OPINION: Why consider rejecting the HUUSD budget? Reason #2: Lack of transparency
February 16, 2025 | By Steven Martin I took a statistics course in college where one of the required textbooks was “How To Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff, so I know there are numerous possible ways to hand-pick figures and manipulate language to support one's position.
Providing clear, understandable data to support one's position might be called full transparency. In my opinion, our state education system, requirements, and formulas can stagger the mind and hide – perhaps even misrepresent – a lot of relevant information. Here are just a few examples.
An “equalized pupil” (now called LTWADM, short for Long Term Weighted Average Daily Membership) is the term used to represent the number of students in a school, district, or the state. The actual pupil count in the Harwood Unified Union School District is 1,814 physical students (1,623 if you don't include PreK). Then a magical formula is applied to add or subtract “weighting factors” to account for EEE/PreK, grades 6-8, grades 9-12, poverty, English language learners, three separate factors for sparsity, and two more factors for small schools.
A student in Vermont may have one or more of these factors applied in order to factor the equalized pupil, or LTWADM, count. If I understand the current formula correctly, one PreK student with no other adjustment factors counts as 0.46 “equalized pupils.” A high school student living in poverty and being an English Language Learner would count as 4.91 “equalized pupils” (slightly more if they live in a very rural area and/or attend a small school). There are currently 10 possible adjustments that could be made to an actual student to “adjust” their weighted count in the LTWADM.
These factors can be changed over time and are created/updated by the legislature (likely considering testimony from experts with possible financial and/or political interests in the system or the implementation).
So, the HUUSD budget presentation in keeping with state guidance does not show the actual, physical number of pupils in the system anywhere (1,814 actual pupils from PreK through grade 12 according to the October 2024 count), but instead it shows the estimated LTWADM count as 2,659.72 “equalized” pupils. Hold that thought.
Then, following the state guidance, HUUSD presents the total budget request as $49,209, 927 and it is labeled Educational Expenses. From this they deduct Offsetting Revenues of $8, 021,812 to arrive at what is listed as Total Education Spending of $41,188,115. Hold that thought.
Finally, the budget presentation claims (in accordance with state guidance) that the Education Spending Per Pupil is $41,188,115 / 2659.72 = $15,485.88. The implication is that HUUSD is asking for voter approval to spend about $15,500 per pupil. That is the state-sponsored statistic that taxpayers are shown by the HUUSD budget presentation.
But here is another way to look at the same information – from the point of view of a person wielding only common sense, a decent education, and basic language and math skills.
The requested budget (labeled Educational Expenses in the Budget Presentation) is $49,209,927. This is the total amount the district is asking for voter approval to spend. I only have a bachelors degree, but if you ask for approval to spend a total of $49,209,927, then $49,209,927 is total spending.
The actual physical pupil count in the HUUSD in October 2024 was 1,814 pupils. If they counted 1,814 actual pupils, my pupil count would be 1,814.
So, using these two pieces of data, I calculate $49,209,927 in Spending (the budget request) divided by 1,814 Actual Pupils for real Cost Per Pupil of $27,128.
A related effort by the state, perhaps to camouflage data associated with the education system and costs, was the decision starting last year, to completely disassociate Equalized Pupils with actual pupils. Prior to FY24, I believe the state formula made a final mathematical adjustment to ensure that in the end, the statewide total number of “equalized pupils” was made equal to the statewide total number of actual pupils. That provided some minimal level of transparency at the state level, but apparently that had to go, perhaps to avoid having a statewide cost per pupil appear too high.
It can be pretty hard to tell what is really going on. Maybe that is the point. So, you can decide for yourself:
Is the total spending to educate our children at HUUSD the budget amount requested for approval of $49,209,927? or is it $41,188,115 as shown in the Budget Presentation?
Is the number of pupils at HUUSD 1,814 as counted in October 2024, or 2,660 as adjusted using the state formula?
Is the cost per pupil requested by HUUSD actually $15,486? or $27,128?
Please vote wisely on March 4.
Steven Martin lives in Waterbury.