By the Numbers: Hoboken's Public School District Costs Per Pupil Are Down This Year

On the New Jersey State Education website, The cost per pupil for Hoboken's Puiblic School district is now listed for the years 2007-2008 to 2009-2010. By using the comparative cost per pupil total Hoboken is down 10.7% from the year prior and using total cost per pupil Hoboken is down 14% (see below for an explanation of the two measurements). That is a significant cost savings per pupil in one year.  From a fiscal standpoint, the district is heading in the right direction. At some point the Hoboken BOE board majority should get some credit for these reductions, all politics aside.

Source: http://education.state.nj.us/rc/rc10/index.html

On the bottom two lines of the of the chart there are two total cost figures.  One is Total Cost which is $18.7K per pupil and the other is Comparative Cost which is $21.8K per pupil in the Hoboken High School for 2010.

Here are the definitions of each of these two terms:

1) The first is Comparative Cost Per Pupil which represents comparisons with districts of similar budget type. The components that comprise the comparative cost per pupil are as follows: classroom instructional costs; support services (attendance and social work, health services, guidance office, child study team, library and other educational media); administrative costs (general administration, school administration, business administration, and improvement of instruction); operations/maintenance of plant; food services, and extracurricular costs. The total of these expenditures is divided by the average daily enrollment to calculate a total comparative cost per pupil.

(2) The second is the Total Cost Per Pupil which, in addition to all of the costs listed above for the comparative cost, includes costs for tuition expenditures and payments to preschool providers; transportation; other current expenses (lease purchase interest, residential costs, and judgments against schools); equipment; facilities/acquisition; and restricted expenses less nonpublic services and adult schools. The total of these expenditures is divided by the average daily enrollment, combined with all students sent out of the district as reported on the ASSA (annual state aid collection) to calculate a total cost per pupil.

Note: Hoboken BOE member Maureen Sullivan always prefers to use the higher costs to make Kid's First look bad. Again, using the comparative cost number Hoboken is down 10.7% from the year prior and using total cost Hoboken is down 14%. That is a significant cost savings per pupil in one year.  If Governor Christie chooses to cut state aid then of course taxes are at risk of going up but it won't be because costs per pupil are going up at least this year. They are trending down. ◦

By the Numbers: Hoboken's Public School District Costs Per Pupil Are Down This Year