Last week I wrote about a new report which concludes that charter schools spend far more on administration per student than school districts. According to the report, charters average $1,403 on administrative costs per student and school districts average $628. The higher costs at charters add up to $128 million a year.
To create the report, the authors went through the Annual Financial Reports submitted to the state by all charters and school districts. They put the data on administrative costs per student for all charters and districts into a long table (It begins on page 26 if you want to look at it). I went through the table to find how much each Tucson-area school district spends on administration per student. As I wrote above, the state average for districts is $628. Here’s the local district breakdown, from low to high.
Sunnyside: $548
Amphitheater: $610
TUSD: $614
Vail: $666
Marana: $679
Flowing Wells: $684
Catalina Foothills: $807
Interestingly, TUSD, which is regularly accused of having a bloated administration, is the third lowest on the list, just below the state district average.
The report shows that many of the larger charter districts, which should benefit from economies of scale, actually have some of the highest administrative costs (Costs at some of the smaller charters are below the school districts’ average cost). BASIS, for instance, spends an average of $2,275 per student on administration, more than 50 percent higher than the charter average. Here are the numbers for the Tucson-area BASIS schools, from low to high.
Oro Valley Primary: $1,952
Tucson North: $1,976
Tucson: $2,075
Oro Valley: $2,456
One final stat from the study: the amount spent on administration relative to classroom spending. School districts spend an average of 22 percent as much on administration as on the classroom. Charters spend 48 percent.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2016.
Then why are the public schools asking for more money and the charters are not?
Mr Safier,
Why do you feel it is fair to compare schools that have vastly different enrollments, use a different accounting system, and financeexpense their facility usage in completely different ways (bonds versus admin expense)?
It seems as if BASIS has the right idea: your educational outcomes are clearly proportional to the amount you spend on administration. Therefore, if TUSD wants BASIS-like outcomes, it should spend a lot more on administration.
Right?
Actually, Ms. Allen, charter schools cite what they call inequities in the funding formula and decry the district schools ability to leverage resources through bonds and overrides as unfair, then ask the legislature for more money to make up the difference. It seems a little disingenuous for them to argue that they provide better value for the state’s education dollars on the one hand, but then turn around and say that they do not have enough money to do their jobs.
As long as we’re talking expense of operations, they just released information that TUSD receives nearly 10,000 per student. If the charters receive far less, I’m not sure what the comparison does other than muddy up the discussion. In fact after gifts from Gates, and others to the public schools, and public tax credits for education, can anybody give us a real accurate number as to how much is being spent? Or are the outside gifts and grants not reported?
Schools’ rates of spending on administration and faculty salaries are important, but in terms of how parents make enrollment decisions, they don’t rate. Parents want their kids’ educational, social, and emotional needs met. They will enroll their kids in a school that meets their needs and treats them humanely over a school that doesn’t even when the former has 2x the rate of administrative spending of the latter.
As a parent, I’m pretty tired of Safier’s approach to education blogging. It has little to do with quality of education or even the topics he sometimes pretends to care about , racial and socioeconomic justice and equality of opportunity.
When it comes right down to it, it’s all about justifying THE PUBLIC DISTRICT SYSTEM favored by his friends and political associates over against THE CHARTER SYSTEM or THE PRIVATE SYSTEM. Any category of analysis in which THE PUBLIC DISTRICT SYSTEM can score points against the other system gets discussed, any category of analysis (including meeting students’ needs) where the other two systems win gets swept under the rug.
Why should people bother to read this repetitive (and highly selective) blog?
“Why should people bother to read this repetitive (and highly selective) blog?”
So we can point and laugh at the socialists, of course. These people need to be ridiculed and shamed, someone has to do it.
Charter schools are public schools
Yes, Ann Brusca, but charters are not public DISTRICT schools. There are different laws regulating them, hence the much-discussed lack of transparency and absence of democratic controls like school boards elected by taxpayers in the region (“district”) feeding the school system.
Also relevant here: charters are disconnected from the political machines / patronage networks that are often part of large, poor, urban school districts like TUSD. Some people view them as “drawing off” students and money that used to “belong” to public district schools, and this inspires much hostility from the political camps and propagandists (like Safier) directly connected to the politicians running TUSD.
Public District v. Public Charter needs to spend time doing more research. You are very confused.
Every knows that Old Pueblo Veteran is just a troll. He trolls around the internet trying to get into arguments. It’s a little sad really.
Good job David S. You gave factual information regarding what is often criticized in regular public information … high administration expenses. You show clearly that TUSD is not ‘top heavy’. Facts are important. Some people just find them inconvenient.
