With 165,000 students to teach, feed and transport, you have but one option: think big.
That approach runs through Gwinnett County Public Schools, the state’s largest school system and its county’s No. 1 employer with 20,000 teachers, administrators and support staff.
When it takes $1 billion a year just to cover basic expenses, it’s clearly a big operation. But here’s a little insight into what it takes to keep the system going.
Student transportation
Gwinnett is the third largest provider of student transportation in the country, carrying 125,500 students twice a day during the 180-day school year.
Most of the school system’s 1,881 school buses are rolling across the county, running 7,694 routes a day and making 54,438 stops a day.
Collectively, those big yellow buses log nearly 130,000 miles per day, the equivalent of 29-plus round trips to Los Angeles. Combined, their odometers log 23.4 million miles in a single year.
Fueling the students
Cafeterias across the district in the 2011-12 school year dished out 3.1 million servings of whole-grain pizza; 3.1 million servings of orange juice; 2.9 million servings of assorted side salads; 1.9 million servings of low-fat strawberry yogurt; 1.4 million servings of all-white meat chicken chunks;
1.1 million bottles of spring water; 651,691 assorted chef salads; 462,750 servings of apples; 439,900 slices of watermelon; 146,412 servings of bell peppers; and 22,344 servings of fresh broccoli.
Powering up
The district spends millions on utilities, with electricity the most costly at $19 million in the 2011-12 school year. Diesel fuel was the second biggest bill at $11.1 million. The district also spent $1.2 million on natural gas, $3.7 million on water and $1.1 million on sanitation. There’s a lot of ground to cover. The school system owns 4,448 acres and occupies 27.4 million square feet in buildings worth a collective $3.1 billion.
Paying up
What does it cost the system in dollars to operate a day? $4.9 million a day for general operations.
Annually? $1.2 billion for general operations.
How much long-term debt does the system have? In total, $912.7 million. The system owes $90 million for SPLOST III, $277.7 million for SPLOST IV. SPLOST debt will be paid with sales tax receipts from each program. The system also has about $545 million in general obligation debt that is repaid with a special property tax levy for debt service.
What does the system have in savings? $96 million, general fund only.
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