The corpus › Metric

State Share Percentage

The fraction of a district’s base cost that the state pays rather than the district — the compensation side of the equity question, where assessed valuation per pupil is the wealth side. verified

metric/state-share-percentage · 3 nodes point here

Under the Fair School Funding Plan this is not an analyst’s construct but a statutory quantity with an exact definition: the state share of base cost per pupil divided by base cost per pupil, with a minimum of 5%. verified The floor is not a rounding convention — it is a policy decision that every district, however wealthy, receives at least 5% of its computed base cost from the state, and it is why the measure stops discriminating at the top of the wealth distribution. A district whose local capacity exceeds 95% of its base cost and one whose capacity exceeds it several times over both report 5%.

Read together with valuation per pupil, the two metrics are the wealth-neutrality test. If the system compensates for local wealth as designed, state share should fall as valuation per pupil rises, and the strength and shape of that relationship is a direct measurement of how much equalization actually occurs. inference

The metric is a derived quantity and the derivation is where the errors are. It is a ratio to computed base cost, not to total district revenue or total district spending — a district may spend far above its computed cost from local revenue, and dividing state aid by actual spending produces a different, much lower number that is frequently quoted as though it were the same measure. inference Both have uses; conflating them does not.

One further trap specific to FSFP: the state share percentage is computed before the phase-in percentage is applied, and it is then used to scale several supplemental funding streams. verified So a district’s statutory state share percentage and the share of its base cost the state actually paid that year are different numbers, differing by exactly the phase-in gap.

Properties

NameState share percentage
Unitpercent
Definition
State Share of Base Cost =
  if (Local Capacity Per-Pupil / Base Cost Per-Pupil) > 0.95
    then Base Cost Per-Pupil x 0.05 x current-year Enrolled ADM
    else (Base Cost Per-Pupil - Local Capacity Per-Pupil) x current-year Enrolled ADM
State Share Percentage =
  max( (State Share of Base Cost Per-Pupil / Base Cost Per-Pupil), minimum state share )
The minimum is a biennial parameter, not a constant: 0.05 in FY2022 and 0.10 for FY2026 and FY2027, which the department's FY2027 calculator states on its Notes sheet. verified Computing a year at the other year's floor is a live defect class — see FSFP Cost Input Refresh vs. Freeze.

Note the ADM asymmetry: base cost per pupil and local capacity per pupil are computed from prior-year or three-year-average ADM, while the state share of base cost is multiplied by current-year enrolled ADM. verified A district with sharply changing enrollment is therefore funded on a blend of two different student counts.

Distinct from state_aid / total_revenue and from state_aid / actual_expenditure, both of which are different measures and must be named differently.
InputsBase cost per pupil and local capacity per pupil by agency and fiscal year — from the foundation and local-capacity calculators, or directly from the department's Detailed SFPR where already computed. Current-year and prior-year enrolled ADM — from dew-foundation.
Values over time
The department's published state share of base cost in the two funding models the corpus holds, over the 609 districts each pays verified crates/project/src/prior_model.rs:
                      FY2026    FY2027
  median district     41.40%    36.00%
  aggregate           35.35%    31.52%
  on the 10% floor       105       138
The aggregate is the state's share of the summed cost, not a mean of district shares. 540 of 609 districts have a lower share in the FY2027 model than in the FY2026 one, at an unchanged floor. verified Two years only: the FY2022 model's 5% floor makes an earlier year a different quantity rather than a longer series.
CaveatsHard floor — 5% in FY2022, 10% from FY2026 — so it does not discriminate among high-wealth districts at all: the top of the distribution compresses onto a single value and correlation measures against wealth will understate the relationship unless floored districts are identified and handled. inference The compression is twice as deep from FY2026, and in the FY2027 model 138 of 609 districts sit exactly on the floor. verified

Computed before phase-in; diverges from realized state share by the phase-in gap. Districts held on a guarantee are off-formula and their computed share is not meaningful. Mixes prior-year and current-year ADM by construction.
Calculatorlocal-capacity

Where this appears on the site

The pages outside the corpus that link here, and the section of each the link sits in.

Cleveland MunicipalIn “Why base cost is $8,120 per pupil”. The same link is on all 609 pages like this one.
Cleveland Municipal — TaxesIn “What voters approved, and what the factors left”. The same link is on all 609 pages like this one.
What changedIn “Reappraisal and the state share”.