If The DOE Only Gets $1.3 Billion In State Funding, Why Do They Spend So Much More?

Avi with Newsworks made an excellent point last night in a comment.  He stated:

Wait. You’re saying the DOE spent $2 billion on employee compensation? They only receive about $1.3 billion overall from the state. Obviously there are other (much smaller) sources of revenue. But that still feels way off.

The reason the DOE shows such a high figure for employee compensation is because the paychecks are generated through the state.  So the entire cash flow for Delaware education has to flow through the state coffers.  Avi is right.  This duncehead somehow found the figure for employee compensation for all state employees.  That was the only thing I searched specifically for, so I apologize for the error and making you all do some math this morning!  In simple terms, my figures are way off.  But according to this breakdown from the Department of Education website, it shows how this could be.  Granted, this is for FY14, but it still shows the same basic formula:

State Source of Educational Revenue (2013-14)

Category 2013-14 Percentage Federal $200,187,600.37 10.27% State $1,147,977,149.19 58.88% Local $601,621,774.97 30.86%

For FY15, the federal allocation is most likely smaller due to Race To The Top funds starting to dwindle.  If the DOE’s budget is $1.3 billion dollars in state money, than based on this chart, the total revenue in education dollars for Delaware would have to be $2.2 billion dollars.  This would mean local funding, usually in the form of school taxes, would have to generate $678 million dollars, and the feds would have to pony up $230 million dollars.  This is why a failed referendum can have disastrous results for a school district, like Christina recently had.  It’s also why rampant spending in the DOE on consultants and vendors, as well as very high salaries in their offices, takes away a lot of money from the classroom.  And yes, someone will go there, the districts could stand to shave off a lot of administrative costs.  How much do standardized tests really mean if the funding for it gets in the way of actual classroom learning?

This is also why charters taking away from local funding can also have a very bad result for a local district.  For a district like Milford, that doesn’t lost a lot of students to charters, it’s not that big of a deal.  But to a district like Christina or Red Clay, it is really bad.