For one private duty nurse at Gorman Elementary School, the school day begins not at the schoolhouse door but at her student's home, where she dresses and feeds a severely handicapped child. Then she rides the bus with him to school.

The student's class has a teacher and two teaching aides for six students, in addition to the private nurse and two school nurses on duty. All of this, by law, is paid by Dayton Public Schools. For more several severely handicapped students, Dayton spends more than $50,000 a year.

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Half an hour down the Interstate 75 toward Cincinnati, Lakota is a sprawling school district in a fast-growing suburb that last year passed Dayton to become the seventh-largest school district in Ohio. But although Lakota is similar in size to Dayton, its students — and the district's responsibilities because of them — are completely different.

Where Dayton has 20 percent of kids in special education, Lakota has 9 percent. And by one Ohio Department of Education poverty measure, 65 percent of Dayton's students qualify as poor, while just 8 percent do in Lakota.

Those two key differences — special education and poverty programs — create a large administrative structure in Dayton that helps drive its spending much higher despite the comparable enrollments.

The Dayton Daily News is comparing the districts' spending to gauge how much of Dayton's administrative costs can be attributed to poverty alone. The answer is some, but not all.

Dayton's core budget of $182 million is a third higher than Lakota, spending an extra $47 million. Special education alone accounts for nearly half of the difference. Dayton outspends Lakota by a staggering $23.5 million on special education.

Poverty programs — federal, state and locally funded — also grow Dayton's budget. Even so Dayton has far more administrators than its peer to the south.

The special

Handicapped students are just one facet of special education in Dayton, where one in five students receives some services.

"Special education for us is behavioral, emotional, learning disability and health issues," Superintendent Percy Mack said. "When you've got one in five, it plays a major role in everything you do."

Only 29 of 613 Ohio school districts have a higher percentage of special education students than Dayton. The district has 191 classes dedicated solely to special education. Gorman is a separate school just for 102 severely handicapped kids.

Lea Loree, a physical therapist assistant at Gorman, said the goal is always to get the students to "graduate" to regular education classrooms, but the district has a duty under federal law to provide the students a "free and appropriate education."

"It's exciting when they graduate our services," she said. "But it's expensive. Lots of general education funds get pulled in here."

With less than half as many special education students, Lakota manages its programs largely at the school level rather than in separate programs. Schools typically have a special education classroom, but even the most medically fragile children are included in regular classrooms where they still are served by specialists.

Dealing with poverty

Poverty accounts for a key difference in the size of Dayton's administration when compared to Lakota.

"I can see 20 or 25 people here who are strictly devoted to poverty issues," Lakota Treasurer Alan Hutchinson said as he paged through a list of Dayton administrators. "That's something we just don't have here."

High poverty districts like Dayton — its schools rank 20th poorest in the state, according to the Ohio Department of Education — qualify for special state and federal aid, some of which requires staff to manage those funds. In all, Dayton has 14 administrators who are paid through state and federal grants. Another seven administrators paid by general funds are devoted entirely to addressing poverty-related problems, said Ed Sweetnich, Dayton's human resources director.

Even more school district staff have at least some poverty-related duties, he said.

Some of these extra services bring with them more state and federal money. Those extra dollars help drive Dayton's per-pupil spending figure so far out of proportion to neighboring districts that school officials argue they are no longer even comparable figures.

Dayton last year spent about $13,767 per pupil while Lakota, for instance, spent $8,049 per pupil.

Lakota's figure stays lower partly because it has less cash flowing through to address poverty and partly because of an administrative focus on a trim operation.

Poverty is a growing problem for Lakota, as low-income families are moving into the fast-growing district along with those with higher incomes. But the associated costs just don't compare to Dayton, said Hutchinson, whose district is the 62nd richest among 613 districts in Ohio.

"They have a huge number of programs, nowhere near what we have," he said.

In fact, Lakota has just one administrator with responsibility for poverty programs, but it's only part of his job. He has no staff and borrows from the superintendent's office when he needs secretarial help.

Lakota runs a very lean administrative ship. All told, the district has 72 administrators at a total salary cost of $5.7 million, including 25 working in the central office.

Dayton, on the other hand, has 157 administrators at a total salary cost of $4.8 million with 70 working in the central office.

Dayton has many positions that don't exist in Lakota. For example, Dayton has eight administrators with the "executive director" title. Lakota has none. Dayton also has almost twice as many directors, associate directors and assistant directors.

Some of those extra administrators are common in urban districts, Mack said. Against those peers, he said, Dayton compares better.

"A lot what we have is just based on what we have to mange in a district like ours," he said. "If you look at other districts in our situation we might be even less than some of those."

Dayton has been shrinking its administrative staff, Mack said, and will continue to do so.

"There probably some areas we can't justify," he said. "But there are some that we probably can."

Charters inflate

One other key budget difference between Dayton and Lakota is busing, but there's a twist.

On the surface, Dayton appears to spend a staggering 41 percent more than Lakota to bus roughly the same number of students to school. Dayton's annual busing cost is $18.7 million a year, while Lakota contracts busing to a private company at an annual cost of about $13.3 million.

But the details show the costs are much closer than they appear. About $4.8 million of Dayton's busing budget is the district's cost for transporting students to charter schools.

Under Ohio law, school districts are responsible for transporting all kids — whether they attend the school district, private schools or charter schools.

When charter school busing costs are subtracted, Dayton's transportation cost — including a $2.8 million contract with RTA for high school students — comes to $13.8 million, nearly the same as Lakota.

'Video gaming'

Both Dayton and Lakota offer unique extras to their students.

The difference is Dayton's extras are aimed at the basic task of getting kids excited about school so they won't skip class, misbehave or lose interest in schoolwork.

In Lakota, the extras go beyond the sort of instruction and activities parents might expect in most districts.

For Dayton, creating unique instructional options causes one obvious disparity among administrators — Dayton has 20 more principals than Lakota for roughly the same enrollment.

Why? Because one focus of Dayton's academic reform efforts has been to create small learning communities designed to increase individualized attention kids receive.

Some examples include two single-gender schools, an early college academy, an alternative school, a school for the severely handicapped, a technology design school, a school for emotionally disturbed kids, and an academic magnet program at Colonel White High School. Lakota has nothing comparable.

On the other hand, kids at Lakota who want to take foreign language have more options that just the traditional French and Spanish. They can take German, Latin and even American Sign Language.

Then there are after school programs. Among the many offerings are intramural sports, ballroom dancing, video gaming and guitar.

How can the district afford all those extracurriculars? Because they don't pay for them — parents do. Many of the program costs are covered by user fees, a luxury not available to high poverty districts.

"They are self-supporting," Hutchinson said. "They are not funded out of the general fund."