A version of this article appears in TheDailyNorwalk.com.
What does your school district spend per pupil? And how does it compare with your neighboring towns? Many Boards of Education will be evaluating this type of financial data as they enter school budget season. Below is a list of 2009-10 per pupil spending for Main Street Connect's 10 cities and towns, based on data compiled by the state Department of Education. They are ranked in order of spending from high to low.
Town/city 2009-10
Weston $17,359
Greenwich $17,155
New Canaan $17,032
Westport $16,974
Stamford $16,127
Wilton $15,692
Norwalk $15,686
Darien $14,981
Easton $14,674
Fairfield $14,455
Every year, the Connecticut Department of Education puts out a list of per pupil spending throughout the state, ranking the cities and towns across the state. The range from Weston to neighboring Easton is $2,800 per student. New Canaan spends $2,000 more per student than neighboring Darien. Those four towns as well as Wilton and Westport are all in the same District Reference Group, which is the way the state groups towns with similar demographics. Greenwich and Fairfield are in the same DRG, as are Norwalk and Stamford, which receive more state and federal money than their neighboring towns. In 2008-09, the Connecticut state average for per pupil spending was about $13,000. Not surprisingly, all of Main Street Connect's towns were well above that average.
Kevin Cambers, an education consultant at the state Department of Education, helps to compile the financial data. Although the state ranks districts, Chambers says, "No two towns are alike."
"Towns have to justify their own budgets," he says. Each district has factors that affect per pupil spending, such as the number of student who require special education services, which can be costly. Sudden increases or decreases in enrollments can also affect the per pupil spending.
I found this information interesting because it seems to show that there isn't necessarily a correlation between student achievement and per pupil spending, even in affluent towns. Over a 13 year period, each Norwalk student gets at least a $200,000 education. It makes you wonder why we are still a district in need of improvement.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
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Yes well to perhaps help us put it all into perspective, lets look at what some other folks are up to.
ReplyDeleteWhat has Boca Raton, FL. been up to,
http://weblogs.pbspaces.com/mrgoldstein/
Intergrating technology to solve problems and reach higher through engagement than ever before.
Florida also has online classes for P.S. students that need extra help, our in advanced placements or are home schooled. Sure Dade County has major issues but their are signs of progress all over FL.
Another town, Pembroke Pines is investng significantly in inventing a process to turn waste water into potable drinking water. They also have begun a campaign to install solar at all schools, eventually all public buildings.
Across the globe to Israel, which has just completed installing a statewide grid of recharge stations for electric cars.
Oregon and Wash. State are installing charging stations along I 5 through the mountains and all the way to the border.
Germany has nearly every home and business with solar rooftops installed. France, Japan have bullet trains.
Switzerland and the Netharelands have Windmill farms that dwarf California and the under construction Texas and New Mexco wind farms. We dont even have grid infrastutcure off the boards yet for these under construction farms.
Some synapse snapping in some places.
Here we struggle to keep the trains running, the schools staffed and prepared, without the tools and resouces the teachers require to try and do their job. We cant even clean the floors or have paper for bathroom passes no less tissue?
This dosent ring a bell to anyone else?
Flashback; Katrina "the little boy speaking the truth and what we all knew was true", his imortal words are forever harshly stingingly recorded in our history.
The than 8 year old lad, exhasuted, dehydrated and exhasperated, barked with a crackle in his parched throat, due to his dehydration and emotional exhaustionand physical, he barked into an msnbc camermans lense and immortalised and cystralised it all, so plainly, so down to earth, so gut wrenching true for us all -
"This is pathetic, this is pitifull,PITIFULL! Ya all should be ashamed of your selves"
The lad extolled the truth.
As that one child, lost his childhood in that instant as he walked off to tend to his drying grandmother under a sheet in 100 degrees with no water. We lost our innocense also. We all, are a part of the pathetic pitfull shame.
We all felt that, we all could relate to that in so many ways.
Can we not do better folks?
Really? Why not?
I mean really? Why Not?
Have we been beaten down and condition so bad, shame is something we can accept and tolerate now?
Its ok to lose generations of children, to delay mans progress? To promote stagnation rather than inovation. To ignore and accept oppression?
HELL NO, ITS NOT!!!!
Now get out there and do what it takes to give a child a chance.
Join the discussion, suggest your ideas where they will be heard.
Get informed, stay informed.
Get involved and stay involved.
YOU can make a difference. so what you waiting on? An invitation?
Ok, vola; All Monia's readers and posters now have your personal invites.
Due to cuts, the fancy embroidered invites will come later. But you dont have to wait.
Click here below, now and use your power and talents to make this clustemucked system better.
http://www.studentsfirst.org/page/group/NorwalkSchoolsStrivingforSuccess
Use the power that we all have individually and collectively to make it better than the way we found it.
Who has the courage, the passion, the persistence, ok than, lets see, what you all have in ya.
Fight like you kids life depended on your actions. It does.