Here is the back story on how the Croydon school budget was formulated. The budget is in the news as it is one half the budget requested by the school board and passed over their objections. While the budget that passed appears arbitrary it was prepared with rigorous research and planning. This is how the budget was arrived at.
Taxpayers and parents researched the cost of sending a student to private schools in the area such as general education, arts schools, trade schools, etc, and of course special education schools. Then they added in transpiration costs and came up with a cost for each student to send them to the school of their choice from that list. Then they applied these specific costs to each student in the Croydon school system based on their specific needs and came up with a total cost to send every student in Croydon to the school of their choice. This specific, targeted budget was the number that was used for the school budget. The rationale was that if the finest schools in the area can operate with tuition like that, the public school should be able to match those levels. At present there are no plans to send Croydon students to private schools. All Croydon students will attend Croydon public schools with the new lower school budget being used.
Edward Smith
Concord