Table 7. Comparisons of Per Pupil Costs of Elementary Education 

 by Districts Grouped According to Average Daily Membership (ADM) 



in Residence 



* Ten of the 33 districts and one of the 44 districts maintain no schools. 



a high school hut sends pupils elsewhere for secondary education at a 

 standard or contract tuition rate. Consequently, there is not much differ- 

 ence in high school costs per pupil. The extreme difference in costs per 

 elementary pupil for these two districts is largely a matter of taxahle 

 wealth. The low-cost district has a total equalized valuation of $988,601 

 and the high-cost district has a total equalized valuation of $11,229,754. 

 This means that the high-cost district can give liberal support to its ele- 

 mentary school with no appreciable effect on the tax rate. Moreover, vir- 

 tually all of the taxahle property in the high-cost district is classed as 

 "electric plant" whereas in the low-cost district two-thirds of the taxahle 

 property is in farms and other permanent homes and small husinesses, 

 all of which is resident property. In the former case, most of the taxes 

 are paid by non-residents, while the amount of appropriations is deter- 

 mined by resident voters. 



The 33 districts with fewer than 50 elementary pupils had an aver- 

 age cost per pupil of $402.78 (Table 7). The average costs per pupil de- 

 cline with an increase in the number of resident pupils for all groups of 

 districts having fewer than 300 elementary pupils. For districts having 

 more than 300 pupils the average cost per pupil tends to increase 

 slightly. 



Table 8 indicates the extremely high costs of maintaining small 

 high schools. Eight districts with fewer than 50 high school pupils in 

 residence had a per-pupil cost of $704.28 compared to $421,21 for 15 

 districts having more than 300 pupils in residence. Again, the quality of 

 high school education is of utmost importance. The larger high schools 

 are able to offer more comprehensive programs in academic and voca- 

 tional subjects at lower costs per pupil than could smaller districts which 

 support only very limited programs of study. 



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