Idahoans for Choice in Education

Expanding Educational Choice for Idaho Families

John T. Wenders

This is a very brief financial/performance comparison of the Boise and Meridian school districts. In 2003-04, these districts had 24,059 and 25,255 students in average daily attendance (ADA), respectively.

In 2003-04, Boise's current spending per pupil was $8,045 (excluding its charter schools). Meridian's was $5,930, or 73.7 percent of Boise's. According to the Idaho State Department of Education, current expenditures exclude "capital assets, debt principal, and refunded debt." Since the excluded spending is lumpy and depends on the annual scheduling of bond repayments and capital spending, current expenditure is probably the best measure of school operating efficiency. Idaho's average per pupil current spending was $6,803.

Thus, Boise spends about $2,100 per pupil more in current costs than its neighbor, Meridian, and about $1,200 more per pupil than the Idaho average. Normalized for its ADA of 24,059, Boise annually spends about $50.9 million more than Meridian and $29.9 million more than the state average.

Boise's property tax base in 2003-04 was about $535,000 per pupil, and Meridian's was $297,000 per pupil, or 55.5 percent of Boise's. (The average for Idaho was about $314,000.) Boise's school property tax rate for current expenditures ranked sixth, and Meridian's ranked 96th, out of 114 Idaho school districts. Boise's school property tax rate for total expenditures ranked 10th, and Meridian's ranked 47th.

Thus, Boise not only has a larger tax base per pupil, it also taxes that base at a much higher rate. As a chartered school district, Boise has certain unique property tax advantages not enjoyed by Meridian and most other Idaho school districts.

Normally, by statute, school districts can budget property tax revenues at a maximum of .3 percent of the previous year's tax base before going to a supplemental levy that requires approval of a majority of voters. Because of its special status as a chartered district, Boise taxes at a rate of over twICE-PAC that (.664167 percent) without going to a supplemental levy.

Further, with a relatively large non-residential property tax base (46.6 percent), much of which is owned by absentee voters, Boise is able to extract relatively large school property tax monies. In contrast, Meridian not only has a much lower property tax base, only 26.7 percent is non-residential.

With a high tax base per pupil, a much larger fraction of that base non-residential and absentee owned, and its special status as a chartered school district, Boise is able to raise and spend much more per pupil than Meridian.

All this supports the view that public school spending is revenue-driven and determined from the top down, not built from the bottom up by anything like zero-based budgeting. Districts will spend what they can extract from the political process, not what is "needed" for efficient operation, which is probably about $5,000 per pupil in Idaho. Anything above that is excess spending, or, more pejoratively, waste.

Does Boise's high per pupil spending pay off in superior school student

(value-added) performance? Unfortunately, when measured by normed ISAT scores, the answer is: "no." The Albertson Foundation published data on the percent of students in each school district who met their expected yearly growth (EYG) for 2002-03. EYG is a measure of each student's yearly growth compared to a national norm of students who started at the same level. For 2002-03, 45.93 percent of Boise's students met or exceeded their EYG. This ranked 90th among Idaho's 114 school districts. In contrast, 51.76 percent of Meridian's students met or exceeded their EYG, which ranked 28th in Idaho. It cost $17,341 to produce a student who met EYG in Boise, and $10,995 in Meridian.

Is Boise the kind of school district that needs more money, or is it a candidate for more efficient management of the monies it already receives?

The data suggest the latter.

ICE-PAC

P.O Box 933

Boise, ID 83701