CAPAC COMMUNITY SCHOOLS: WHERE DID THE GENERAL FUND GO?
Dear readers, I've looked at ten years of Capac's finances. I've looked at ten years of staffing.
Now I'm narrowing the lens to 2024–25 and asking a much simpler question:
Where did the General Fund dollars actually go?
Capac reported $9,878,826 in General Fund expenditures.
Of that:
📚 Instruction: $5,328,876 — 53.94%
🔎 Pupil Support: $644,569 — 6.52%
🍎 Instructional Staff Support: $255,520 — 2.59%
🏛� General Administration: $439,009 — 4.44%
🏫 School Administration: $549,471 — 5.56%
💼 Business Services: $297,021 — 3.01%
🔧 Operations & Maintenance: $1,226,571 — 12.42%
🚌 Transportation: $444,773 — 4.50%
👥 Central & Other Support: $341,608 — 3.46%
Looking at expenditures by type rather than function, personnel expenditures totaled $6,694,614 — 67.77% of the General Fund.
But there is another number that earned a little pencil mark in my ledger:
✏️ Professional & Technical Purchased Services: $1,482,293 — 15.00% of the General Fund.
Now, that number is not an accusation.
Purchased services can encompass legitimate contracted functions and professional services, and the report itself notes that outsourcing can move costs that might otherwise appear as salaries and benefits into purchased-service categories.
But $1.48 million representing 15% of the General Fund is large enough for me to ask what comprises it.
And that's where this Capac examination gets more interesting.
Remember what the first two ledgers showed:
Over ten years, enrollment declined 41.0%.
Business & administration spending per pupil increased 119.3%.
Administrator FTE declined 15.8%, while teacher FTE declined 35.6% and paraprofessional/aide FTE declined 70.0%.
None of those numbers, individually or together, establishes that something was done improperly.
They do, however, tell me where to look next.
And next I'm heading into the budgets, audits and underlying financial records to see what they tell us — including what sits behind that $1.48 million purchased-services figure.
The numbers have opened the door.
Time to see what's on the other side. 🐇
Source: Capac Community Schools, 2024–25 Personnel & Operating Expenditure Reports (2025 FID).
Receipts aren't very useful if we only keep the convenient ones.
With receipts & respect.
#LadyBudgetdown #CapacCommunitySchools #SchoolFinance #PublicEducation #EducationTransparency #FollowTheNumbers #MichiganSchools