America's Talking - Some New York school districts spend almost or more than $100,000 a student

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

(The Center Square) — A half-dozen school districts in New York state reported spending more than $70,000 per student recently, with two districts spending almost or more than $100,000, an investigation by The Center Square found. Each of the six districts were among the smallest in the state, with fewer than 340 students. Still, the figures dwarfed those of a typical pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school district in the Empire State in 2023-’24. According to the New York State Department of Education, the median figure for per-pupil spending was $35,095. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/new_york/article_dad44cd9-fcf1-4d7d-98e7-c35023849811.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking. My name is Art Kane. I'm Investigations and Enterprise Managing Editor at the Center Square. I'm joined by Mark Strickcher, one of our investigative reporters, who was looking into the New York school districts and how some of them are spending more than it costs to send a kid to one of the top colleges in state in the country. Mark, you looked at some smaller districts around New York. What did you find? I found that two districts, Stricts spent almost or more than $100,000 per student. As you mentioned, they were smaller school districts, less than 340 students. So it's still a lot of money.

It's more than tuition at Pepperdine University there in Malibu, California, and one of the nation's most expensive colleges, as well as elite boarding schools, including the Priory, the Benedictine Monk School in Portola Valley, California. is in the Bay Area. And so these are smaller schools, right? What's the average per pupil tuition in New York compared to these ones they're spending $100 or $60,000?

According to the latest figures in 20, 23, 24, the median or typical salary or budget spending per pupil was a little more than $35,000. And I found six school districts in New York. state in that same school year that had spent more than twice that, roughly $70,000 more per student. This is K through 12. That's an incredibly high amount of spending. What do the school districts justify that spending on? They justified on high upfront costs on buildings, for example. They said, well, we don't have many students. We've got to have the buildings. What are you supposed to do? but how much of that is also due to the high administrative staff salaries is another question

I looked at school districts that had also were small in frankly poor parts of New York State and their salaries for teachers would be like $60,000 for typical versus say $135,000 or so in Fire Island, which is an island off there, Long Island, a couple hours drive from Manhattan. So it's hard to say exactly. have to play political scientists or social scientists look at the exact reasons, but there's a lot going on. Well, clearly you're going to dig a little bit more into this, but it just seems like these schools are, these districts are so small that shouldn't they just consolidate into a bigger nearby

district so that they're not, you know, building a building for what, 30, 40, maybe 300 students? Right. That has been an issue in the past couple years in a number, number, number of school districts I looked at. They were considering plans for consolidation to save money. But the ones I looked at, the actual school districts, I did not say it's Procantico Hills that is not consolidated or Paxedo. It's a bedroom community of New York City that has not consolidated. But they do say that they have the offer of the private school atmosphere in a public setting. That's how they advertise the public schools. They're in Tuxedo, New York.

Right. But taxpayers are the one who are on the hook for the that private school. Yes. And maybe they don't want to pay $100,000 a student when the average is 30 in New York and probably 12,000 in the rest of the country. You talked to some policy people. What do they say about this and what can be done? They didn't say exactly what could be done.

They just said this is a lot of money, one of the highest. for people spending in the whole world. The man I talked with is the head of a Salinas, Salinas, how I'm pronouncing his name correctly. He's the president of the Empire Center. It's a nonpartisan nonprofit, think, a research center. And he was skeptical that taxpayers were getting their money for it. My story did not look at, frankly, at how the results were in the school district. So that's a big question, as you suggest, that will come out in later stories.

Yeah, I mean, it's worth looking into it. I mean, it's not a lot of students, but it's a lot of money. Do you have any sense that, you know, you found teachers' average salaries were, in at least one of the districts was, you know, basically almost an executive salary, you're over $100,000 a year for the average student. That's nowhere near what teachers are getting. in other places, and it's probably not that the cost of living there is that high either. Right. Yeah, no, that's a big outstanding issue for a future story. I wasn't able to go into

that detail on my story, in my article, but, yes, say in Fire Island, I mentioned the typical salary for teachers, like for $135,000, and that's not even tops. So some students, some teachers are making more. If you've been there, say, for 20 or 30 years, you can make even more. than that. But Canada Hills, I believe, I think the figure was like the early, low 90s for a typical teacher and they would maybe go up a couple, $2,000, $20,000, $30,000 more for the top salary. They could be wrong on those exact numbers, but that's the ballpark. And then by the time you put in benefits like pensions and all the other stuff, it's got to be, it's got to be a huge amount of money for these teachers, but the school said that's not the

issue is the issue was just they had to up front costs of building buildings and right and so they couldn't obviously like rent a building or something like that yeah I mean they could probably they just probably didn't want to I don't know what the um but it just seems to not make sense building buildings for a small and probably decreasing uh school population all the school districts are losing all the public schools are losing um people so eventually they They won't have any students and no one to charge that, pay that $100,000 for. We'll say that Fire Island is a bit of, and it's an unusual case because there's no paid roads on the island. And they how they're going to get the kids to school.

They have to have a school bus. And that has a lot of, it's high cost to get the school bus and to take the kids to and from the school. In fact, on the website, I believe the school district says that about quarter, of the students who go to this one school on Fire Island there, they come from outside the island. I don't know how exactly that works, but that's surely for ramps up the transportation costs. Well, great, Mark. Keep digging into that and I'll heal from you again when you get more information from the districts. This has been Americans Talking for the Center Square. I appreciate you joining and watching us. Thank you.