The Scranton Times article simply divided district budgets by their enrollment to arrive at that figure. The actual instructional costs per student for 2010 were approximately 2/3rds of that amount. Every private and parochial school should be able to educate their select students at a lower cost than public schools given that private and parochial schools do not have to accept special education students or English language learners; they do not have to pay retirement contributions to PSERS; the transportation costs for the majority of their students are paid for by the public school districts that are within 10 miles of the private and parochial schools; and they do not have to follow the majority of the other mandates that public schools have to follow. Also, the budget numbers for 2009/10 & 2010/11 are higher than any other budget year because of the inclusion of federal stimulus dollars. These funds were provided to all schools to be spent over a two year period. They will not be included in the 2011/12 budget and the budget will be significantly less.
As for health care, in the last contract negotiations the health care package was converted from Traditional Blue Cross/Blue Shield to Blue Care PPO with co-pays.