Finance Issues of Harlem Childrens Zone - Statistics Project Example

The paper "Finance Issues of Harlem Children’s Zone" is a worthy example of a statistics project on finance and accounting. The first issue is the featuring of unqualified successes in HCZ despite spending over $20,000 on each student annually (Harlem Children’s Zone). The second issue is applying utility as a national model for running HCZ’s schools (Grossman and Curran 6).

Featuring of unqualified successes is an external threat tied to the application of the utility model by rival organizations.
Applying utility as a national model for running HCZ’s schools is an internal weakness.

HCZ’s assets in 2000 reached almost $200 million. Canada placed HCZ’s budget for 2014 at $84 million, which was 66.67% of the private contributions it received that year (16). Goldman Sachs added $20 million the same year for the building of a new school, which added to HCZ’s assets. In spite of this strong capital, the issue of still applying utility as a national model remains (27). After Goldman Sachs’ contribution, HCZ bought a piece of land worth $43 million to anchor the new headquarters for charter school complex (7). HCZ spends over $12,443 of taxpayer money on each of its pupils and $3,482 in private funding annually between 1997 and 2000. An extra $4,657 per student was added to cover expenses within charter schools, and an estimated $2,172 per student for extracurricular activities and programs. This means HCZ spends $19,272 per student yearly (21). In contrast, this means New York’s median institute constituency spent $16,171 per student in 2000 while the constituency at the 95th percentile cutpoint spent $33,521 per student in 2001 (18). As a result, receiving extra expenses of HCZ as reaching over $19,000 per student lies at a point between the New York median and the 95th percentile district expenditure (22). The issue arises from acquiring relative expenditure data per student for HCZ whose recorded total proceedings differed from $6,000 to $60,000 per student (10). Considering the scale of poverty these students come from, HCZ’s expenditure can be seen as an accomplishment if not an improvement. However, the case study shows that 31% of households in Harlem live on incomes below $15,000 annually. Yearly, an estimated 18.4% of four-year-old children are admitted to HCZ’s programs lately. This figure is somewhat more than the 15.9% projected by Canada (7). The case study shows that 100% of Harlem Gems preschoolers undergo the curriculum of grade schools and HCZ prepares all of them for middle school. For a non-profit community organization that offers to program for over 7,500 children from poor households, a yearly budget of $15 million seems adequate (16). Raising $300 million by HCZ should produce adequate returns to dedicate that $1 million yearly for operating costs. The decrease in contributions and grants by 56% in FY1999 raises the banner on fundraising from private and government agencies acting of multi-year gifts (16). Even though its general effect is unclear, utility poses a cost of nearly $16,000 on commission schools for every student annually on top of thousands of dollars spent outside the classroom (11). Scores of grade 8 students in 2009 showed the difference between the true scores and the scores projected from student variables. Read More