UPDATE: GM is an idiot. He wrote this article looking at last year’s budgets. He’s now updated the article with the right numbers.
Late last week, DCPS released proposed budgets for each school, including Georgetown’s Hyde-Addison Elementary and Hardy Middle School.
For Hyde, DCPS proposes to set aside $2,615,100$3,092,942. The budget predicts an enrollment of 260315. If those numbers hold up, that would mean $10,058.07 $9,819 per student. The enrollment numbers, however, don’t seem quite right to GM. For instance, the budget projects a Pre-K enrollment of 40. But as of right now, next year Hyde is only offering one Pre-K class of 20. Additionally, Hyde’s current Kindergarten class is 58, but the budget only calls for a first grade class of 42.
Setting aside that confusion, Hyde’s per student budget compares well to other sought after NW elementary schools. Here’s their per student budget allocations (with last year’s numbers struck out):
- Janney:
$7,798.39$8,408
- Key:
$8,661.48$8,842
- Stoddert:
$9,762.66$9,649
- Mann:
$9,349.57$8,767
- Murch:
$8,936.39$8,985
Part of the reason Hyde has such a high per student budget compared with these other schools is that it’s smaller than all of those schools. Also note that the per pupil budget didn’t not move in a uniform direction from last year across these schools; some went up, some down, and Murch is almost exactly the same.
As for Hardy, DCPS is proposing $4,143,363$4,334,677 for the middle school. This is based upon a projected enrollment of 474516. This also seems like an overestimate. The pre-audited numbers for Hardy this year are 418. (Deal similarly has a disparity of 891945 budgeted with a 866 pre-audited ’10-’11 enrollment). Either way that works out as a $8,741.27$8,401 per student budget for Hardy (Deal’s will be $8,843.11$8,400).
The bigger news this week for Hardy is that Mayor Gray is keeping Kaya Henderson as school’s chancellor. After Jack Evans proposed a bill to bring Patrick Pope back as principal of Hardy, Henderson and Gray made it crystal clear that they were uninterested in Evans’ meddling and reiterated that Pope was not going to return to Hardy. With Gray making Henderson’s appointment permanent, it seems that the administration’s position on Pope is unlikely to change.
Photo by Buggie73.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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