More on Jefferson County Schools funding level

I wrote two days ago about a local National Public Radio affiliate’s article on public school finances that seems to portray the per pupil funding for Kentucky’s largest public school district, the Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) in a questionable way.

That first blog used enrollment and spending information from the US Census Bureau’s “Public Education Finances: 2013” document to rank JCPS spending against the Kentucky wide total and the US average. This document has the most “apples to apples” education funding comparisons I have found to date.

But, even my earlier blog seemed a bit apples and oranges to me, so I have now pulled more data from “Public Education Finances: 2013” to assemble the table below, which ranks the per pupil total expenditures in JCPS against the other 49 largest school systems in the US (by enrollment, JCPS is the 27th largest school system in the US).As you can see, JCPS ranks very high in 14th place.

JeffCo PP Expenditures Ranked with 50 Largest US School Systems

I still have not found the cost of living data that NPR supposedly applied to the spending figures, but I am pretty sure that Jefferson County’s cost of living is not likely to be way out of line with the other large school systems listed.

Certainly, compared to other large districts in the US, Jefferson County’s funding looks pretty good.