What are weighted pupils?

All students are not equal. Some require more resources than others. A pupil who does not speak English cannot understand a sonnet by Shakespeare as easily as a student who speaks English. The English language learner may require a translator. Similarly, a high school student learning physics in a lab requires more resources than a third grader learning math. That's why students are "weighted."  This affects the school district's Per Pupil Spending (PPS) number used to calculate education property taxes because that PPS value is per Weighted Pupil. A school district may have 900 actual students, but 1200 weighted students. Colchester has about 2300 students. Weighting adds another 1000 or so. Check your district here:

Prior to Act 127 of 2022 the weights were set by law as follows:

• Prekindergarten 0.46

• Elementary or kindergarten 1.0

• Secondary 1.13

A high school student was counted as 1.13 students. If the school had 10 high school students, the number of students used in calculating taxes was 11.3.

Act 173 of 2022, using the results of a study, changed everything. Here's the new process:

We start with the "long-term membership" of the district. That's the average of two year's worth of average daily membership (students showing up for school). It's referred to as the  LTADM. We use that LTADM to compute a weighting count, by multiplying the number of LTADM student in each of the following categories by the appropriate adjustment.

• prekindergarten—negative 0.54

• grades six through eight—0.36

• grades nine through 12—0.39.

There is also an adjustment for students raised in poverty

• if a student's family is in poverty, an additional 1.03 is applied to the weight of that student

• if a student is an English language learned, an additional 1.49 is applied to the weight.

The study that changed the counts also found a difference in the resources needed to educate a student in a rural area, as opposed to an urban area. So a population density adjustment is also applied, based on the number of persons per square mile (P/SqM) in the district.

• If P/SqM is fewer than 36  then add 0.15 for each weighted student

• If P/SqM is 36 up to, but not including, 55 then add .12 for each weighted student

• If P/SqM is 55 up to, but not including,100 then add .07 for each weighted student

And finally, there is an adjustment for small schools, but this only applies to those districts with a P/SqM of 55 or less. in which case:

• if the school has fewer than 100 LTADM pupils, then take that number of actual (not weighted) pupils, multiply it by .21 and add that to the districts total of weighted count.

That, at last, is your Weighted Long-Term Average Daily Membership (LTWADM). That's the number of  weighted pupils used to calculate the district tax rate.

What does all this mean?

The result is a fairer targeting of State resources (the Ed Fund). Districts that need more funds for English Language Learned would have a higher pupil count. If they kept their budget the same, their tax rate would decrease because the tax rate is contingent on Per Pupil Spending; lower per pupil spending equals lower tax rate. The hope was that this would enable districts to put more resources toward the students that need them.