Yesterday I pointed out the legislature’s new 2012 Citizen’s Guide to K-12 Finance. The state auditor’s office has also released a report on public school spending. The performance audit considers:

1. What percentage of Washington’s educational dollars is spent on classroom instruction, and how does it compare with other states?
2. How do expenditures at individual school districts compare with their peers in Washington?
3. What cost-containment practices are efficient school districts using to hold down non-instructional costs that other districts could adopt?

That last question is key because, as the audit notes, “every 1 percent of general fund revenue Washington is able to shift from non-instruction to classroom spending frees up $100 million, which could be used to hire more than 1,000 teachers.”

The report notes that Washington’s spending on instruction is below the national average, but gaining:

While Washington’s instructional spending is pretty close to the national average, the audit finds that “per-student costs among districts in Washington vary, even among similar districts” and “opportunities exist for controlling costs outside the classroom.”

As part of the report, the auditor’s office created profiles of each school district in the state (the Excel spreadsheet is accessible here) and placed each district in a peer group. The peer group comparisons allow you to look at a particular district and see how its spending in a variety of different areas (teaching, administration, operations and maintenance, etc) compares to that of other, similar districts. The district profiles include demographic information, as well as spending by category and student achievement (including comparisons to the district’s peer group and the state average).

The profiles are informative and easy to use. For example, I was able to look up the district in which I attended school: West Valley in Yakima. The percentage of its spending that goes to teaching fell from 62 percent in 2009 to 60 percent in 2011. West Valley’s peer group average was 61 percent in 2011, while the state average was 62 percent. Also, West Valley spends the most among its peer group per student on operations and maintenance.

In looking at districts who spend less than their peers in the non-instruction areas, the audit notes several contributing factors, including having fewer staff per 100 students, paying less in salaries and benefits per student, spending less per student on utilities, using fewer buses, and paying less per student on food. The report details costs (and ways to reduce them) in administration, other support (e.g. human resources), student support (e.g. career planning), instructional support, food service, transportation, and maintenance and operations.

In the end, the report notes that “careful consideration of costs and benefits” is “the common denominator of successful districts.”

The audit recommends:

1. School districts should evaluate their non-instructional spending by comparing themselves to their peers and look for addtional opportunities to free up more money for the classroom.
2. OSPI should change the way it reports on the percentage of education dollars Washington school districts spend on teaching in its annual Report Card.
3. OSPI should maintain the database that we prepared to create the district profiles.

Included in the audit is a response from OSPI. Unfortunately, it says that “given recent budget cuts that have significantly reduced state government’s operational funding, OSPI is likely not able to fund the work necessary to maintain such a database.”