Growls

During public comment at Saturday's Arlington County Board meeting, Wayne Kubicki raised a question involving just how the County and the Schools compute the "incremental cost" for each additional student who attends the Arlington Public Schools (APS). [Video available at the County Board’s webpage]

It is a serious question for several reasons, besides the one that the districtwide cost-per-Arlington-student for the FY 2010 school year is $18,569. Mr. Kubicki raised the question because of the large discrepancy in  how the two entities recently computed the “incremental cost.” According to the Schools’ arithmetic, it’s $5,455 per student and $8,870 per student according to the County’s arithmetic. Let’s look at how the two numbers were arrived at.

• Computation by the Arlington Public Schools. During a School Board work session on February 4 regarding Arlington students attending Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology, where APS budgeted $12,171 per student for FY 2010. However,  if the students attended APS, instead of TJHSST, one of the slides shows the “incremental cost” of those 75 students as $409,113, or $5,455 per student.

• Computation by Arlington County. In introducing the proposed FY 2011 budget on February 16, the Acting County Manager said that 0.8 cents of the proposed rate, which would generate $6.2 million, is needed to pay for 699 additional students expected to enroll in the fall semester. That would give the Schools $8,870 per student.

County Board member Mary Hynes, a 12-year School Board member until three years ago, explained the difference is primarily because the county transfer to the schools includes the incremental amounts for ESL and special education students, and results from the revenue sharing agreement between the two Boards. [for a technical discussion of the latest RSA, see agenda item E.3. at the School Board's 11/5/09 meeting]

While providing a technically correct response, Ms. Hynes did not mention the cost of alternative high schools or the lack of transparency about the cost-per-student in the school budget documents. In the Arlington schools budget, only a 1/2-page districtwide number is provided. By comparison, the Fairfax County Public Schools provide three pages of explanation, slicing the cost-per-student in many ways that are quite enlightening (see pages 253ff, FY 2010 adopted budget at the FCPS website).

Thanks Wayne for raising a “serious question about something” because of a “confluence of occurrences.”