A student's home school district must pay for the student to enroll, based on its own per-pupil expenditures.

But the vast majority of families don't look at overall per-pupil expenditures when deciding whether to send their children to public or private school.

Looking at data from school districts across the country," she said, "it's hard to find a positive correlation between per-pupil expenditures and educational results.

It has inched up to 48th in per-pupil expenditures and 46th in teacher pay.

"We have to keep the per-pupil expenditure down in order to allow us to continue our programs," he said.

Under his legislation, students would bring the average per-pupil expenditure of the school district with them to the school they wanted to attend.

The bill can be equal to the district's per-pupil expenditures for the amount of time the child spends at the school.

They proposed expanding the school by 100-200 students, and equalizing its per-pupil expenditures with those at the city's larger schools.

The annual budget was $210,748,000 in 2007, with a per-pupil expenditure of $19,017.

Just to bring Baltimore schools up to the average per-pupil expenditure in Maryland, he found, would mean spending $26,250 more per class.