Average per-pupil spending on Long Island hits nearly $40,000 for 2025-26 school year, Newsday analysis finds

Average per-pupil spending on Long Island hit nearly $40,000 this school year, setting a record and marking an 8% jump from two years ago, a Newsday analysis has found.

From district to district, the analysis found the cost to educate a student varied greatly, from $26,133 in Franklin Square to $148,735 in Fire Island.

Educators said the large dollar amounts reflect the region’s high cost of living, as well as expanded services that districts must provide to vulnerable groups of students. 

The Island's high per-pupil spending has long raised questions over whether it has yielded better academic outcomes for students.

To Bob Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, the answer is a clear yes.

“For the overwhelming majority of our schools, we perform very well,” he said. “We have schools that are challenged ... and have not performed at a statewide average, but they've shown growth.”

Ken Girardin, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, pointed to scores released earlier this year by the National Assessment of Educational Progress that showed fourth graders in New York ranked in the middle among all states for reading and math, despite having the highest per-pupil costs in the nation.

“There is plenty of data that raise serious questions about whether New Yorkers, and Long Islanders in particular, are getting their money’s worth for this level of spending,” Girardin said.

Here's what to know about student spending on Long Island:

How is per-pupil spending calculated?

Newsday calculated spending by dividing each district’s 2025-26 budget by its projected student enrollment, which was compiled in the New York State Department of Education’s 2025-26 Property Tax Report Card data. For seven districts with sizable charter school populations, Newsday subtracted tuition reimbursements to those schools from the total spending for a more accurate calculation of their per-pupil spending.

School districts are funded mainly by local property tax revenue and state aid, with a small percentage also coming from federal funding.

Why does the per-pupil cost vary so much from district to district?

Many factors can skew the figure, including a district’s size, location and the percentage of students it has that need extra services, educators said.

Fire Island, for example, has just 41 students this year. When a district is that small, even a slight change in enrollment can greatly sway its per-pupil spending. Superintendent Travis Davey said while the amount appears high, it is largely driven by fixed costs such as staffing, building operations and transportation that don’t shrink because the district has a small student body.

If a district is large, administrators typically have more flexibility to maximize resources. For example, a large school may have 20 students enrolled in an advanced course whereas a smaller school may only have 10 students — but each requires a teacher.

Some educators also said it is harder to hire and retain staff for East End districts, where housing costs are higher. 

How do Long Island schools compare with the state and the nation?

The average per-pupil spending on Long Island is $39,156 for the 2025-26 school year, up from $36,105 in 2023-24. The state average for the current year is $34,859.

Long Island schools typically outspend the state average and New York spends more than any other state in the nation. A January report from the Citizens Budget Commission found New York’s per-pupil spending was the highest in the country, nearly double the national average.

Andrea Vecchio, a regional taxpayer advocate from East Islip who has no relation to Bob Vecchio, said the costs should come down given declining student enrollment on the Island.

"There's no way it should cost that," she said.

Why is Long Island’s per-pupil cost so high?

Educators pointed to the region’s high cost of living, inflation and mandatory services that districts must provide.  

“It's just more expensive to do anything on Long Island,” Vecchio said. “Salaries, utilities, supplies. Everything is more expensive.”

Many educators noted in particular the rising costs to educate students with special needs and those who are English language learners.

State regulations outline how English language learners, who “must be provided with equal access" to school programs and services offered to others, are screened, assessed and taught. There are also certain services districts must provide to students with disabilities, depending on what the child needs.

The number of students with disabilities in Island schools has increased by nearly 10% in the past five years, from 63,148 in 2019-20 to 69,125 in 2024-25, according to state data. The number of English language learners jumped by nearly 14% during the same time frame, from 40,370 to nearly 46,000 students.

The exact cost to educate these students varies, depending on which district they attend and what services they need.

In the Southampton district, it cost more than $120,000 on average during the 2024-25 school year to educate a student with special needs, according to Jean Mingo, the district’s assistant superintendent for business and operations. She estimated the cost to educate an English language learner to be roughly $20,000 less. The average per-pupil cost in Southampton is $71,510.

Coupled with growing mental health needs, James Widmer, deputy superintendent of Nassau BOCES, said: “The level of disability in the children has increased so the number of services needed has also increased.”

Educators like Widmer also said schools are spending more on transportation, health care premiums, school safety and cybersecurity. Because so many of the expenditures are mandatory, educators say they have little room to cut costs.

“There's about 3%, 2% of the budget that's not fixed,” said Larry Aronstein, a retired superintendent who was most recently in charge of Wyandanch schools. “You have very little discretion in constructing a budget.”

Are Long Island students getting a good education? 

It depends on how success in student learning is measured.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which compares results of state-by-state sample testing in math and reading every two years, found only 31% of fourth graders in New York performed at or above proficient in reading in 2024. New York also underperforms Massachusetts in both reading and math in grades 4 and 8.

But in other measures, New York did well.

Last month, a preliminary report from the state Education Department showed students in grades 3-8 performed better in 2025 in English and math on state assessment tests than in the previous two years, though questions have been raised about how proficiency was measured.

The state has consistently ranked second in the nation, following Massachusetts, in the percentage of graduating high school seniors who passed at least one Advanced Placement test. Many of the Island’s schools outperform state averages, with some landing on best-of lists in the state and country year after year. And Long Island has also produced more semifinalists in the prestigious Regeneron science competition than any other region in the country.