MSOC: materials, supplies and operating costs

The state pays a flat allocation per student - $1,614 per student in 2024-25, with a further per-student add-on for grades 9-12. Unlike staffing allocations, it does not vary with a district's size, its regional labour costs, or the mix of students it serves.

That flatness is the design: it is the simplest lever in the formula, and raising it moves money to every district at once. It is also the reason a 200-student rural district and a 20,000-student suburban one receive the same amount per student toward heating a building, licensing software and insuring a bus fleet.

Statewide, actual MSOC spending works out to $1,743 per funded student, against a formula built on the $1,614 general-education rate. This is the most widely shared gap on the site: 263 of 315 districts spent more than they were allocated, totalling $201.4M.

Ranked by per-student difference. Small districts and charter schools dominate the top of this list because fixed building and technology costs do not shrink with enrollment - the same heating bill divided by fewer students is a larger number per student.

Among districts with more than 10,000 funded students:

Both sides follow the MSOC definition in the Superintendent of Public Instruction's 2026 budget request - the same scope behind AESD's Big 3 dashboard: the funding side counts general-education, career-and-technical and alternative-learning MSOC, and the spending side takes non-staff objects across those programs while excluding items that are not operating costs (contracted student transportation, tuition, debt, land and building improvements). Counting every non-salary object across every program instead would pull in capital outlay and the non-salary share of special education, transportation and food service - double-counting money already compared on those pages.

The formula rate and the spending actuals are also drawn from different reporting cycles, so a small part of any single district's difference is timing rather than shortfall.

Relevant bills: SB 5192, SSB 5918 and SB 6310 have all proposed changes to the MSOC rate. Full detail on Sources & Methodology and the current bills on Take Action.