Two New Studies: AT ISSUE: SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM + PATHWAYS FOR SCHOOL FINANCE IN CALIFORNIA
Small Steps Could Lead to Big Improvement in School Finance System: Reforms Would Create a Fairer, More Transparent Approach to K-12 Funding
PPIC PRESS RELEASE | HTTP://BIT.LY/BMUKXE
SAN FRANCISCO, November 9, 2010—California can significantly improve the way it funds public schools by making strategic changes now, according to a report released today by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
The PPIC report outlines a strategy to reform California’s school finance system—widely considered to be inadequately funded, inequitable, and overly complex. There is unlikely to be additional money available soon to address the first of these concerns—the level of funding. But the system can be made more equitable and transparent, and doing so would prepare the state to make the most of any additional resources in the future.
"Given California’s budget problems, school finance reform isn’t likely to happen overnight,” says Margaret Weston, PPIC research associate and author of the report. "But small investments over time can add up to a big change. This approach wouldn’t require a major investment in a single year and would ensure that no district would see a decrease in funding per pupil.”
The funding system today is a product of piecemeal changes made over four decades. Before the 1970s, each school district levied its own property taxes and the revenue made up the bulk of funding for district schools. But a Supreme Court decision in 1971 found this system unconstitutional and the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 lowered the amount of property tax revenue available to schools. As a result, the burden of financing public schools shifted largely to the state. K-12 education is the largest area of spending in the state budget, and schools are allocated money based on a complex array of laws and formulas. Similar districts serving similar students currently get widely varying amounts of money per pupil. Districts with higher per-pupil costs—those with many disadvantaged students, for example—don’t necessaril