The corpus › Formula Parameter

Base Cost Per Pupil

The amount the state treats as the cost of educating one student before categorical additions — the single most consequential number in Ohio school funding, and the one whose meaning has changed most.

parameter/base-cost-per-pupil · 27 nodes point here

Under the foundation base cost formula it was a statewide figure set in the biennial budget, and the Supreme Court of Ohio found in DeRolph I that it was derived by working backward from available appropriation rather than from any costing of an education. verified Under the Fair School Funding Plan it is not set at all: each district’s base cost is built from staffing ratios and priced inputs, and the statewide figure is the quotient of the summed district aggregates over the summed district ADM — an output, not an input. verified

The FY2022 statewide aggregate was $11,023,233,582.74 over a base cost enrolled ADM of 1,499,918.26, giving an average base cost per pupil of $7,349.22. verified The career-technical equivalent, computed from the JVSD base cost calculation, was $8,891.03. verified

Comparing a pre-2022 base cost to a post-2022 one compares a policy decision to a computed output. The comparison is only meaningful with the reference year of the cost inputs stated alongside — and the distribution matters as much as the average: districts under roughly 700 students, about one-sixth of Ohio districts, carry base amounts above $8,000 per pupil because minimum staffing floors apply regardless of enrollment. inference Fordham The statewide average conceals a bimodal distribution driven by district size.

Properties

NameBase cost per pupil
Unitdollars-per-pupil
KindIt changed kind at the regime boundary, and this is the parameter that shows the taxonomy is not a property of a name.

Legislated before the Fair School Funding Plan: a dollar figure set by act — $5,283.00 in FY2006, $5,403.00 in FY2007 — that a reader could look up and a legislator could amend. inference

Measured under the plan. R.C. 3317.011 does not state a base cost; it specifies a build-up from reported inputs — classroom teacher salary at a reference year, average insurance cost, staffing ratios — and the statewide average per pupil is what falls out. verified The $8,241.61 in the department's FY2027 model is an output, not a setting. Nobody chose it, and no act would have to change for it to move; what moves it is the cost inputs' reference year, which is itself a legislated choice one level up.

That two-level structure is the substance of the cost input refresh scenario: the lever is which year is read, and the thing it moves is a measured quantity. Reading this parameter as legislated — as its pre-2021 series invites — makes the refresh look like a policy that sets a number, when it is a policy that chooses a measurement.
Values over time
Reconstructed from the Legislative Service Commission's analysis of every enacted budget act since the 124th General Assembly, and deflated. The greenbooks state the amount in prose, biennium by biennium, and twelve of them have been committed in this repository since before this node's series was written. Each row below carries LSC's own sentence in project::base_cost::SERIES, and a test requires that sentence to be in the act's greenbook and to contain that row's figure. verified crates/project
    FY     nominal    FY2026 $   how the amount came about
    1999  $4,420.00  $8,881.27   measured: the average adjusted base expenditure of the 127
                                 districts meeting at least twenty of twenty-seven
                                 performance standards
    2002  $4,814.00  $8,936.33   FY1999 indexed at 2.8% a year, plus $12 for the twentieth
                                 graduation credit
    2003  $4,949.00  $8,996.89   indexed 2.8%
    2004  $5,058.00  $8,904.21   indexed 2.2%
    2005  $5,169.00  $8,875.05   indexed 2.2%
    2006  $5,283.00  $8,695.26   rebuilt from three priced components
    2007  $5,403.00  $8,660.07   indexed 2.27%
    2008  $5,565.00  $8,493.22   indexed 3.0%
    2009  $5,732.00  $8,874.71   indexed 3.0%
    2010          -          -   the Evidence-Based Model has no statewide per-pupil amount
    2011          -          -
    2012          -          -   the Bridge formula pays each district its own FY2011 aid
    2013          -          -
    2014  $5,745.00  $8,049.55   the opportunity grant's formula amount
    2015  $5,800.00  $8,116.57
    2016  $5,900.00  $8,174.98
    2017  $6,000.00  $8,179.92
    2018  $6,010.00  $7,964.84
    2019  $6,020.00  $7,848.71
    2020  $6,020.00  $7,798.35   held at FY2019
    2021  $6,020.00  $7,399.41   held at FY2019
    2022  $7,352.00  $8,285.94   the Fair School Funding Plan's computed average
    2023  $7,352.00  $8,047.01   held at FY2022
    2024  $8,242.00  $8,760.83   recomputed on FY2022 cost inputs
    2025  $8,242.00  $8,533.06   held at FY2024
    2026  $8,242.00  $8,242.00   held at FY2024
    2027  $8,242.00          -   held at FY2024; June 2027 has no price index yet
Nominally the amount rises 71.21% from FY2002 to FY2026. In constant dollars it falls 7.77% across the same span, and its high is FY2003, at $8,996.89 in FY2026 dollars. Ohio's base cost per pupil is worth less today than it was twenty-three years ago, and every figure in the left-hand column above says the opposite. verified

