District Estimates Common Core Costs $200K Over 2 Years

Kings Park school officials have finally put a price tag to home much its cost the school district to begin implementing the new Common Core curriculum. 

Ralph Cartisano, Kings Park's assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and personnel, said he estimated the district has spent at least $200,000 on Common Core curriculum over the past two school years. The school district spent at least $40,000 in the 2012-13 school year, and has spent roughly $140,000 for the 2013-14 school year. 

"I am very careful in what I honestly could comfortably attribute to [Common Core] and what I could say I didn't," Cartisano said at Kings Park Board of Education meeting on Tuesday night. 

The largest piece of district's spending was roughly $100,000 for staffing changes related to the Common Core. To aid with changes in the curriculum, the district increased a reading teacher and math teacher position by a half day this school year. 

Kings Park schools spent roughly $60,000 on Common Core materials coming into the 2013-14 school year. It breaks down into several categories: $17,000 on the printing of modules; $22,000 for core knowledge kits for students in kindergarten to second grade, and an additional $6,000 for books and materials aligned and recommended to go along with the modules. 

"A lot of that money would have been in budget anyway. It would have been used it to buy other materials instead of Common Core aligned materials," said Kings Park Superintendent Susan Agruso. "For example, there’s $40,000- $50,000 we took from text book money and bought Common Core modules instead of textbooks." 

In addition to those physical modules, books and items purchased for the district's transition to Common Core, both Agruso and Cartisano reminded residents money has been spent on the professional development of the school's teachers to help them teach Common Core and present the modules to students. 

"We need to spend considerable amount of time on professional development... the success of our students depend on it," said Tom Locascio, vice president of Kings Park Board of Education."Our teachers need to be comfortable in the classroom so our kids can succeed they should have whatever it is they need."

The figures provided by Cartisano on the school district's spending on implementing Common Core does not includes any Race to the Top initiatives, the APPR, training on the APPR and development of the related rubrics.

Despite some concerns, the district has not been spending additional funds to have the newly required state tests graded by outside vendors, according to Cartisano, as the district used outside vendors to grade tests before the implementation of Common Core.