In the last two months, I’ve attended my share of county council meetings and heard more than a few people, some citizens, others elected officials, suggest that Cecil County Public Schools needs to stop wasting money.
One elected official recommended that CCPS hire an auditor because such a professional is, and I’m paraphrasing so bear with me, “trained to find waste, prioritize spending, and be resourceful.” Uh huh.
As I sit in these meetings and read the comments online imploring the county executive and county council to “cut the out of control spending,” I can only shake my head and think that this person has now outed himself as someone who hasn’t visited a school lately.
So I’ve spent some time looking for this “waste” in the data on the CCPS website and ran across this statistic:
Cecil County ranks last in the state for transportation costs per eligible student. The state average transportation cost per student is $1,042, while the Cecil County cost per student is $638; that’s a savings of $404. By using tactics like the installation of GPS in school buses, CCPS transportation cost is nearly 40% below the state average.
If only 25% of the 15,634 enrolled students (2013) are eligible for bus transportation, that’s a savings of over $1.5 million per year.
Tell me again about this so called waste.
