A new report released yesterday by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and EdChoice shows that New Hampshire public school spending and staffing increased much more rapidly from 1992-2014 than student enrollment did, and the staffing increase came overwhelmingly in non-teaching positions.
The study also calculates that of the $16,205 in per-pupil revenue New Hampshire public schools received in 2015, $11,716 (or 72.2 percent of total per pupil expenditures) can be classified as variable rather than fixed costs.
Together, these data show that there is no reason to believe Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) will trigger local property tax increases should families choose ESAs to provide educational alternatives for their children. On the contrary, ESAs can be expected to save school districts money.
School choice opponents always claim that losing a student won’t save a school money because the remaining students must continue to be taught, so the school can’t fire the teacher. These data show that the spending increases of recent decades have been concentrated in non-teaching positions and have far outpaced student enrollment growth. As such, schools have options for finding savings that need not include cutting teachers.
Study highlights:
- Between the 1992 and 2014 fiscal years, real spending per student in New Hampshire public schools increased by 56 percent, even though student enrollment grew by only 4 percent. In that same time, teacher salaries rose by only 2 percent.
- From 1992-20015, the number of full-time-equivalent personnel increased by 56 percent. These were mostly non-teaching positions. The number of teachers increased by 29 percent, while the number of non-teaching staff positions increased by an eye-opening 89 percent — 22 times the rate needed to accommodate student growth.
- The student-to-staff ratio in New Hampshire fell from 8.6 students per full-time staff member in 1992 to 5.8 in 2015. The national average in 2015 was 8 students per full-time staff member.
- New Hampshire has a lower student-to-staff ratio, student-to-teacher ratio and student-to-non-teaching staff ratio than the national average. Nationwide in 2015, there were 16.1 students for every non-teaching public school staff member. In New Hampshire in 2015, there were 10.8 students per non-teaching public school staff member.
“The claim that Education Savings Accounts will cause property tax increases is just not borne out by the data,” Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy President Andrew Cline said. “With an 89 percent increase in non-teaching staff from 1992-2015 and a 56 percent overall increase in spending, there are opportunities to find savings on the non-teaching side of the ledger should schools lose some revenue from families choosing Education Savings Accounts.”
“Furthermore, as a previous Bartlett Center and EdChoice study showed, school districts can expect to keep more than 98 percent of their budgets should ESAs become an option for New Hampshire families. Looking at the numbers, there is no basis for the claim that ESAs will somehow decimate school districts. In fact, studies show that school choice programs tend to improve educational outcomes for students who remain in traditional public schools.”
Read the report here. Learn more about Education Savings Accounts and SB 193 here.
