August 30, 2004
Bridgewater
Raynham
Easton
East Bridgewater
West Bridgewater
Massachusetts
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Bridgewater-Raynham Schools
Massachusetts
USA
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Joseph Gillis Jr.
You can do something!
I am often told that Bridgewater does not financially support education, so I decided to do a comparison amongst the many school systems to look at enrollment, State Chapter 70 money and the resulting share to be provided by the community. To make the comparison, I have only included systems with K-12 programs. (No, I never bothered to calculate with any of the others since I do not believe their results would have any statistical significance to the analysis.)
When all is said and done, Bridgewater and Raynham through taxation provide $3,624 per student for education. By the Regional Agreement, both towns must fund at the same rate. This places B-R at #147 out of 204 school systems.
{Click here to download the spreadsheet; this data is available as separate downloads from the Dept. of Education - I just combined the data from different sources for this analysis.}
This analysis was put together - and I can provide the source of raw data if anyone wishes confirmation - to see for myself how the two towns are doing at providing funds for education in comparison to the rest of the state. I have seen the reports that put B-R and its $6722 per student total at around 280/320 systems. The spreadsheet created was done solely to see how the towns are doing at funding from their revenue, separate from State Funds.
