How Per Pupil Spending in Bernards Stacks Up Against Other Districts

The NJ Department of Education released the 2010 Comparative Spending Guide last week, ranking NJ schools based on expenditures per pupil, giving residents an idea of how their district compares to others in the state.

Bernards is classified as a K-12 district of 3,501 students or more – one of 105 in the state. Among those 105 districts, Bernards is ranked on a number of factors, including total cost per pupil, median teacher salaries, administrative costs and more.

For total costs, the NJ DOE does not count certain factors that are likely to vary widely from district to district such as transportation, capital expenditures and tuition. A highly concentrated urban district could have lower transportation costs than a sparsely populated district due to children walking to school, etc, but those numbers are not counted toward calculating the total cost per pupil.

According to the report, Bernards has the 33rd lowest total cost per pupil among the 105 similar districts at $12,487. The number is up from an actual total cost per pupil of $12,042 in 2008-09, but comparatively ranked lower as the average cost has climbed (Bernards ranked 36th in 2008-09).

The cost per pupil also ranks well below the K-12 state average of $13,860 or the state average across all types of districts of $13,835.

As teacher salaries are currently being negotiated, the issue of "getting tough" with the teachers has been echoed from many residents at Board of Education budget hearings this year.

Elaine Kusel of Granville Way, a challenger for the three full-term Board of Education seats said at the March 24 meeting, "I think we need some sort of way to share the burden. I happen to be the daughter of a public school teacher... and she worked really hard ... but I think right now we need to find some way to share the pain."

"We're not doing anything that's going to be a long-term savings right now," Kusel said. "If we did something with the teacher contracts, or with the health insurance, the amount teachers pay into, that might make a difference."

The NJ DOE report ranks the school districts in a number of personnel related categories, including: classroom salaries and benefits (includes salaries and benefits of teachers, substitute teachers and teacher's aids other than secretarial or clerical, as well as additional compensation paid for duties such as hall monitor, detention and lunchroom aids), median teacher salaries and administrative costs. Some of the relevant numbers are listed below. The Category represents the cost being analyzed; the figure under Bernards is the cost per pupil for the district; Rank is the where Bernards falls among the 105 similar districts in the state (1 for lowest cost per pupil, 105 for highest cost per pupil) and State Average lists the state average across all K-12 districts. All numbers are based off 2009-10 school information.

Category                           Bernards                    Rank                  State Average

Classroom Salaries            $7,839                            46                         $7,654
and Benefits

Median Classroom             $59,364                         46                         $60,006 
Teacher Salary

Student to Teacher             12.7                                48                           12.4
Ratio

Salaries and Benefits         $1,869                            54                         $1,980
of Support Services

Total Administrative         $1,014                              5                           $1,397
Costs

Administrative                   $115,091                          34                         $117,888
Personnel Median
Salary

While the classroom salaries and benefits for the Bernards School district are slightly lower than average for similar districts (46 out of 105), the amount the district spends on classroom salaries and benefits as a percentage of total costs per pupil is higher than that which is typical. Bernards spends 59.2 percent of their total cost per pupil on classroom salaries and benefits, which ranks as the 22nd highest percentage of total costs among the 105 similar districts (56.6 percent on average).

Residents who feel that Bernards gets far less than other districts in state funding would be right according to the 2010 NJ DOE guide. Bernards received 7 percent of the district's revenue from the state, which ranks 92nd out of the 105 similar districts (average of 34.1 percent). The residents of Bernards also contributed the sixth highest amount of local taxes as a percentage of total revenue among the 105 similar districts – 89 percent of total revenue came from local taxes in Bernards compared to an average of 58.7 percent across all large K-12 districts.

To see the full report, readers can go to http://www.state.nj.us/education/guide/2010/ and search for Bernards by district, or download the full spending guide as a zipped file.