Portland Public Schools will probably spend between $13,200 and $15,000 per student in 2012-13. From the Oregonian’s PolitiFact article “Does Portland Public Schools spend $12,000 a year per student” by Janie Har (here):
We will not rule on McIntire’s revised statement that the district spends about $15,000 on each student a year. He and others may think that’s a better estimate of how much money the district has -- and therefore, what it can afford to spend on arts education -- but that’s not what he said publicly. We will rule on the $12,000 per student figure instead.
The best historical numbers we have are state figures that show that Portland Public Schools in 2010-11 spent $11,830 per pupil. (The same report shows capital outlay per student was about $400, and $777 statewide.)
Now, let’s go back to Portland Public Schools’ 2012-13 adopted budget. If you add together salaries, benefits, materials and services -- in other words, take out debt, capital and contingencies-- you get nearly $542 million. Divide that by the number of students and we end up at $11,459 per student. Again, we think that’s pretty close to $12,000.
With debt and capital -- the way McIntire and some others think is more accurate -- the number would be more than $12,000. It would be anywhere from $13,200 (without contingency and ending fund balance) to $14,100 (if those categories are included) to $15,000 (if he is correctly adding education service district costs to the budget).
For strategic economic and national security reasons, I have been urging PPS to pay for high school study abroad programs for PPS high school students, especially to China. Note that there are many, many high school year abroad programs offered by existing study abroad organizations, whose fees covering tuition, room and board with a family, and international transportation, are less than $15,000. I list two here: ASSE, which tends to be the lowest cost provider, and AFS, which is better known in the US.
ASSE High School Year Abroad (fees here)
$4,900 (plus airfare) to Mexico.
$6,300 to French Canada.
$8,050 to Hong Kong, Mongolia, and Vietnam
$8,100 to New Zealand.
$8,250 to English Canada
$8,400 to China, Taiwan, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Ukraine, Lithuaia, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia, Portugal, Holland, Romania, Norway, Italy, Poland, Estonia, Serbia, and Moldova.
$9,050 to Spain, Great Britain, France, and Denmark
(ASSE offers a 10% discount for payments by January 15th.)
AFS High School Year Abroad (fees here)
$11,000 to Ecuador, Honduras, and Panama.
$11,500 to Peru.
$12,000 to Paraguay.
$12,500 to Argentina, Belgium (Flemish), Brazil, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, Hungary, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, and Turkey.
$13,000 to Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ghana, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland,
$13,500 to Belgium (French), China, France, Iceland, India, Italy, Spain, and Sweden.
PPS can afford to pay for high school students to spend a high school year abroad.
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