Wichita school spending

Spending by the Wichita public school district, adjusted for inflation and enrollment.

Has spending by the Wichita public school district risen or fallen? A nearby chart shows recent spending figures. These figures are expressed on a per-student basis using full-time equivalent enrollment, adjusted to reflect changes in the consumer price index.

(Current expenditures do not include facility acquisition and construction service, debt principal retirement, interest expense, and other expense. Over the past ten years, total expenditures per student have averaged $2,219 per year more than current expenditures.)

Should anyone want to politicize these figures, note that the years of decline were under a Democratic governor and a one cent per dollar sales tax increase. For the past three years, these three measurements of spending have risen each year.

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Spending data is from USD 259 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2015, Miscellaneous Statistics, page 122.
Enrollment data from Kansas State Department of Education, available at http://www.ksde.org/Portals/0/School%20Finance/data_warehouse/total_expenditures/d0259exp.pdf.
Data adjusted for inflation using Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.