🪶 TRAVERSE CITY AREA PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A 10-YEAR LOOK AT THE LEDGER
Lady Budgetdown is heading north. 👑
I pulled the Michigan Department of Education's Bulletin 1014 data for Traverse City Area Public Schools and compared 2014–15 to 2024–25.
Same methodology. Same ten-year window. Same question:
What changed?
And there are a few numbers that caught my attention.
📉 Pupil count fell 12.46%
10,000 → 8,754.02
That's 1,245.98 fewer pupils.
Meanwhile:
💰 General Fund revenue per pupil rose 58.75%
$9,016 → $14,313
📚 Total instruction per pupil rose 44.47%
$5,671 → $8,193
📝 Instructional support per pupil rose 109.30%
$742 → $1,553
🏛� Business & administration per pupil rose 67.55%
$1,137 → $1,905
🏫 Operations & maintenance per pupil rose 83.63%
$892 → $1,638
And then there are the teachers.
🍎 Average teacher salary rose 20.67%
$60,372 → $72,848
For comparison, inflation over this ten-year period was approximately 35.83%.
So while revenue per pupil grew 22.92 percentage points faster than inflation, average teacher salary growth was 15.16 percentage points below inflation.
That doesn't mean every dollar above inflation was wasteful. It doesn't tell us why a particular category increased. And it certainly doesn't tell us everything about a district from one chart.
But it does tell us where the ledger says to look next.
TCAPS served about 12.5% fewer pupils, while revenue per pupil increased nearly 59%. Instructional support, business and administration, and operations and maintenance all increased faster than inflation.
At the same time, average teacher salary did not keep pace with inflation.
So the next question is a pretty obvious one:
What happened to staffing during those same ten years?
That's where I'm headed next. 🐇🕳�
Source: Michigan Department of Education, Bulletin 1014, 2014–15 and 2024–25.
With receipts and respect. 🪶
#LadyBudgetdown #TraverseCity #TCAPS #MichiganSchools #SchoolFinance #EducationFunding #FollowTheMoney