$21,356 per pupil: Massachusetts school districts’ operating spending in fiscal 2023–24, district by district

Operating spending per pupil in 210 Massachusetts school districts, fiscal 2023–24: median $21,356, range $16,476 to $39,212. Every figure from DESE public records, with what the figure includes and leaves out.

Half of the 210 Massachusetts school districts that run both elementary and high school grades recorded operating spending of more than $21,356 per pupil for fiscal 2023–24, and half recorded less. That middle figure, the median, comes from the per-pupil expenditure report published by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). It is the most recent year DistrictFacts publishes for the state.

The lowest figure among those districts is $16,476 per pupil, at Dracut (3,456 students enrolled, 2025–26). The highest is $39,212, at Cambridge (6,960 students enrolled, 2025–26), about 2.4 times the lowest. The middle half of districts fall between $19,613 and $23,596.

Spending per pupil, fiscal 2023–24: the 5 lowest and the 5 highest of 210 Massachusetts districts

Dracut
$16,476
Bridgewater-Raynham
$16,784
Ashburnham-Westminster
$16,953
Melrose
$16,977
Grafton
$17,211
Berkshire Hills
$30,479
Weston
$31,171
Hull
$31,821
Boston
$33,854
Cambridge
$39,212

10 of 210 districts shown: the 5 lowest and the 5 highest. Bars start at zero and the line marks the median of all 210, $21,356. Each bar links to the district’s page.

Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), per-pupil expenditure report, fiscal 2023–24

The largest district

Boston is the largest Massachusetts system reporting this figure, with 44,416 students enrolled (2025–26). Its figure is $33,854 per pupil for fiscal 2023–24, 59% above the $21,356 median of the 210 districts compared here. The DistrictFacts homepage compares the same figure with a wider group: all 395 Massachusetts systems reporting it for the year, including the kinds of district left out here. That median is $21,959, and Boston is 54% above it.

What “spending per pupil” means in Massachusetts

In Massachusetts the figure is DESE’s reported expenditure per pupil: operating spending from all funds, including the cost of students the district pays to place in programs outside it, divided by DESE’s average number of full-time-equivalent pupils for the fiscal year. That pupil count is not the enrollment headcount shown on a district page. The figures are reported by districts and are not labelled audited. It leaves out community services, fixed assets and debt service.

Each state defines this figure differently: what spending is counted, and which count of students it is divided by. The Massachusetts figure should not be set beside another state’s, and DistrictFacts does not rank states on it.

Which districts are counted

DistrictFacts publishes pages for 425 Massachusetts districts and other local education agencies. 395 of them report this figure for fiscal 2023–24. The median and the range above cover 210: regular school districts whose schools span both elementary and high school grades. The other 185 are left out so that different kinds of district are not mixed in one median:

The remaining 30 have no published figure for the year. A missing or withheld figure is not counted as zero; it is left out of the median.

What this does not tell you

A per-pupil figure does not show whether money was spent well, and it is not a measure of school quality. Districts differ in the students they serve, the services they must provide and their size. In a district with few students, a small change in spending or in the pupil count moves the figure a long way. This is one year of data and it says nothing about the trend. A useful question to ask a district is what is included in its figure and how it has changed over time; each district page linked here shows the detail and the source file.

This report was generated from public records by the DistrictFacts Data Desk. Every figure in it is read from the per-pupil expenditure report of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), as published on the district pages; none was typed by hand. The method is described on the DistrictFacts methodology page, and a correction can be requested from this story.

Sources

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