As regular observers of the TUSD Board meetings know, the claims that TUSD is high in administrative bloat have everything to do with how the terms “administrative” and “classroom” spending are defined. Readers here might be surprised at what is considered to be in the classroom. I do understand that the report cited here is comparative across the figures required by the State, but I do not know if the requirements for what is considered classroom and administrative spending remain constant across charters and district schools. In any case, there are studies out there that prove both claims–that TUSD is not bloated (cited by Board majority members…except perhaps during their first elections) and that it is (cited by regular Board watchers and other transparency freaks). If you look hard enough, you can find stats that will tell you anything you want to hear.
I find it strange and hypocritical that the same people who rant and insult others about “government waste” and “socialist takeovers” are such apologists for charter school administrations that, across the nation, are just starting to be checked out for extracting possibly excessive amounts of public taxpayer money.
If more money went to teachers and students the issue might be different, but it is not since charter teachers don’t have to be certified and charter administrators know this. I knew one charter teacher who was let go because the principal told her she “didn’t need the money” and promptly hired a newer, greener, less costly person to replace her. School finance courses teach that the majority portion of a school (any school) budget is always salaries for employees.
But mostly I return to that bold unethical fact that, no matter what current, different “rules” for public vs charter schools may be: administrative overhead in charter schools that collect taxpayer money should report every budget item, line by line, and that must include salaries of all whose paycheck comes from public taxpayer. To NEVER report all the annual financial budget information implies if not indicates, that somebody is hiding behind the “rules” and stashing lots of public money in personal bank accounts.
“Proud to Teach”:
If “Public District v. Public Charter” is “confused” and “needs to do research,” why didn’t you specify where exactly you believe the information in that comment is inaccurate? From what I know of the laws governing charters and public district schools, “Public District v. Public Charter” is spot-on. If you are in fact a teacher, I am concerned: denigrating information provided by others without backing up your concerns with facts is not something a professional educator should do, either in a classroom or in a comment stream.
The laws governing charters and public district schools are linked on this web page of the Arizona Revised Statutes:
http://www.azleg.gov/ArizonaRevisedStatutes.asp?Title=15
Compare ARS 15-183 (on various charter requirements) with ARS 15-321, 15-341 and 15-341.03 (RE the means of election of school district governing boards and their powers and duties) and ARS 15-351 (on public school site councils). Charters have to have a governing board to set policy, but they are not required by law to follow the same processes for constituting it. Public district schools are required to have a democratically elected district-wide board, and each public school, according to Arizona law, should have a site council; on these site councils, faculty and teachers must constitute a majority. (This should, in theory, provide a check against the power of administration, though unfortunately the requirement doesn’t always end up having that effect. It depends in part on the personalities and relationships on each council.)
What is the practical local effect of the differences in governance requirements for charters and public districts?
If your child is enrolled in a Basis school, the Basis charter determines that policy is set by a governing board located in Scottsdale. There are eight board members:
http://bsischools.org/about-us/school-governing-board
Not clear from information available on Basis school and Basis.ed websites or by phoning school offices or Basis.ed offices how the Basis charter determines that the board is constituted (by election? by appointment? eligibility to serve? terms?) If, as a Basis Tucson parent, you want to know what’s going on in these meetings and traveling to Scottsdale is inconvenient for you, you can read the agendas posted online, listen to the governing board meeting “telephonically” from the site where your child attends school. The minutes of these meetings appear not to be available online:
http://www.basisorovalley.org/public-meetings_basis-oro-valley.aspx
If, as a parent in a public district school, you’d like to know what’s going on in school governance, you can attend meetings taking place in Tucson for both the district governing board and for the site council. You can review meeting schedules, agendas, and minutes (and for some governing boards, videos of the meetings) online:
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbschedule.html
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbagenda.html
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbminutes.html
http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo_archive.html
In public district schools, the law determines that you have a right to run for the district wide board and the processes by which you do so are clear:
http://www.schools.pima.gov/elections
You can also seek a place on your school’s site council, where you can have a vote in setting site-level policy and allocating resources that fall to the council to allocate.
If you doubt whether large, poor urban districts have problems with political machines / patronage networks, there are many sources that could be cited to document that this is the case. One recent non-academic book pitched to a general audience that tells an interesting story about poor urban school district politics vs. charter network politics is The Prize by Dale Russakoff.
