Comparable Communities Spending Comparisons
In order to help our community understand how our schools spend valuable taxpayer funds, we are providing an analysis of comparable communities and regional school districts. The reports we provide below are pre-populated with comparable communities data based on publicly available information on the MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's (DESE) website.
Individuals who would like to explore the DESE tool to create your won data set, may use DESE's
RADAR Benchmarking Online tool.
Information contained in our reports below reflect data available on the DESE website as of January 17, 2024.
(
In FY22 - the most recent available data - AB spent $1,496 per student below state average)
Comparable Communities Comparative Spending
Coming soon
Regional Districts Comparative Spending
In Massachusetts, Regional Districts are considered independent municipal entities. This means that Regional District carry costs in their school budgets that for most towns, only show up in the town budget (not the school budget). Examples of some of these spending categories include:
- Health Insurance
- Employee Retirement Contributions
and often costs for:
- Capital Improvements to Facilities
- Utility Costs
- Technology
This can make it hard to compare a regional district's total spending to that of a school district that is part of a town. Either way, the costs still need to be paid by the taxpayers... it is just whether or not those costs show in the school budget or in the town budget. These costs add up to millions of dollars, sometimes as much as $20M or $30M, depending on the size of the district.
For this reason, we are also providing some spending comparisons for regional school districts around the state.
Coming Soon...