A Cost-Benefit Analysis
The Mentor Workshop Riddle
D.K. Powell
I took the brochure regarding the Go the
Distance Mentor Program Leader workshop
conducted by Peer Resources to my school
principal. He was denitely interested in
reducing dropouts and starting a
mentoring program, but he balked at
releasing me for three days (actually four
days since it would take me a day to get to
Victoria, BC where the session was being
held).
we were away; (2) getting behind on
managing day to day activities at the school
while we were catching up on what we
missed; (3) rescheduling parent conference
appointments; and (4) not attending
another conference that I was also
interested in that dealt with new curriculum
issues.
Although we really wanted to go, we didn’t
want budget restraints to reduce our
First he would have to locate and pay a
chances of going. We also suggested that
supply (substitute) teacher. He would then we would likely need some release time or
have to spend time insuring that all my
reduced teaching responsibilities sometime
other student responsibilities were covered; following the workshop in order to take on
then he would have to apply to the school
the responsibilities associated with
board for the budget to cover my expenses establishing and monitoring a mentor
(travel, meals, registration fee, and
program.
accommodation).
At our experience and salary level, this
We estimated that the total direct cost for
release time would probably cost our board
attending this workshop would be
about $24,000 to have two of us involved as
approximately $1100.00 (all funds in
program coordinators. We also estimated
Canadian dollars). I requested that one of
that to run a program we would need to
the other staff members also attend so that have a budget that would enable us to hire
the two of us could work as a team to
additional clerical staff, pay for operating
establish a dropout prevention program
expenses as well as miscellaneous program
using community mentors. This brought
expenses. We estimated that to be about
the cost to about $1800.00 for the two of us $7,000 for the year.
to attend the workshop.
We were now up to $32,800 and we hadn’t
We also recognized that there would be
even left the building for the workshop. The
indirect costs to attend the three-day
principal wanted to know how we could
session in Victoria including: (1) nding the justify such an expense when all around us
time when we returned after the workshop we are being asked to cut back, reduce
to deal with whatever things came up while spending, take pay cuts and such. And all
Peer Bulletin No. 209
February 7, 2012
26
Finding a Healthy Path…(continued)
we wanted to do was attend a worthwhile
three day workshop. What is the answer to
this riddle.
Data also shows that many students who
dropout of school wind-up on
unemployment and welfare, but we weren’t
sure how to calculate this gure exactly. We
We found four answers. First, the cost to the guessed, based on our own experience of
student who drops out of high school has
being on unemployment insurance, that
been estimated to be $250,000 less in
this would be about $18,000 per year per
wages than the student who graduates
student. Given the high unemployment
from high school. This means about
rate for young people anyway, and
$85,000 less in taxes being available to the particularly for Aboriginal youth which are a
government. Less tax money available
signicant number of our student
means less spending on education and
population, we gured that ve years
other necessary services in our society. Less would be a reasonable time period for this
wages means a lower standard of living, less type of unemployment-welfare cycle to
opportunity, and ironically, an even greater continue. Therefore, the total tax dollars
need for education regarding family,
that would not be going to education from
nancial, and social coping.
this source would be $90,000 for each
student dropout. In total we are now up to
The answer to our riddle also came from
about $236,000 in tax dollars we will forego
examining the social costs to society of
for just three student dropouts.
dropping out. Data shows that many
students who do not graduate from high
The third answer to our riddle is based on
school are at risk of winding-up in the
the number of dropouts that are associated
criminal justice system. It typically costs
with our school district. Although the
$61,000 per year to keep a person in a
gures are not accurately monitored and
Canadian prison. This means that just two
they seem to differ somewhat depending
dropouts (one in jail and one working a low on whose denition is used to determine
paying jobs for a lifetime) will prevent
‘dropout,’ we determined that our dropout
approximately $146,000 from being
rate is about 18 percent.
available to the education system.
In our school district this meant that our
grade twelve population was missing about
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds
discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) ~
American civil rights advocate, educator, and author
Biography
Peer Bulletin No. 209
February 7, 2012
27
Finding a Healthy Path…(continued)
190 students who were here during grade
nine. Since our district receives about
$5,000 for each grade twelve student, this
means that our district loses close to a
million dollars in operating expenses for
each year that our dropout rate remains at
18 percent. Over a ve year period, our
school district will lose almost $5 million.
Our Three-Year Mentoring Budget
Expense
Two staff to workshop
1,800
Release time for staff to
recruit, monitor &
supervise
75,000
Operating expenses of
mentor program
25,000
Revenue
Increase to tax base by
reducing dropout rate by
50%
7,225,000
Tax savings by keeping
at least 50% of potential
dropouts off welfare &
unemployment
7,650,000
Increase in funding from
Ministry as more
students reach grade 12
1,275,000
Donations of time and
expertise from mentors
Total:
675,000
$101,800 $16,825,000
Finally, we calculated the value of services
we would receive from volunteers. We
expected to recruit about 60 mentors for
the rst school year, eventually having a
cadre of about 150 mentors from the
community we could rely on over a three
year period. Given the level of life and work
experience we anticipated would be
Peer Bulletin No. 209
associated with each mentor, we estimated
a volunteer’s time would be worth about
$45.00/hour. Since each volunteer would be
expected to commit to a minimum of 50
hours per school year (including one-to-one
meetings with students, training time,
monitoring and peer coaching time, and
group meetings), the dollar contribution
that each mentor would be making is equal
to $2,250. Sixty mentors volunteering in our
rst year would equal a contribution of
$135,000 for the year. If we added this value
from the rst year to the value of both the
second and third year equivalents
(assuming we hit our target of 150 working
mentors), we came up with the total of
$675,000 donation of volunteer hours.
When we put this data together, we said to
the school principal: “Can this district afford
not to send us to this workshop? If from our
initiating efforts, we can reduce the number
of dropouts by just seven students, we will
have paid for our program and placed
about $500,000 dollars into the tax base to
use for education, health and other
supportive services. If we could cut the
dropout rate by 50 percent (95 students),
we would have access to more then $16
million in revenue with little more than a
$100,000 investment. Think of all the
support services, curriculum choices, band
instruments and sports equipment we
could get. And in addition we would be
getting more than half a million dollars
worth of services at no cost!”
I didn’t get a chance to nd out the
principal’s reply because my alarm went off,
woke me from this dream, and I had to go
out and shovel the snow off my car and
driveway so I could get to school on time.
February 7, 2012
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