Early Childhood Education

SC Times has a piece on Senator Tarryl Clark offering legislation providing more money for Early Childhood Education.

Story Chat is at it once again...

Rep Larry Hosch sets the record straight though. Rep Hosch is a great elected leader and serves his constituents very well.

Larry Hosch from St. Joseph
Comment Posted: 1/5/2007 10:05:33 AM

cwhiatt - I think you would find the report from the Minnesota state auditor interesting. it is titled financial trends of Minnesota School Districts 2001-2005. This report was done by Patricia Anderson, our previous Auditor. This is a fair report which proves most of your figures wrong. The report can be found here

http://www.osa.state.mn.us/reports/gid/2005/schooldistrict/schooldistrict_05_report.pdf

According to this report, in 2005, 67.9% of operating expenditures are spent in the classroom, these expenditures include regular instruction, career and technical education, and special education.

In 2005, 8.3% of expenditures were spent on Adminsitration.

In 2005, 8.1% of expenditures were spent on pupil support, much of which is in the classroom.

In 2005, 2.6% of expenditures were spent on student activities and athletics.

In 2005, 8.2% of expenditures were spent on operations and maintenance, such as transportation.

In 2005, 4.9% of expenditures were spent on equipment, land and buildings.

In my opinion, these numbers seem to prove that your claim that 70% of education expenditures happen outside of the classroom as inaccurate. I even used a report you suggested others to reference. We all are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts, as Governor Pawlenty has pointed out before

From the person debating Rep Hosch

cwhiatt from MN.
Comment Posted: 1/5/2007 10:20:11 AM

Take a gander at what was payed out in salaries and benefits. Furthermore for education Minnesota to yammer on and on about crumbling schools and the overall state of our public schools and then kick in 8% towards operations and maintenance and 5% on equipment, etc. is pathetic.

I stand by my original argument. If you can't educate Minnesota's children with a nearly $11,000 per pupil expenditure and a $12billion+ budget. Then something is definitely wrong and more money is not going to fix it.

And one last rebuttal

cwhiatt - I know we may disagree on this, but I really don't see 5% of expenditures on equipment or 8% expenditures on operations and maintenance as excessive. We all work on a household budget and these numbers seem reasonable to me. Let me put things into perspective.

Let's create a hypothetical household which makes $50,000 a year. If they spend 5% of their income on equipment, let's say vehicles, they would then spend $2,500 annually on their vehicle, which amounts to $208.33 a month. I would say this is a average, if not below average amount spent on vehicles (equipment) for a household. If this seems fair for a family, I woulkd say this is also resonable for a school.

Now, onto the 8% figure for operations and maintenance. 8% of $50,000 is $4,000 annually or $333.33 a month. In my househoid my operational costs probably equal this too, with the utility bill, refuse, water, waste water. internet, furnace filters, salt, etc. This doesn't even take into consideration of maintenace such as my lawnmower, fertilizer, window treatments, cleanings, etc. Again, in my world, this seems like an acceptable, real world expenditure amount to me.
These percentages seem reasonable to me and my household. What are your thoughts, or what do you think your household expenditures are?