Spending Money Wisely

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Let’s start with two basic principles that are foundational to my views. Principle 1 – there are few, if any, better ways to spend public money than on education. Principle 2 – if the money being spent is public money, then the people spending it have an obligation to ensure that every dollar spent conveys the maximum possible benefit. In plain words – “spending money wisely” doesn’t necessarily mean “spend less money” – it means ensuring the effectiveness of the money being spent.

So with that preamble out of the way, let’s look at some structural changes in the Glen Rock school district in recent years.

A consistent pattern

Let’s take a look at the following table, which shows the number of full-time equivalent staff by function in the school system¹.

Something interesting happens in 2022. In 2021, there were a total of 224 full-time equivalent instructional staff and 19 support staff – a ratio of 11.8:1. In 2022, the number of instructional staff increases to 264…and the number of support staff increases to 61, a ratio of 4.3:1. So what happened, exactly? Not much changed in the enrollment as can be seen in the image below²,³. It’s genuinely confusing – the 2022 financial report⁴ doesn’t say anything in particular.

For the 2022-23 school year⁵, the district’s per capita spending on administrative costs per student was $1,930. In the 2024-25 year, which is the year with the most recent finalized public numbers, that figure was $2,570 – an increase of over 33%, far outpacing inflation! As can be seen in the above image, the three largest year-on-year increases in student spending per capita occurred since 2022 – and while there was a notable inflation spike that year, the increases still outpace annual inflation.

Some more context

Tenafly is the most directly comparable school district to Glen Rock – also in Bergen County, similar size, and similar income levels. And, as we’ll eventually discuss in a future post, it scores well above Glen Rock in academic achievement. So, what do Tenafly’s finances show⁶?

I’d like to be able to present a nice, neat story comparing the two districts – but there isn’t one, partly because the way Tenafly reports its support staff appears to be very different. Having said that, four things stand out:

• There is no comparable jump in support staff in the same time frame.
• Tenafly spends less per capita on administrative costs⁷
• Tenafly’s overall per-pupil spending is very similar to Glen Rock’s
• Tenafly has much higher over all staffing levels

The bottom line

I want to be very clear here – none of this is intended to impugn any individual person working in Glen Rock schools, in any role. Nor is this meant to diminish the importance of administrative work in general. However, when taken in combination with Glen Rock’s academic attainment numbers (which will be the subject of a separate post), all of this at least raises the question of whether the money we are spending on our schools is having the impact our kids deserve.

To go back to the beginning – spending public money is the closest thing to a sacred trust in a secular society. Properly resourcing our schools does not mean spending money haphazardly. I’ve only scratched the surface here, and focused on one aspect of spending – there are many others, such as spending on capital projects, that I hope to return to in future installments. Personally, I would pay even more in taxes if I were sure that every additional dollar was truly benefiting students (and teachers and staff). I’m just not sure that’s currently the case.

1. The source is the district’s comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR) to the state for the year 2025 – page 114, exhibit J-16. ↩︎
2. Same link as above, page 115, exhibit J-17. ↩︎
3. Also, this is probably not important, but there’s something funny about the “Teaching Staff” column in the second table, compared to the instruction totals in the first table. From 2017-2021, the numbers match up perfectly…and then after 2022, they don’t, being much smaller in the second table. I have no idea why – it can’t be a part-time vs. full-time thing, because the first table has full-time staff equivalents, and the second table has lower numbers. ↩︎
4. Which you can read for yourself here. ↩︎
5. This link contains the numbers cited in this paragraph. ↩︎
6. You can find their CAFR at this link – exhibits J-16 and J-17 are the ones we’re looking at. ↩︎
7. You can find those numbers at the same link in note 5. ↩︎