A Bold Pitch To Boost School Funding For The Nation's Most Vulnerable Students
School district lines have become engines of inequity in many states. Not only can they be used to keep children out of a neighborhood's schools, they can also keep a district's wealth in. But with many districts facing severe budget cuts because of the coronavirus pandemic, a new report proposes a radical solution:
Leave the lines, but spread the wealth.
The report, titled Clean Slate, comes from EdBuild, a nonprofit that advocates for equitable school funding. It's a moonshot pitch to many district and state leaders that recommends distributing local property tax revenue more broadly — at the county or even state level. According to EdBuild, only 13 states currently do this.
After a nationwide analysis of school funding data, the report found, "the bigger the school district taxing jurisdiction, the more equity was being created," says Rebecca Sibilia, EdBuild's founder and CEO.
Under this reimagining of America's school funding system, EdBuild found, more than 2 out of 3 K-12 students (69%) — and 76% of low-income students — would receive equal or greater school funding than they do now, an average increase of nearly $1,000 per student.
Sibilia admits some communities may see this idea as a threat to their local control of schools, but funding should not be confused with governance, she says.
"I hope this report will take the first step toward really challenging this question of whether or not being able to run your own schools means being able to keep all of the money that you happen to have," Sibilia says.
To understand Sibilia's proposed solution, here's a quick primer on the system as it is: On average, America's schools receive nearly half of their funding from local sources, mostly property taxes. But those local dollars usually don't cross school district lines. So if one community's property wealth far surpasses that of its neighbors across the road, the inequity will show up not just in the size of the homes or the number of businesses, but in classroom spending, too.
According to EdBuild, in counties with more than one school district, the average CONTINUE READING: A Bold Pitch To Boost School Funding For The Nation's Most Vulnerable Students | 89.3 KPCC