Deflation settles the price half of the objection this node raises against cross-era comparison and leaves the other half standing — a pre-2022 figure is a legislated amount and a post-2022 one is the quotient of a district build-up, and no index makes those one quantity. Within an era, where the two ends are the same kind of thing:

| era | span | nominal | real | |---|---|---|---| | base cost formula amount | FY2002-FY2009 | +19.07% | -0.69% | | opportunity grant formula amount | FY2014-FY2021 | +4.79% | a fall of 8.08% | | statewide average base cost per pupil | FY2022-FY2026 | +12.11% | -0.53% |

The opportunity grant era is the decline. Eight years in which the printed amount rose every year and bought less every year but one. verified

### 4 fiscal years have no value at all

Not an unrecorded value. None. The Evidence-Based Model replaced the per-pupil base with a per-teacher compensation amount that varies by district, and LSC says so outright: "there is no specific formula amount per pupil". The Bridge formula that replaced it paid each district its own FY2011 aid per pupil. So FY2010 through FY2013 are a hole in the series, and this node's request for "the Evidence-Based Model's computed adequacy amount for FY2010-11" was a request for a number nobody ever computed. verified

When the parameter came back in FY2014 it came back 9.30% lower in real terms than when it was abandoned in FY2009, on a nominal figure $13 higher. verified

And a statewide per-pupil amount did run through the hole — the deduction. What a district is charged for a pupil it does not teach, on a community school, STEM school, open enrollment or Post-Secondary Enrollment Options transfer, was legislated in each of those acts and fell in each: $5,732 in FY2009 when it was the base cost, then $5,718, $5,703 and $5,653. Ohio stopped saying what a pupil costs without stopping saying what one is worth taking away. verified

### Every second year is a freeze, and the freezes are lengthening

The amount is recomputed once a biennium and held for the rest. H.B. 166 held FY2020 and FY2021 at the FY2019 figure, H.B. 110 held FY2023 at FY2022, and H.B. 33 and H.B. 96 between them have held FY2025, FY2026 and FY2027 at FY2024. A freeze is a nominal decision with a real effect and nothing has to be cut for a district to receive less: the three cost 5.72%, 2.88% and, so far, 5.92%.

The current one is the largest in the series. The FY2024 amount is worth $8,760.83 in FY2026 dollars and the formula pays $8,242.00 — a shortfall of $518.83 per pupil, with a fourth frozen year still to run. verified

### FY2024 through FY2027 are one number, and this node printed it as three

$8,240, $8,241 and $8,242 are not a rising series. They are $8,241.61 rounded by three publishers: Fordham, LSC in the H.B. 33 greenbook, and LSC in H.B. 96's. H.B. 33 computed one amount for FY2024 and required FY2025 fixed at it; H.B. 96 "maintains the use of the FY 2024 statewide average amounts ($8,242 and $9,856, respectively) in FY 2026 and FY 2027". Four fiscal years, one figure. verified LSC greenbook

The same thing happened at the other end of the plan and this node caught it there. FY2022's $7,349.22 is the aggregate over the ADM; $7,352 is the stated average, and H.B. 110 fixed FY2023 at the FY2022 amount, so the $2.78 between the node's FY2022 and FY2023 rows is the quotient-against-multiplier gap the FY2027 paragraph below describes, not a year of growth. verified LSC greenbook

### The estimate at enactment is not the amount that gets frozen

Under the plan the average is not knowable when the act passes: it is a quotient over data the department has not collected. So the biennium's own greenbook estimates it and the next biennium's states what it was. H.B. 110 estimated FY2022 at $7,202 and the year came in at $7,352, so the estimate was low by 2.08% — and because FY2023 was then frozen at the realized figure, it was wrong about two years rather than one. The career-technical companion missed the same way in FY2024: $9,726 estimated, $9,855.62 used. verified
FY2027 detail from the department's own FY27 calculator verified:
  statewide aggregate base cost     $11,767,054,639.44
  base cost enrolled ADM              1,425,005.53
  aggregate / ADM                        $8,257.55
  stated average base cost per pupil     $8,241.61   (the calculator's own multiplier)
  classroom teacher salary [s5d]         $68,022.22   (FY2022 reference year)
  average insurance cost   [s4]          $17,152.68
Those last two are different quantities and the node used to conflate them. Dividing the aggregate by the ADM gives $8,257.55; the figure the calculator carries and multiplies by is $8,241.61, and the gap is $15.94 per pupil.

