suburbs, $14,085 for LEAs with schools in towns, and $15,554 for LEAs with schools in rural areas.   In FY 23, current expenditures per pupil in the 100 largest public school districts by enrollment ranged from a low of $7,980 in State-Sponsored Charter Schools, Nevada to a high of $33,387 in New York City School District, New York.  The tables also provide information on a regional basis, although a geographic cost adjustment was not applied. In FY 23, the district with the highest per pupil current expenditure in each region out of the two largest enrollment school districts within each state were highest in:   Northeast: Boston City Schools, Massachusetts ($36,906); South: Christina School District, Delaware ($33,954); Midwest: Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana ($23,197); and West: Los Angeles Unified School District, California ($22,606) The median current expenditures per pupil, on a national basis, were $15,050 for independent charter school districts and $15,772 for noncharter and mixed school districts. 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 32 state equivalents that met reporting standards for reporting finance data for independent charter school districts.   On a national basis, current expenditures per pupil were 4.7 percent lower in low-poverty districts than in high-poverty districts, based on poverty groups 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 (table 7). Total current expenditures per pupil in high-poverty districts were less than those in low-poverty districts in 4 states, with the percentage difference exceeding 5 percent in 2 states.   To view the full report, please visit https://ies.ed.gov/use-work/resource-library/report/first-look-ed-tab/revenues-and-expenditures-public-elementary-and-secondary-school-districts-school-year-2022-23.