Reader comments
Pignanelli & Webb: S.L.'s Buhler-Becker race is heating up

Mary Ann Kirk | 8:31 a.m. Oct. 14, 2007

Will someone please address the difference between variable costs and fixed costs related to student per pupil expenditures. You can't include fixed costs. Having 20 kids from an elementary school leave for a private school does not reduce the cost for the school unless the school looses a teacher based on overall student enrollment. But then class size will be increased, not reduced. Twenty students is not going to affect the heating, electricity, busing, custodial, cafeteria, counseling, school nurses, etc. Having 20 kids from every elementary school in the state does not change the costs for the general operations at the local district level or the state office of education. Bottom line - the so-called "savings" is not what it is proposed to be.

Chuck | 4:35 p.m. Oct. 14, 2007

This adds to what Mary Ann Kirk stated:

One more correction needs to be explained on economics. It isn't $7500 that each kid brings to the public schools!! The WPU (weighted pupil unit) is less than $2500. That is ALL a typical, average student brings to the district! Students with problems cost more and bring more with them, as much as seven times as much or more. There are busing costs and many other things as well that don't come with a particular student and still have to be provided. Adding that all up, including federal dollars that won't be left behind if a student leaves, one can divide the number of students into the total budget and get the $7500 figure. But that does NOT give an accurate picture of what a student brings to a school or the "savings" left when one leaves.

When one of those average kids leaves the public school, $2500 is not given to the public school, but up to $3000 will then be given to the private school?!? We're willing to give MORE to the private school than to the public school?! This is the reality, not some oreo misinformation analogy!

Instereo | 8:23 a.m. Oct. 15, 2007

Attaching your campaign to vouchers would be like saddling up with the war in Iraq. People know when something is wrong.

Comments continue below

saltlakealright | 12:04 p.m. Oct. 15, 2007

Becker and Buhler's race is heating up??? According to who exactly???

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