I’ve been looking at the Interactive Illinois Report Card for District 150. Here are the total expenditures of District 150 for a period of eleven years, 1997-2008; in the last column, I converted all the amounts into constant 2008 dollars to make it easier to compare apples to apples:

Fiscal Year Actual $ 2008 $ 1997-1998 $107,936,064.00 $141,958,238.53 1998-1999 $115,530,704.00 $147,952,054.74 1999-2000 $126,520,944.00 $156,698,726.18 2000-2001 $133,724,155.00 $163,011,857.72 2001-2002 $141,804,220.00 $168,810,141.23 2002-2003 $144,820,439.00 $169,186,245.74 2003-2004 $150,635,231.00 $170,357,567.44 2004-2005 $156,088,426.00 $170,720,248.71 2005-2006 $171,085,329.00 $182,558,995.50 2006-2007 $161,209,034.00 $167,334,977.29 2007-2008 $166,503,198.00 $166,503,198.00

Looking at the inflation-adjusted dollars, and acknowledging that it does appear to have started a downward trend, you’ll nevertheless notice that from 1997 to 2008, operational expense per student has increased over 17%. However, if you look at enrollment over roughly the same period (1998-2009), the trend is different:

Fiscal Year Enrollment 1998-1999 15,258 1999-2000 15,134 2000-2001 14,910 2001-2002 14,910 2002-2003 14,889 2003-2004 15,001 2004-2005 14,701 2005-2006 14,469 2006-2007 13,961 2007-2008 13,642 2008-2009 13,825

I wanted to include the 2008-2009 data so you could see that enrollment did go up slightly that year. Nevertheless, enrollment from 1998 through 2009 fell by 9.4%. As a result, operating expense per student has increased over 24% — from $9,184 in 1997 (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to $11,398 in 2008.

Questions: Why have operational expenses continued to climb while enrollment has been decreasing? Why are expenses $25.4 million more in 2008 than in 1997 (in inflation-adjusted dollars) when enrollment fell by over 1,400 students? Where is the money going?