LADY BUDGETDOWN: BEECHER COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
TEN YEARS. HALF THE STUDENTS. AND ONE NUMBER THAT DEMANDED A SECOND LOOK. 🪶
The ledger has arrived in Beecher.
I pulled Beecher Community School District's financial data from the Michigan Department of Education's Bulletin 1014 and compared 2014–15 with 2024–25.
As always, I started with the same question:
What changed?
Quite a bit.
📜 PUPIL COUNT
1,084.00 → 553.26
Change: -48.96%
Beecher is educating roughly half the number of pupils it was ten years ago.
Now follow the dollars.
💰 ALL-SOURCES REVENUE PER PUPIL
$12,193 → $33,041
Increase: +170.98%
For perspective, inflation over the same period was approximately 35.83%.
But where the money is being spent gets considerably more interesting.
🏫 TOTAL INSTRUCTION PER PUPIL
$6,605 → $11,964
Increase: +81.14%
📚 INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT PER PUPIL
$2,077 → $4,385
Increase: +111.12%
🔧 OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE PER PUPIL
$1,980 → $3,329
Increase: +68.13%
And then I reached this line.
👀 BUSINESS & ADMINISTRATION PER PUPIL
$1,588 → $6,612
Increase: +316.37%
I checked it again.
And then once more.
That is an increase of $5,024 per pupil — approximately 280.54 percentage points above the CPI benchmark.
Meanwhile:
🍎 AVERAGE TEACHER SALARY
$48,908 → $55,784
Increase: +14.06%
That is approximately 21.77 percentage points below inflation.
Now, these numbers do not tell me why Beecher's business and administration spending per pupil increased by more than 300%.
And I am not going to invent an explanation.
They do, however, tell me where the next breadcrumb is.
So I think we may need to open another page in the ledger. 🪶
Source: Michigan Department of Education, Bulletin 1014 — Financial Information of Michigan School Districts, 2014–15 and 2024–25.
Receipts aren't very useful if we only keep the convenient ones.
With receipts & respect. 👑
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