As for Safier and his relationships, he is closely associated with the current TUSD governing board majority and superintendent and has defended the current district leadership many times, including here:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2015/03/30/sen-steve-farley-this-is-not-your-fathers-tusd
and, more ambivalently, here:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2015/11/23/recent-tusd-decisions-the-good-the-bad-and-the-arrogant
A friendly suggestion: please, before commenting in these streams, which frequently include posts from people who are well informed and can back up what they write with documentation, “do some research.”
Everybody makes a case for their position. It is funny how concerned the public school supporters have become over charter school finances.
If you hadn’t screwed the pooch there wouldn’t be charters.
Own it.
The rest of the story…
FY 2014 Total Expenditures by Fund per ADM
TUSD: $10,245
Amphitheater: $10,035
Marana: $9,056
Vail: $8,758
Flowing Wells: $8,142
Sunnyside: $8,135
Catalina Foothills: $7,859
FY 2014 Total Expenditures by Project for Charter Schools per ADM
BASIS Tucson $6,254
BASIS Oro Valley $6,949
http://www.azed.gov/superintendent/files/2015/01/safr-2014-volume-i.pdf
So if we are going to be fair, (according to the way that the report and Mr Safier DIRECTLY compare districts and charters) if district schools would expended the same that BASIS did per ADM ($6,601 avg) in Pima County we would save…
Tucson Unified: (10245-6601)*46,830 = $170,648,520
Amphitheater: $47,128,216
Marana: $29,010,735
Vail: $24,486,264
Flowing Wells: $8,370,712
Sunnyside: $25,645,412
Catalina Foothills: $6,095,010
Total: $311,384,869
$311 million savings (Pima County alone) is way more than the $128 million statewide that charters are supposedly over expending on administration vs district schools.
But of course this comparison is not fair, districts and charters are different despite the claims of those who try to compare them directly.
So the truth is we could save a lot of money and give parents more choices if we use charters and vouchers. Great job Cynthia. It seems fairness is never the motivation in these articles. It is about maintaining a monopoly.
Times they are a changing.
Hi Rat T,
You wrote…
“So the truth is we could save a lot of money and give parents more choices if we use charters and vouchers. “
That is not the truth, what seems to be the case is that charter opponents like to compare apples to hand grenades when looking at district v. charter finances, but them scream bloody heck about the unfairness of comparing district v. charter test scores.
It would be nice to seem some balance from Mr Safier but he seems determined to not engage and just post other’s content or regurgitate the AZ education supporters talking points.
Too bad, maybe his job here is to generate page views not to better education policy in AZ.
I think it’s simply the old guard union members trying to protect their fifedoms. Education can’t change until they get out of the way. The kicking, screaming and pouting are almost over. It’s just a shame that they needed to make it so political because it left the parents and their children out of the planning stages.
The problems with our local poor urban public district schools are not with the unions, which in this region are so weak and low functioning as to be largely irrelevant. The problems are rooted in relationships between elected officials, bureaucrats, political parties, contractors, and employees. Cronyism has corrupted the hiring and contracting processes and crippled the functionality for so many years and to such a degree that a behemoth like TUSD can barely keep its basic daily operations going. There are still some excellent faculty in the district, but when it comes to admin, the organization is honeycombed from top to bottom with people incapable of properly managing the work it falls to them to do.
Admin COMPENSATION rates? If an education journalist / blogger wanted to do some worthwhile research into a topic with greater impact, he or she might look into admin COMPETENCE — and motivation for serving, which in far, far too many cases has NOTHING to do with protecting students’ best interests.
Again (again): IF there is nothing to hide, why are the highest salaries in charter schools kept hidden? I could readily accept the reality that charter admin salaries are not out of line, but no one really knows. The game of percentages, rates and comparative stats being played here does not and cannot change the fact that these taxpayer funded operations are allowed to avoid public reporting. Private money can stay private. Public moneys should always be on the public record – somewhere.
What a pointless article. Why do we care about the administrative cost per student? The only numbers that matter are how much funding an entity gets per pupil (the cost) and how much education is produced from that funding (the benefit). The amount you spend is only relevant to the end product, and it makes no difference how you spend it as long as you produce as high a quality product as possible at the end. Should you care whether a manufacturer spends more on production or administration, or should you care more about the quality of the product for which you are paying?
Under a cost/benefit analysis, the Basis schools seem like a bargain for taxpayers, regardless of how they choose to spend their per pupil funding.
It seems the amount spent on “Administration” should be broke down better. If the money is going towards in the classroom people, that would be good, if it’s going to assistant of the assistant’s assistant file shuffler then it is Not getting into the classroom…and is Bad. Details folks, that is what matters.