Top 30 most expensive school districts in New Jersey

For each student, New Jersey schools are spending an average of $19,164.

But some school districts are spending much more per student.

The most expensive school district in the state is the Bergen County Special Services District, which serves 554 students at $95,778 a pop. But the special nature of the special services schools doesn't reflect the vast majority of school districts in the state.

In the list below, we looked at school districts that had at least 2,000 students to see which school systems were spending the most. For the purpose of this list, we looked at what the state calls the budgetary spending per pupil, which is the number that individual school districts give when publishing their user-friendly budgets each spring.

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Total vs. budgetary spending

Budgetary spending per pupil can be a useful way to compare school districts against each other. It only includes costs that are directly comparable between districts and does not include factors like transportation, lunches, debt for construction projects, and pension payments for teachers made by the state on behalf of the school, according to the state report.

Budgetary spending per student at New Jersey schools in 2021-22 was $17,656, which was 8.5% less than what was budgeted for this year.

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this chart listed Ocean Township under the wrong county, which should be Monmouth County.

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