The figure doesn't seem outlandish to me. In the grant budgets I work on, we figure 28% for benefits and 50% for indirect costs, which is supposed to help support the things you aren't considering in your numbers--keeping the lights on, toilet paper in the bathrooms, the building maintained, etc. But a public elementary school is going to have so many more costs that I don't have to figure in the budget for a community college program--the public school will have transportation costs (which are huge--in my last job working with a school arts program, the cost of getting kids to a program by bus would often cost more than the program itself), breakfast and lunch programs, textbooks and materials (college students pay for those themselves), far more administrative costs (the public elementary school has to comply with curriculum and testing requirements that bring in levels of administration that make my head spin), and, as you mentioned, all of the "specials" like music and art. And in spite of what you say, the school DOES have a special needs program. If there are children with special needs in your district (and there are in every district in the country), the schools are paying for them. In your local school it might just be paying for a PT school counselor and reading specialist to handle kids who just need a bit of support, but the kids with Down Syndrome and autism and CP are being educated *somewhere* and the district is paying for that. If the district doesn't have the programs themselves, they pay for the children to attend a private specialized school or to attend programs in other districts. It's more common, though, to have the special needs programs concentrated in just a few schools, so the kids with autism in your neighborhood will go to a school in the district but not their "home" school. If the district is particularly small, though, they won't have the resources for that and will have to send out of district or to a private program, which is far more expensive per student than educating in a local program.

Out of curiosity, I just ran the numbers for our district to find out how much is spent per student. I don't know the average class size, and the budget is for the full district, so I can't figure the cost per class for K-5. But the total spent per student in our district is $11,312. $8,750 per student sounds like a bargain, and with the reduced education your kids are getting (no gym, minimal music and art), it sounds like you're getting what you pay for.

Sarah