By FITSNews || South Carolina’s public schools are spending a record $8.4 billion – or more than $12,000 per pupil – this year.
Or are they?
That figure comes our way from the S.C. Budget and Control Board’s Office of Research and Statistics, and it’s the amount we’ve been using in our coverage here on FITS, including the informative story we ran when this information was first released.
But is that number accurate?
Or have we (gasp) been lowballing it!
According to a new report published by our friends at The Voice, raw data from the S.C. Department of Education shows that expenditures actually topped $9.1 billion – or more than $13,000 per pupil – in 2008.
Also, actual per student funding in 2009 and 2010 may exceed $14,000 per student.
Click on the link below to examine the raw data for yourself …
WEB EXTRA
By Not Sayin', Just Sayin' January 20, 2010 at 3:59 pm
And for what? The worst schools in the nation. Could’t we just send everyone to boarding school for that kind of money?
By Gov'tAcctBalance= -12.5 Trillion (andcounting) January 20, 2010 at 4:05 pm
Wow. I can’t believe we are getting our money’s worth!
By countryboy January 20, 2010 at 4:28 pm
To me the figure that stands out is the administrative cost, which is 1/3 of the budget. If you have good teachers and staff in the schools (and for the most part we do in Chesterfield County), then why in the hell do you need all those people in district offices across the state and at the Dept. of Education in Columbia ? I can tell you, as the father of a teacher, my daughter would be just as good a teacher if the district office and Dept. in Columbia didn’t even exist. Neither office contributes one damn thing and that is a fact. Yet those people are eating up 1/3 of the budget while our teachers are being furloughed with reduced pay. Tell you what. I believe a person could run for the top job on the basis of cutting administrative costs by some huge percent (at least 25% if not more) and he or she would win in a landslide. I know that person would have my vote and probably would have the vote of every teachers family in SC because THEY ARE SICK OF THE OUT OF CONTROL ADMINISTRATIVE COST WHILE TEACHER PAY IS BEING CUT.
By Liberty For Me January 20, 2010 at 4:34 pm
What is wrong with people??!! Cant they see these are insane numbers??
Our children should be the best in the world by far.HMM ,I wonder why they are not?? Could it be the government keeping them dumb while controling power and paying a huge bureaucracy to keep churning?
By BIN News Editorial Staff January 20, 2010 at 8:19 pm
voucher clowns like sic(k) willie and voice for voucher scams have nothing better to do than spend Howie’s voucher scam money attacking children. What voucher pimps. Nothing new. Just the same old voucher scam rhetoric.
Voucher pimps. What? Are there 4 or 5 of you left.
Everyone else knows vouchers are dead in S.C.
By Old Bike Dude January 21, 2010 at 6:28 am
Countryboy has all the truth in his post. Actually the cost I’ve heard per student is around $7,500. But count on my beloved South Carolina to keep electing the same assholes yet expecting different results.
By HMMM January 21, 2010 at 8:40 am
Countryboy is a moron. What he calls “administrative” costs is every single thing except actual teachers. Buildings. Libraries. Guidance counselors. Computers. Athletic programs and coaches. School buses and bus drivers. You can call them administrative if you want, but except for athletics, you can’t do education without them.
Oh, and the State Department of Education takes up a whopping 2 percent of the state budget.
By Home Rule January 21, 2010 at 9:08 am
Jim Rex and the SDE take up 2% of the state budget?!
What the hell for – why not send that money straight to the local districts, or better yet, the schools.
By Tucker January 21, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Imagine being a teacher of a class worth over $300,000 of state money and making less than 10%! Surely school overhead cannot cost 90% this is a classic case of mismanagement due to overly restrictive beauracracy. Government policy will continue to fail if we continue to believe someone can do ‘it’ better than we can.
By baker January 21, 2010 at 4:41 pm
HMMM has it right — and SCRG keeps trying to mislead people, it appears.
By Martha Washington February 12, 2010 at 1:49 am
Im late with a comment on this but I just found it.
An unscientific cross section study was done in 2008 that estimated at least 5% of students in a coastal area county in SC, at the high school level were illegal aliens. Figuring that the younger the student, the higher the percentage due to the increase in anchor babies in SC since 2004. Using this rough and fair 5% number, with the $9.1 billion figure from 2008, we can presume we spent about $450 million. That equated $2.2 million and 7 full classrooms and 6 buses for students. Teaching aliens also means hiring teachers and tutors of additional languages, as well as bi-lingual teachers and staff. The cultural and social impact is immeasurable. And finally, these students had 30 days to get vaccinations and a health examination. Need I list the dozen communicable diseases that are prevalent in Latin America?