One of the ways we attribute meaning to what we see is through stories. Here is the story of my school district. We are among the top districts in Ohio in the local school property taxes we have voted. But our district was forced to cut teachers and programs this year, and the teachers almost went on strike because of threatened cuts to their health care benefits despite that, in November, we passed yet another local school property tax operating levy. When my children were in elementary school in the 1980s and early 1990s, each school had a nurse and each school had a certified librarian, but now schools share nurses and the libraries are staffed by aides. Looking at this situation from a purely local point of view, many people in my community interpret these facts in a way that blames the district for mismanagement or salaries that are too high, or both.
But a new report from The Education Law Center insists that citizens must expand their understanding of funding public schools beyond the local story: “The political dynamics in state capitols have profound implications for the level and distribution of school funding. Nationally, state sources (mainly sales and income tax) provide 47%, and local sources (overwhelmingly from property taxes) provide 45% of the revenue to support public schools. The federal government contributes the remaining 8%. When state governments allow tax revenues to decline or remain stagnant, public schools, which states are legally obligated to maintain and support, pay the price. Elementary and secondary education on average accounts for 36% of states’ general fund spending, the most of any state government services.”
The Education Law Center’s new report, $600 Billion Lost: State Disinvestment in Education Following the Great Recession, sets the financial crisis in my school district and a mass of other school districts in a much clearer context. The Education Law Center blames state policy over more than a decade as the primary cause of our dilemma. I already had some understanding of the current fiscal problems for the nation’s public schools because, for years, I have been reading reports on this topic from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (see this example). But the new report is short, up to date, readable, and extremely important for CONTINUE READING: Education Law Center Exposes Collapse of States’ Investment in Public Schools Since 2008 | janresseger
