ROCKFORD: TEN YEARS IN THE LEDGER
Dearest readers... your Lady has made her way to Rockford Public Schools. 🪶
And as always, we begin with the same question:
What changed over the last decade?
From 2014–15 → 2024–25:
📉 Pupils:
7,964 → 7,518
DOWN 5.60%
💰 Revenue per pupil:
$9,487 → $15,279
UP 61.05%
📚 Instruction per pupil:
$6,034 → $8,966
UP 48.59%
🪶 Instructional support per pupil:
$774 → $1,832
UP 136.69%
🏛� Business & administration per pupil:
$953 → $1,698
UP 78.17%
🔧 Operations & maintenance per pupil:
$786 → $1,531
UP 94.78%
And then we arrive at the teacher salary column.
🍎 Average teacher salary:
$63,608 → $75,397
UP 18.53%
For comparison, inflation over the same period was approximately 35.83%.
So while revenue per pupil increased 61%, instructional support increased nearly 137%, operations and maintenance nearly doubled, and business and administration increased 78%...
average teacher salary increased just 18.5%.
Now, dearest reader, none of those percentages tells us why.
A large increase isn't automatically waste.
A small increase isn't automatically neglect.
But the ledger has certainly left us some rather interesting breadcrumbs. 👀
Instructional support gets the biggest circle at +136.69%.
Operations and maintenance gets another at +94.78%.
And business and administration isn't exactly hiding in the margins at +78.17%.
So we'll keep turning pages.
Because receipts aren't very useful if we only keep the convenient ones. 🪶
With receipts & respect. 👑
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