Prisons are cheaper.

The Stealth Hippopotamus: Prisons are cheaper.

No, they're not. If there is $1,500,000 being cut and there are 66 programs receiving part of that funding, then that's $22,727 per program. Each student in those programs obviously only costs a percentage of that.

The annual cost for housing a single prisoner in Illinois is $32,963

DRTFA.

Was the football coach running this one touching the kids too?

timujin: The Stealth Hippopotamus: Prisons are cheaper.

No, they're not. If there is $1,500,000 being cut and there are 66 programs receiving part of that funding, then that's $22,727 per program. Each student in those programs obviously only costs a percentage of that.

The annual cost for housing a single prisoner in Illinois is $32,963

Des Moines was asking for 1.5 million alone. I'm thinking that each of the 66 programs that are getting funding will get over a million each.

Witchyman: timujin: The Stealth Hippopotamus: Prisons are cheaper.

No, they're not. If there is $1,500,000 being cut and there are 66 programs receiving part of that funding, then that's $22,727 per program. Each student in those programs obviously only costs a percentage of that.

The annual cost for housing a single prisoner in Illinois is $32,963

Des Moines was asking for 1.5 million alone. I'm thinking that each of the 66 programs that are getting funding will get over a million each.

You're correct, that $1.5 million is split over 10 schools, not 66 programs (the article isn't especially well written), which means $150k per school. Over the 176 days of the Illinois school year, that's $852/day.

Now, I don't know which 10 schools are receiving these funds, so I don't know exactly how many students get that funding. But there are 30,683 students in the 63 schools in the Des Moines public school system, an average of just over 1439 per school. The requirement to receive funding is that over 50% of the students must be eligible for reduced or free lunches. Let's be conservative and go with the minimum, which is 720 students per school.

$852 per school per day divided by those 720 students is $1.18 per student per day. $1.18 times the 176 days is $208 per student per year.

The caveat for all of this is whether or not I'm understanding the article correctly, it goes off into counselor and adviser roles and whatnot, but the paragraph I'm focusing on is this:

For school districts to be eligible for the grant, 50 percent of students must be eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program. Last time Des Moines applied, eight of the 11 middle schools were eligible for money. Now, 10 of the 11 middle schools qualify, so the district asked for $1.5 million annually in funding to maintain levels of service, Wright said.