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To help educate New Jerseyans on how the state spends its tax dollars to promote k-12 education, the NJ Department of Education released the 2022 Taxpayer’s Guide to Education Spending.
The below key statistics demonstrate how taxpayer funds are allocated based on the average Budget Cost:
For the 2021-2022 school year, the average Budgetary Cost Per Pupil was $18,208.
This represents the state average for districts that serve students in preschool through grade 12, charter schools, county vocational schools, and county special services school districts. This per pupil evaluation excludes costs that are not directly comparable between school districts – such as transportation, payments on school-construction debt, and tuition for out-of-district programs.
The 2021-2022 average budget cost per pupil increased by $1,385 (or 8.3% to $17,833) over NJ districts’ average actual spending from the prior year ($16,458).
The average cost of classroom instruction for grades K-12 for the 2021-2022 school year was $10,629 – a 7.3% increase from classroom instruction costs from the prior year ($9,902).
Additionally, the average cost of classroom supplies & textbooks for the 2021-2022 school year was $364 – a 22.5%% increase from the previous 2020-2021 school year ($297).
Classroom salaries and benefits for the 2021-2022 school year cost an average of $9,897 per class – a 6% increase from the 2020-2021 school year ($9,329).
Additionally, the average, median teacher’s salary for the 2021-2022 school year was $76,958 – a 1.8% increase from the average teacher’s salary last school year ($75,613).
Administrative costs totaled an average of $1,924 for the 2021-2022 school year – a 1.5% increase from the previous year ($1,896).
Administrative salaries & benefits averaged a yearly cost of $1,525 for the 2021-2022 school year – an 0.46% increase from the previous year ($1,518).
Extracurricular activities cost districts an average of $362 per pupil for the 2021-2022 school year – a 23.5% increase from the previous year ($293).
Approximately 32.3% of educators’ salaries were paid as benefits in the 2021-2022 school year. A year prior, benefits consisted of 31% of the total salaries for educators.
Total equipment costs per pupil for the 2021-2022 school year averaged $101 – a 6.4% decrease from the prior school year ($108).
The student-to-teacher ratio across all NJ school districts for the 2021-2022 school year averaged 11.6 students for every teacher – the exact same ratio of students to teachers as the year prior.
View a PDF of the complete statistics here.
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