The New York City School District spent $19,184 per pupil in the 2009-10 (“fiscal 2010”) school year – more than any other large public school district in the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in its recently released report on revenues and expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools.
The five largest public school districts that spent the most per student in the 2009-10 school year were:
| District | Per-Pupil Expenditure | |
| 1. | New York City Schools, NY | $19,184 |
| 2. | Boston City Schools, MA | $19,169 |
| 3. | Montgomery County Schools, MD | $15,582 |
| 4. | Atlanta Public Schools, GA | $15,043 |
| 5. | Baltimore City Schools, MD | $14,711 |
Source: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
On the other end of the spectrum, per-pupil expenditures for the 2009-10 school year were lowest in the Alpine School District, Utah, which spent $5,528 per student.
The national median expenditure per student was $9,989 – an increase of one percent from the prior school year. On the revenue side, the national median total revenue per student was $11,823 in fiscal 2010, up 0.8 percent from fiscal 2009.
The report, entitled “Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts: School Year 2009-10 (Fiscal 2010) – First Look,” provides a detailed breakdown of expenditures by category and revenues by source for the 100 largest public school districts in the country.
The National Center for Education Statistics is part of the Institute of Education Sciences, a division of the U.S. Department of Education.