Rock Hill Schools Finances, Part II

An astute reader of District Three Education News pointed out that our "new" schools seemed to top the list of the most expensive schools to operate (maintenance and utilities). I had noticed this as well. The only explanation I can come up with is the new schools have more square footage under roof (and resulting HVAC) than the older schools because of a "mall" type design between wings of the school. Nevertheless, a quick check on cost per square foot should be done.

The 2007-08 cost of $10 million for utilities should go up about $900,000 because of our two new schools this year - making school utilities about 8.5% of the total budget for the 2008-09 school year. The good news is we expect our utility costs to go down because of energy saving projects that have been implemented this past year. The bad news is the savings will be going to pay for those projects - over the next 17 years.

In addition to utilities, there are other expenses to run our schools. Each school has at least one secretary and bookkeeper and some have receptionists. The total cost for this in our current budget is $3.6 million or 2.8%. Then we have nurses at $1.84 million (1.4% ), Testing and Program Coordinators at $1.9 million (1.5% ), elementary foreign language at $0.4 million (0.3%), English as a second language teachers at $0.34 million (0.3%), athletics at $0.31 million (0.2%), band at $0.17 million (0.1%), IB programs at $0.04 million and our elementary swimming program seems a bargain at $14,000. Totaling up these costs amounts to $5 million or 3.9% of the total budget.

Now we've accounted for about 12.5% of the budget. With 1221 teachers (2008 report card) at $73.2 million or 56.4% we can bring the total up to about 69%. School administration comes in at $10.7 million (8.3%), Student Transportation at $3 million (2.4%), Library and Media cost at $2.4 million (1.8%), Vocational Expense at $3 million (2.4%) and Special Ed at $7 million (5.5%) for a new total of around 89%.

If the numbers seem confusing - they are. The remaining 11%, or $14 million is spread over capital, operations personnel, school security, curriculum development, supplements (national board, athletics, department heads, extra duties ect.) and a dozen other accounts. But the bottom line is about $110 million (85%) of the budget goes to salaries and is directly tied to jobs, making cost cutting decisions much more difficult.