Schools’ Size Not Basis for Budget

By The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.

Jun. 12–Charleston County School District enrolls 6,000 more students than the Horry County Schools near Myrtle Beach.

With similar enrollments, you might think that the state’s second- and third-largest school districts’ budgets also would be close. In fact, the Charleston district’s operating budget is $61 million larger.

At a time when school districts are working to finalize their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year, inconsistencies in the relationship between a school district’s size and its budget can be found across the state.

That’s no surprise to education officials, who say the discrepancies stem from factors such as differences in demographics and instructional priorities.

Still, the large variations raise questions about the financial effectiveness of some school districts.

While school district officials can explain some of the irregularities, comparing the effectiveness of budgets can be tough.

Paul Krohne, executive director of the South Carolina School Boards Association, said stacking the budgets of neighboring districts against one another is not an exact “apples to apples” comparison based on student enrollment.

“The budget is developed by locally elected officials, and it should reflect local interests,” Krohne said. “It’s up to them to know what their community needs.”

To get a clearer answer would require drilling into the numbers and taking a deeper look at where and how money is spent, said John Cooley, deputy superintendent of finance for the state Department of Education.

School districts receive money from a mix of local, state and federal sources, and the amounts from each depend on characteristics such as poverty, taxpayer base and student enrollment.

While district officials can’t control those variables, they have the power to decide what instructional programs or services to fund.

Some might want to provide full-day pre-kindergarten; others might opt to offer laptops to high-schoolers. Either decision would drive expenditures higher while leaving student enrollment the same, he said.

Don Kennedy, chief financial officer for the Charleston school district, said he couldn’t explain the $61 million difference without studying Charleston and Horry district numbers.

One of his top goals is to make the Charleston district more efficient, and Kennedy said the district will cut $12.5 million from the budget for next school year. The operating budget still grew $7 million to a proposed $308 million.

Members of the Charleston school board have expressed an interest in moving to the type of system used in Horry County Schools.

The school board there builds its budget through a modified zero-based approach, meaning the board starts from scratch when determining what will be funded for the next school year, said John Gardner, executive director of fiscal services for Horry County Schools.

Every program is evaluated to determine the return on its investment, then decisions are made about whether to keep or cut them, he said.

For private schools, an efficient budget determines whether the school’s doors will stay open, said Larry Watt, executive director of the South Carolina Independent School Association.

Watt estimated that the average cost per pupil for South Carolina independent schools is $4,500, nearly $3,000 lower than the state public school average. Private schools operate on less money because they pay teachers between 60 percent and 70 percent of public school teachers’ salaries, he said.

Whereas governments can raise taxes, private schools can’t afford to raise tuition much each year, Watt said. If they do they’ll price themselves out of local markets and close, he said.

In Berkeley County, school administrators project a general fund budget of $165.6 million, a spike of nearly 7.3 percent from last year’s $154.4 million operating total.

Brantley Thomas III, the district’s finance director, said he realized the $11.2 million jump represents a substantial change, but he anticipates the pattern will continue. The $200 million benchmark might not be too far away, he said.

Berkeley’s schools enrolled about 26,500 students this year; more than 25,000 students attended Richland 1 schools in Columbia. Still, Richland 1 boasted a $212.7 million general fund budget in 2005-06 — about $58 million more than Berkeley. Richland 1 spent almost $3,000 more per pupil than Berkeley last year.

It’s tough for Lowcountry districts to match their Midlands counterparts, especially in offering competitive teacher salaries and innovative educational programs such as elementary school foreign language instruction, said Allyson Duke, Dorchester District 2′s finance director.

“Taxpayers there are willing to foot the bill,” Duke said. “There are a lot of competitive school districts in the Columbia area, and that drives taxpayers to agree to pay higher taxes to make sure that their local schools can maintain their instructional programs.”

District 2′s proposed operating budget is $114.6 million, compared with $105.6 million for the 2005-06 fiscal year.

The district’s enrollment grew by 900 students this year, and the total enrollment is expected to surpass 20,000 students next year. Lexington 1 has roughly the same number of students but projects a $35 million higher budget.

Despite the lower projection, Duke said she still hears from folks who question the district’s skyrocketing budget.

“This is just the additional amount that’s required in order to educate all of our additional students,” Duke said. “There’s a mind-set that we are this large entity that has all of this money, and that we keep asking for more, but we still are charged with educating all of these children. On a per-pupil basis, we’d love to have the amount of money that some other districts have.”

By Diette Courrégé and Mindy B. Hagen

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.

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