Budgets up, students down
Spending per pupil
Proposed 2026-27 budget divided by the district's own budget enrollment. Central high school districts (grades 7-12 only) are excluded.
Biggest budgets
Top 15 proposed 2026-27 budgets. Bar length is total spending; the figure on the right is the change from 2025-26.
Teacher pay
Median salary of full-time classroom teachers, 2024-25 school year, as reported to the state.
Size vs spending
Each dot is a district: students across, budget per pupil up. Small East End districts spend the most per student. Hover or tap a dot.
Spending vs ELA scores
Budget per pupil against the share of grades 3-8 students proficient in English language arts in spring 2025. More money does not line up neatly with higher scores.
All 125 districts
Click a column to sort. Click a row to fly to it on the map. Tick the boxes to compare up to six districts side by side. Download the CSV with every field.
Methodology and sources
Sources
- Budgets, tax levies, tax cap, budget enrollment: NYSED Property Tax Report Card 2026-27 (May 2026 posting), with the 2026-27 revote file for five districts. p12.nysed.gov/mgtserv/propertytax
- Enrollment: NYSED BEDS Day enrollment, 2025-26, with 2024-25 for the one-year change. data.nysed.gov/downloads.php
- Pin locations: NCES EDGE public school district (LEA) locations, 2024-25: the geocoded district office address. nces.ed.gov/programs/edge
- District boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 unified and elementary school districts, clipped to the county land area and simplified for display. census.gov TIGER/Line
- Graduation rate: NYSED High School Graduation Rate database, 2024-25 release: 4-year outcome of the 2021 total cohort as of August 2025, all students, district level. Also Regents diploma with advanced designation and dropout shares. data.nysed.gov/downloads.php
- Test scores: NYSED Report Card database 2024-25 (SRC2025): grades 3-8 ELA and math, percent of tested students at Level 3 or above, spring 2025, all students; Regents Algebra I and Regents English Language Arts, percent at Level 3 or above, 2024-25. data.nysed.gov/downloads.php
- Teacher salaries: NYSED Personnel Master File statistical runs, 2024-25: median (50th percentile) salary of full-time classroom teachers, plus average salary per full-time equivalent and the classroom teacher count. nysed.gov personnel master file
- Basemap: Esri World Dark Gray Canvas.
Missing values
125 districts are listed and 121 have budgets. These four are not in the state report card and are shown as Not reported, never estimated:
Caveats
- Revote districts. Locust Valley, Three Village, South Country, Islip and Bayport-Blue Point had May 2026 budgets defeated; figures are the revote proposals. Final outcomes are not in the file.
- Central high school districts. Bellmore-Merrick, Sewanhaka and Valley Stream Central serve grades 7-12 only; their component elementary districts are listed separately, so per-pupil figures are not K-12 comparable. They have no separate boundary on the map.
- Two enrollment counts. Students (PK-12) is the state's fall 2025 BEDS-day count of students in district schools. Per-pupil spending uses the district-reported budget enrollment, which can be higher where districts pay tuition for students taught elsewhere (Remsenburg-Speonk, Tuckahoe, East Moriches).
- Budgets are proposals as submitted for the May 2026 vote, and include tuition, charter-school payments and debt service, which raise per-pupil figures in some districts.
- Over the tax cap means the proposed levy exceeds the district's state tax-levy limit, which needs 60% voter approval.
- No high school. 25 districts teach only up to grade 3, 6 or 8 and send older students to a neighboring or central high school district, so they have no graduation rate or Regents ELA figure. They are marked No HS, never estimated.
- Suppressed scores. The state blanks a figure when a group is small enough to identify students. Grades 3-8 math is suppressed for 34 districts, mostly because a handful of 7th graders took the Regents Algebra I exam instead and the combined figure would reveal them; ELA is suppressed for 5 small districts. These are marked Suppr., never estimated.
- Grades 3-8 math counts 7th and 8th graders who took the Regents Algebra I exam instead of the grade-level test, as the state does.
- Teacher salary covers full-time classroom teachers only and only settled contracts; the state does not publish a salary where a contract was unsettled. A median for a very small district reflects only a few teachers.
- Compare mode marks the best and worst value in each row in lime and pink where one direction is clearly better (higher scores and graduation, lower cost growth and per-pupil cost). Size, budget, levy and salary rows are only marked highest and lowest.
- Pins mark district offices, not geographic centers; a few offices sit near a boundary (Westbury and East Williston are both in Old Westbury).