Chatham School Budget: High Spending, Mixed Priorities, Slipping Results

Moving onto Chatham or, if you want to get fancy, the “School District of the Chathams’.  It rolled out an eye-popping $99,719,590 as its preliminary 26-27 budget figure.  This pulls from a general fund tax levy of $82,734,722, a $3,350,639 debt service tax levy and $187,936 state debt service aid.  There’s a $1,649,494 adjustment as a result of the rising health benefit costs every District is grappling with, a $3.5M capital reserve withdrawal for facilities and a max travel expenditure of $102,930.

While Chatham shows up in the top half of our ACFR Dashboard those big numbers get more perspective when you bring it down to a per-pupil comparison to the 6 other Districts.  The District is 4th of 7 in total per pupil cost, 3rd in total instruction and 4th in total administration.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

The spending priorities appear solid in some areas – 1st in staff training, 2nd in total special education, 1st in resource room, 1st in co-curriculars, 2nd in Guidance and 1st in Transportation – all arguably student centered services.

Yet….

On our seven-district school performance dashboard, Chatham shows more slippage than residents might expect from a district spending at this level in several categories. Chatham shows up last in ELA on the most recent school performance reports, second to last in Math and remains below its pre-pandemic benchmark. ELA growth lands near or below the low-growth threshold, and math growth also remains meaningfully below its pre-COVID level.

It might help to look at the other categories.

Chatham is 2nd out of 7 on Security spending (starting to see a theme here?), 2nd in Custodial services, 3rd on athletics, 6th in textbooks, 5th in improvement of instruction, and dead last on Bilingual Education.

So while the picture is mixed, it offers some clues about what families should ask. Chatham is spending hard in special education, staff training, security, custodial services, and athletics, while ranking lower in textbooks, improvement of instruction, and bilingual education. With math still below pre-COVID levels and growth measures not especially strong, residents have every reason to ask about how well students who fall in the ‘middle’ are being supported and how high funded priorities are decided on.

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