School Beat; Melissa Hammann Speaks on the Wisconsin DPI stats on Evansville

(Ed. note. The following is a portion of the comments made by Melissa Hammann on Monday night at the Evansville School Board.)

"An excellent source of monetary flow data is available at the DPI School Finance Data webpage (www2.dpi.state.wi.us/sfsdw/). This shows comparative cost and revenue data for the 2003-2004 budget year. Then I went to the 2004-2005 spreadsheets (dpi.wi.gov/sfs/cmprvcst.html), and performed the necessary calculations to arrive at the per capita data as summarized in the first webpage. According to the website, the formulas used for the calculations changed between the two fiscal years and may account for some fluctuations. However, several interesting items stood out during my brief survey of the information. Please refer to the attached table for clarity.

First let’s discuss revenue. While our 2004-2005 State Revenue per child exceeded the state average by 16% and our property tax allocation per child was 17.5% lower than the state average; our Federal Revenue was less than half of the state average Federal Revenue. This is a good place to begin a build up of revenue, I think. For fiscal year 2004-2005, revenue from all sources for Evansville is 1.5% lower than the state average, for a total of $10,879 per Full Time Equivalent student in 2004-2005.

For the same fiscal year, on the cost side, we were 3% below the state average Educational costs, 16% lower on Transportation and 26% lower on Food Services costs. However, Evansville’s facility costs per student exceeded the state average by 53%, or in concrete terms, $378.00 per student, for a total of $637,686.00. This would have a big red target on it if it were my personal budget being scrutinized. That was a revelation to me."


The Observer was a little shocked by the "53%" figure for facility costs that Evansville exceeds the state average. However, on reflection, we are at 82% capacity in the EHS and have 522 students. The projection for enrollment dated 12/5/2005 for the school year of 2010-11 is 538 students.

Another way of saying that our costs are high is to say we need to better utilize the facilities we have. This might mean realigning some grades and their location.

In her monthly report, Supr. Carvin noted that a study of enrollment is proposed shortly. This may provide a framework for a discussion of how to better to utilize and plan. With energy costs a premium, excess facility is painful. Stay tuned.