Summer Time, and The Living is...

Well, not exactly "easy".  I have spent the last month looking into assisted living options for my mother.  This is not a fun exercise. All I'll say is if you don't yet have a long-term care insurance policy or about $40K per year for each year you plan to live in assisted living (not talking nursing homes, which are double the cost), then you are going to be in trouble...

My summer might not be easy, but here is something that is sort of fun to explore.  This very interesting Texas Tribune website is an interactive tool exploring public education numbers at the school, district and state levels.  You can see numbers and graphs that show demographics, academics, college readiness, staffing and spending.  For instance, here you can see a comparison of how Katy ISD spends relative to the state average.  You can see that Katy spends well below the state averages by program (Regular, Bilingual, CATE, Athletics and Accelerated) but a bit over the state average for Gifted & Talented and Special Ed.  I'll have to think about and ask smarter people about why that might be.  Scroll down and you see Katy ISD spending per pupil by function, and you'll see that Katy spends below the state average in all areas (Instruction, Student Support, Central Administration, School Leadership, Food Services, Transportation, etc) except Security and Data Processing.  I understand about security; being situated in three counties necessitates our own police force while many districts in the state just have agreements with another law enforcement agency in their county or city.  I'm not sure about Data Processing, but will have to ask.  (Not sure what "Student Support" means?  Scroll around and find where the term is underlined and a box will pop up explaining what it means.  Cool.)

Anyway-- numbers, numbers, numbers.  They can provide answers but often raise questions, too.  I'm sorry the Tribune didn't include a tool allowing us to easily compare demographically similar districts, or districts in our geographical region (Region IV), but with more exploration on my own I'll be able to see that picture, too.  Good news is, it is a comparison that shows where we are below the state average (spending) and above it (academics).  Since it is only a comparison tool, it doesn't answer absolute questions such as "are we as a state spending enough money on education?".  However, as a tool to give us insight on how we are spending and what we are achieving compared to others in our state, it's a fun way to see how we stack up in Texas, and good data to use as a filter through which we can process emotion-driven statements like "Katy spends too much at the District Administration level".

Enjoy your summer-- it will be over too soon!