Utah last in U.S. in spending per pupil — again

By Molly Farmer and Lee Davidson, Deseret News

Published: Tuesday, June 29 2010 12:21 a.m. MDT

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Summary

Every year, the U.S. Census Bureau comes out with a state-by-state education funding per pupil report. And every year, it seems, Utah comes in dead last.

Utah not only ranks last in overall per-pupil spending, it also ranks last in per-student spending on overall instruction ($3,718), last on teacher salaries per student ($2,429), last on general administration per student ($62) and last in school administration ($340).

The Census Bureau said that on average, Utah schools receive 9.1 percent of their funding from federal sources, 56.3 percent from the state, and 34.6 percent from local school district sources. The national average for such sources is 8.1 percent from federal sources, 48.3 percent from state sources, and 43.7 percent from local sources.

The Census Bureau also released per-pupil spending figures for 13 Utah school districts in 2007-08 that had more than 10,000 students each.

In order, they were Salt Lake City, $7,190; Ogden, $6,528; Provo, $6,028; Cache, $5,902; Washington County, $5,812; Box Elder, $5,660; Davis County, $5,564; Weber County, $5,555; Granite, $5,433; Tooele County, $5,477; Nebo, $5,325; Jordan, $5,316; and Alpine, $5,123.

e-mail: mfarmer@desnews.com, lee@desnews.com

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Featured Comments

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Jasper

This entire situation of school funding is counter-intuitive. Given Utah is dead last in funding, maintains the dubious honor as the nation's largest class sizes, continues to demonstrate poor (relative) scores nation wide - thus necessitating the More..

6:27 p.m. June 28, 2010
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Steven S Jarvis

@Jasper

Squeezing a grape results in very little juice. Families, particularly the larger ones don't pay much in taxes because they have no money after clothing, feeding and sheltering their brood. Some don't pay a dime at all.

More..