Dearest reader,
Step Four usually means I open the check register and start following individual payments.
Rudyard Area Schools made me change the recipe a bit. 🧐📜
I could not locate a posted check register, so rather than pretend I can tell you who received every dollar, I went to Rudyard's state-required 2023–24 expenditure reports and followed the General Fund by category instead.
And the first number is:
$11.80 million.
That's approximately how much Rudyard reported in total General Fund expenditures for 2023–24.
Now let's see where it went.
📚 59.75% — Instruction
$7,047,868
More than half of General Fund expenditures were classified as instructional expenditures.
🍎 61.03% — Personnel
$7,199,454
That includes salaries, employee insurance benefits, retirement/FICA and other personnel expenditures.
🏛� 8.47% — Administration & Business
$997,924
That is General Administration, School Administration and Business Services combined.
And then one number that deserves a little explanation rather than a raised eyebrow:
🏫 11.54% — Payments to Other Public School Districts
$1,360,942
Without a check register or additional detail, the report doesn't tell me enough to responsibly tell you exactly what those payments purchased or which public school entities received them.
So I'm not going to guess.
That's an important part of following receipts too.
Sometimes the ledger tells us exactly where the money went.
Sometimes it tells us the category, and that's where the receipt ends.
There are plenty of additional expenditures in Rudyard's reports: transportation, operations and maintenance, purchased services, supplies, capital outlay and others. Those receipts belong in the full ledger rather than crammed onto one graphic.
But the broader Step Four picture is pretty clear:
Nearly 60 cents of every General Fund dollar was classified as instruction, and just over 61 cents of every dollar was tied to personnel costs.
And once again, Rudyard is giving us a fairly interesting ledger.
Step One showed every financial category we track beating inflation.
Step Two showed teacher FTE increasing despite declining enrollment.
Step Three gave us a clean, straightforward superintendent compensation disclosure.
And Step Four shows the majority of General Fund expenditures flowing through instruction and personnel.
That doesn't mean the spectacles come off.
It means the receipts get reported exactly the same way when they look good as when they don't.
That's rather the point. 🪶
With receipts & respect.
#LadyBudgetdown #RudyardAreaSchools #ChippewaCounty #UpperPeninsula #MichiganSchools #SchoolFinance #PublicMoney #PublicEducation #Instruction #SchoolSpending #Transparency #Accountability #FollowTheMoney #FollowTheReceipts #WithReceiptsAndRespect