If New York State were paying aid to fund school vouchers at the local level, instead of all of its aid going to pub lic schools, it could save hundreds of millions of dollars. When The New York Sun looked at the New York City budget gap, these columns noted the chasm in efficiency between the schools run by the Archdiocese of New York and those run by the city’s Department of Education. Whereas in the public schools the cost is about $10,000 a student to educate elementary- and middle-school students, and about $9,000 a student for highschool students, in the Catholic schools those figures are $3,200 a student for Kindergarten through eighth grade and $5,800 a student for high school.

That’s quite a difference. And the city’s expenditures are by no means out of line with the rest of the state. According to the “Analysis of School Finances in New York State School Districts,” put out by the New York State Department of Education, the small upstate cities —such as Albany, Elmira, and Ithaca — spend about $9,000 a student, and the small cities downstate — such as New Rochelle, Peekskill, and White Plains — spend about $12,000 a student. Upstate suburban districts spend a hair under $9,000 on average, and the downstate suburban districts spend a hair under $12,000 on average. This works out to more than $11,000 being spend on every student statewide, and about $5,500 of that comes from the state.

The difference in the costs of the educations provided by public and Catholic schools can be explained by a few major factors. A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese, Nora Murphy, told the Sun that the Catholic schools have lower average teacher salaries, less top-down management, an administrative consciousness toward cost effectiveness, and smaller schools. New York’s Catholic schools have few assistant principles and they don’t budget everything that goes into making a school run. The Archdiocese administers a system with about 110,000 students with a total central administrative staff of 28. At that level, New York City’s 1.1 million student sys tem should be able to run with no more than a few hundred administrators. Instead, the city has almost 9,000 administrators, secretaries, clerks, accountants, and other assorted bureaucrats.

Assuming that Catholic schools and other private alternatives around the state could educate a child for an average of $7,000 a student — a generously high estimate — that would mean about $4,000 in savings on every student accepting a voucher in lieu of public school. The question then is how many parents would opt for a voucher. In New York City, when private philanthropists offered 7,500 scholarships to New York City private and parochial schools in 1999, applications were filed for nearly 170,000 students. That’s about 15% of the public school population. Assuming that half that percentage wanted vouchers statewide — suburban schools presumably have less students desperate to get out — that would mean 420,000 students taking vouchers statewide. Assuming a savings of $4,000 saved on each student — $2,000 of that saved by the state — count $840 million toward closing Albany’s gap.