The state funding formula sends $8,224 per K-8 student, and $4,083 per 4k student, to Yorkville for each child choosing to open enroll to us. Conversely, we send the same amount per student, residing in Yorkville, and choosing to attend public schools elsewhere.
In Yorkville, the largest annual expenditure is the salaries, wages, and benefits to our employees. This constitutes about 66% of our total budget. This percentage is very common from school district to school district. In fact, this percentage is reportedly very typical among many lines of work, ranging from hospitals to small businesses, and law firms to grocery stores.
Over my three plus decades as a public educator, most of which has been serving as a principal or superintendent, I have learned it is common for many to think that middle/high school sports might rank the second largest categorically in school budgets. In reality, the second largest for most districts are either open enrollment, maintenance, or transportation. Open enrollment, as an expenditure, ranks high only for those districts with the aforementioned net loss in students.
You might be surprised that when referencing the table above, that we do have 31 students residing in Yorkville choosing to attend a public school other than Yorkville. This number is higher than I would have expected, and a number for us to keep an eye on. When studying these specific students, we have learned that to the best of our knowledge, not one of these students has ever walked our hallways.
It can be assumed that they were not necessarily disgruntled with Yorkville School and left, but rather never attended here in the first place. The most common examples are as follows:
- Child lives in Yorkville School District but their parent works at a neighboring school and thereby chooses to have their child attend school where they work.
- Child lived in Union Grove, attended Union Grove Elementary, then parents moved residence to Yorkville, but wanted to maintain consistency in their child's schooling. Therefore, they open-enroll to remain at the school they had been attending. Union Grove is just one example.
For Yorkville, our second largest expenditures are maintenance (supplies, utilities, and projects). Projects include items such as repairing windows, painting, addressing ventilation issues, resurfacing and painting parking lots, and much more. Information technology, transportation, and curriculum also rank high for Yorkville.
We are hopeful that parents, property owners, taxpayers, and local business owners are happy to hear this news. It is important that your local school operates as good and transparent stewards of your hard earned tax money.
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