Section D of Multi-Year Edition of Basic Facts
Cost measures, themselves, cannot indicate the extent or quality of a particular district's educational program. Users of this data are encouraged to pursue the reasons for cost differences between districts. Click an appropriate link below for more information.
Comparable Cost Measures
Cost can differ from one district to another and from one year to another. There may be several reasons for this variance such as educational programming, pupil transportation requirements, increases or decreases in debt service expenditures or having food and community service operations. Reliance on a single cost determination, which may not be representative for all school districts, can lead to erroneous conclusions. The following "comparable" cost measures were developed to limit or identify the effects of various factors that contribute to cost variances.
Total Current Educational Cost (TCEC)
This measure attempts to identify overall instructional and instructional support service costs attributable to district resident students. It can generally be described as the cost of the district's General and Special Project funds, excluding transportation and facility acquisition expenditures, less interfund transfers and revenues for instructional services the district provides to nonresident pupils such as tuition receipts, CESA and cooperative agreements and state interdistrict integration aid.
Total Education Cost (TEC)
This is the TCEC plus transportation, expenditures for facility acquisitions charged to the General, Special Project and Capital Expansion (Tax Levy Financed "Sinking") funds and debt service principal and interest.
Total District Cost (TDC)
This is TEC plus food and community service costs. It should be noted that food and community service activities are funded with a combination of fees, other program revenue, and property taxes.
Comparative Cost Files
Over time, the computation logic used in the comparative cost calculation has been revised to more accurately reflect a true measure of education cost. The accounting methodology for the current Comparative Cost calculation, as well as those for prior years, can be found in the Excel links below.
Accounts used in Calculation
- Comparative Cost Per Member Calculation 2023 and forward
- Comparative Cost Per Member Calculation 2017-2022 (for the 2017 year and moving forward, the Administration section was broken out of the previous Operation/Administration/Other category and reported on its own.)
Multi-Year Comparative Cost Summary Data File
Multi-Year Comparative Cost Detail Accounts Data File
Single-Year Comparative Cost Pie Charts
The links below allows users to create pie charts using audited Annual Report data, as rolled up into Comparative Cost breakdowns. Note that single-year comparisons between districts may be misleading if any of the districts in question incurred an unusual expense in any given year. Users are encouraged to research the reasons behind data anomalies before using these charts.
One-District Comparative Cost Pie and Data Charts
Single-Year All-District Comparative Cost Summary Data Files
- 2023-2024 Comparative Cost Per Member - Audited 23-24 Annual Report Data