And the gap has an explanation, which the corpus recorded as a mystery. The multiplier is not an FY2027 quantity at all. H.B. 96 holds the categorical multiplicands at their FY2024 values: "The budget maintains the use of the FY 2024 statewide average amounts ($8,242 and $9,856, respectively) in FY 2026 and FY 2027." verified LSC greenbook So $8,241.61 is a FY2024 average carried forward by statute, while $8,257.55 is what the FY2027 base cost model actually computes — two different years, which is why neither is recoverable from the other and why the difference is small but not zero.

Every place this corpus labels $8,241.61 and its career-technical companion $9,855.62 as "FY2027" is naming the year they are used rather than the year they are from. The figures are right; the vintage is a third input year beside FY2022 and the phase-in, and the act freezes all three. $8,241.61 is the load-bearing one — it is what the English learner and special education weights multiply (project::panel::categoricals::AVERAGE_BASE_COST_PER_PUPIL) and what the open-enrollment clawback charges per FTE — so it is a stated input rather than a derived average, and it is not recoverable from the two figures above it. Any statement of the form "aggregate ÷ ADM = the average the formula uses" is false here by $15.94. verified summed from crates/foundation/fixtures/fy27-department-model.csv, 609 districts

Note the ADM trend: 1,499,918.26 in FY2022 against 1,425,005.53 projected for FY2027, a 5% decline. Aggregate base cost still rises because the per-pupil figure rises faster than enrollment falls. inference
Supporting FY2022 detail, all verified from the department's payment report:
  Statewide aggregate base cost      $11,023,233,582.74
  Statewide base cost enrolled ADM    1,499,918.26
  Career-technical base cost/pupil    $8,891.03
  Economically disadvantaged pct      46.7239%
  Districts receiving foundation aid  611
  Total state foundation funding      approximately $7.5 billion
Still missing: FY1992 through FY2001, which the greenbook series does not reach - LSC's education analyses begin with the 124th General Assembly, and the H.B. 94 model's own FY1999 base year is the one earlier point it states. What the constant-dollar series cannot settle is whether a consumer price index is the right deflator at all: base cost is majority compensation, and the Employment Cost Index would be the better measure over a series this long if it reached back far enough. open
Statutory basisR.C. 3317.011, with sub-components at 3317.011(D) through (H). verified
Simulation keybase_cost_per_pupil
Written in formulas as
  • statewide average base cost per pupil
  • average base cost per pupil
  • district base cost per pupil
  • district aggregate base cost
SensitivityMoves every district's computed cost proportionally before local share is applied. Because state aid is the residual after local capacity, a dollar of extra base cost per pupil is a dollar of extra state aid per pupil, not the state's percentage of it: local capacity does not move when base cost does. Scaling the state share proportionally instead is the obvious-looking mistake, and it understates the cost of an increase by the whole local share. verified crates/project

The exception is the bottom of the wealth distribution, where the minimum state share floors the effect. That minimum is 10%, not the 5% the plan was enacted with — it is set by each biennial budget and it doubled, and 138 of 609 districts sit exactly on it in the FY2027 model. verified the department's own Notes sheet states 0.1 for FY2026 and FY2027

The aggregate response is therefore not linear. Each increment lifts districts off the guarantee and onto a formula that then has to pay them, so the marginal cost per point rises: $47.7M for the first two points, $72.5M by the twentieth. A fiscal note extrapolating a large increase from a small one understates it, and the error grows with the size of the proposal. See Phasing Out the Temporary Transitional Aid Guarantee. verified

Interacts multiplicatively with FSFP Phase-In Percentage: raising base cost while holding phase-in constant delivers only the phased fraction of the increase.

The dominant driver is the teacher salary input. Base cost is majority personnel, priced at ($62,696.18 x 1.16) + $14,265.53 = $86,993.10 per funded teacher in FY2022, so the parameter's real sensitivity is to the reference year rather than to any legislative choice about the number itself. verified the arithmetic inference the claim about dominance

Where this appears on the site

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

Cleveland Municipal — TaxesIn “The pupil counts on this page, and which figure uses which”. The same link is on 432 of the 609 pages like this one.