School spending: definitions and calculations

Source review: Washington school spending

Penner Strategy | Public edition 1.1 | September 11, 2026 | Working analysis

The four percentages reproduce from the captured source records: +12.533593%, +19.063406%, +0.773922% and −1.527871%. A separate calculation read the expenditure CSVs with Python's CSV reader and decimal arithmetic, read the enrollment workbook, checked accounting codes, and recomputed CPI means. It did not import the original analysis code. It uses the same captured sources and selected definitions, so it is a source recalculation, not independent data collection or causal validation.

Dollar values and scope

All retained endpoint-year records carry Fund Code 1, General Fund. The two expenditure totals match the statewide totals in OSPI's ten-year workbook within a cent. District comparisons differ by at most about five cents in 2024–25; these small source differences do not change the statewide total. The calculation retains signed adjustments and includes all numeric reporting-entity codes, rather than applying the separate district-chart sample threshold.

Enrollment is a mixed reporting measure

The denominator comes from the Enrollment sheet of 10_year_f-196_data_2024-25.xlsx, not the separate historical P223 workbook. OSPI's Section One introduction describes FTE enrollment for regular K–12 and other programs, plus birth-to-five special-education headcounts. It includes skill-center summer programs, detention centers and other state institutions. Calling the entire denominator simply “AAFTE” was too narrow and has been corrected in this public edition.

The denominator is therefore not a count of individual K–12 students. The public page and corrected charts call it OSPI financial-summary enrollment.

There is a small publisher discrepancy: the workbook totals 1,088,261.99 for 2024–25, while Section One's Table Two displays 1,088,272. The difference is 10.01 enrollment units. Both reproduce the public page's rounded $19,371 figure, although they differ at finer precision. Section One Table Seven displays 1,088,262; other PDF tables also use inconsistent per-pupil values. This edition explicitly uses the captured workbook throughout. It does not blend the PDF's printed per-pupil values or annual growth rates into the calculation.

The relief selection is explicit

Programs 11, 12, 13, 14, 19 and 23 correspond to SLFRF enrollment stabilization, ESSER II, ESSER III, ESSER III learning loss, other CARES Act spending, and ARP IDEA special education. The labels were checked against both endpoint years' accounting dictionaries.

Program 23 contributes $30,146,076.10 in 2021–22 and $435.51 in 2024–25. OSPI's summary groups it under special education, outside its five-code CARES Act COVID-19 grouping. Our six-code selection deliberately includes it. The resulting measure is spending outside those selected programs. It does not identify every effect of the pandemic or establish that districts gained unrestricted resources.

Exact inflation window

The national series is BLS CPI-U CUUR0000SA0; the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue series is CUURS49DSA0. Both are all-items, not seasonally adjusted. Means use September 2021–August 2022 and September 2024–August 2025. Each national mean has 12 observations; each Seattle-area mean has six observations, October through August at two-month intervals. Annual-average M13 records are excluded. Exact observations are included in cpi-observations.csv.

These are consumer-price adjustments, not school-input cost indexes. The page makes no claim about reserve exhaustion, adequacy, efficiency or the cause of district spending changes.

Exact source URLs, retrieval dates and hashes appear in sources.json. The included reproduce.py checks four percentages from the captured aggregates without network access. Its legacy state_fte_* field names refer to the mixed workbook enrollment measure described here; the names do not establish a pure FTE definition.

Additional comparisons, September 11

Raw expenditure totals were recomputed with Fund Code 1 and checked against the financial workbook. The new script also reproduces alternative-base comparisons, COVID-excluded real growth and every program-chart contribution by code. These are automated calculations. This record does not assert personal review by Joshua Penner.