Budget Cuts In Public Schools

School funding is a mix of different funding sources like federal, state, and local. About ninety percent of funding for education comes from state and local community. K-12 education has failed to keep up with high enrollment. Schools must spend to counter effects of poverty while many European countries alleviate these conditions through government spending. Currently more than forty percent of low income school get an extremely unfair share of state and local funds. Low income school are receiving inadequate funds for their school, whereas other schools in the United States are unfairly distributing their state and local funds. That is unfair to the low income schools because those schools really need the money for school books, field trips, etc. Funding for public schools has been quite unequal for years, but even though Americans are fully aware of this issue no one does anything to solve it. Researchers are trying to show them both sides of this unequal funding issue in public schools in order to help balance the distribution of educational funding.

If the education system relies most of their funding from taxes, where do they end up getting the rest of the money. The government and administration grant more money to wealthier areas than low -income areas. Wealthier communities are granted more money because they have a higher percentage of funding coming from property taxes. This leaves the low-income students at a disadvantage. People living in low income areas mainly rent and don’t own their own property. As a result of not having a house or owning property, they have little property taxes. If low -income students are not given enough money for funding a school, the students are suffering. With the lack of money causes students to miss out on college prep classes such as AP classes and Honors classes. These classes are pivotal to the students that want to pursue higher education and a road to success. For example students in the low-income areas are given a poor education. They are not given the resources, or quality teachers in order to achieve success. According to George Miller House Education and the Workforce committee, many students are not educationally ready to graduate and attend higher education (Minority 1). This is another reason why low income students should be provided the same classes as a middle class or a wealthier community. In a study, 2 million students in 7,300 schools had no access to all calculus classes, a staple in many high – achieving high schools (Minority 2). Low-income

Our political leaders struggle to understand the impact they have on the policies they put into place to improve public education. We see mandates that are unfunded and have a significant impact on a school district’s budget. Special education continues to be an area rich with policy and yet additional dollars are not included in the decisions made for implementation. Title one funding is an area that falls into a blurry area of policy for school districts. In our district, we have policies for fiscal responsibility in our spending procedures and yearly audits to be sure we are spending our money in a proper way.

Since last spring, Philadelphia school district leaders have been sounding the alarm about this year’s fiscal budget. Even after months of discussions and headlines, schools have opened with fewer resources than last year. On March 28th the School Reform Commission approved a lump sum budget which showed a need for an additional $220 million in revenue in order to provide schools with same resources as the “wholly insufficient” 2013-14 school year (McCorry). There will be many inadequate funding impacts on the quality of the education. Classroom resources would be stripped to untenable levels. The district would reduce as much as $2.2 million funding to the districts’ multiple pathways to graduation program which affects estimated 300 students. Another $1.5 million could be reduced from the elimination of preparation and professional development time for teachers at the district’s high needs promise academies. The district’s building maintenance budget could have reduction in amount of $9.6 million. Schools will be cleaned less frequently as a result. Building maintenance will also be curtailed as a result. District’s school police budget could also have reduction in amount of $2.4 million. School police officer vacancies will be unfilled, leaving an additional 27 elementary schools to share an officer.

“Education is a major driver of development and is a strong instrument for reducing poverty, improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability” (The World Bank) - so why is it that students are often deprived from an extensive education? In Illinois, education funding has been an ongoing problem. Funding for schools is based on the property taxes where the schools are located, causing those who live in lower socioeconomic areas to receive less educational funding. This is unfair because children who live in lower socioeconomic areas are not able to receive the same opportunities and benefits that are acquired when a quality education is obtained. This is why educational funding in Illinois should be distributed evenly so that every

Charter schools in North Carolina do not receive any funding from the lottery, while public schools do. Teachers complain about how they do not get paid enough. Voters go to the polls and vote for referendums that would hopefully be used for education purposes. Student population is growing, so should the money. Jessica Swencki, spokeswoman for Brunswick County Schools, said “It does not go very far. Brunswick County got about $800,000 last year which went to reroof one of the aging middle schools. The average price on one of those middle school roofing projects is around $1.2 million, so it really pays for about three-fourths of a roof, if you really think about the check that Brunswick County Schools actually receives.” Swencki also stated, “…Whenever the misperception is out there that these dollars are flowing into the public school system may or may not be using them to their fullest extent.” Teachers are starting to go on more strikes to protest for better pay. Schools never received half of the lottery money. Based on poverty concentration, North Carolina received a ‘B’, which was much better than the ‘Fs’ the state received during the early 2000s. North Carolina then cut funding for wealthy districts, but continued to fund for the poorer districts. Well, what followed the cut? Teachers went years without seeing a raise in their salaries. The amount of students in a classroom increased. Countless numbers of teacher assistants were cut from

Pennsylvania has strict limitations on funding schools. Local governments heavily influence the funding that does occur. The school district governance in Philadelphia has been a subject of debate. A large majority of the revenue that the local government receives is from property taxes. In the year 2000 property taxes regarded for almost $10 billion of the revenue in Pennsylvania. That was 30 percent of the total revenue that the local government received and 70 percent of all local government tax revenues. Property taxes accounted for roughly 85 percent of the overall tax revenues for Pennsylvania school districts in 2000. Practically half of all the school district’s revenue came from the compilation of property taxes. The one thing

As another example, the National Center for Education Statistics reported for fiscal year 2012 that state and local governments in 24 states were spending less per pupil in their poorest school districts than they were in their most affluent school districts. Pennsylvania had the highest differential in the country with state and local per-pupil spending in its poorest school districts 33% lower than per-pupil spending in the state’s most affluent school districts (Brown, 2015).

Virtually every school district in the country has been or is currently facing the need to reduce their budget. In the last two years, budget cuts have become far more common in school districts than ever recorded. Some schools are able to cushion the effects of the reductions by shifting fundings around or pulling out reserves, but there is no debate to the fact that these cuts have, in one way or another, a negative impact on the education of students in school districts.

The current sanctions placed on the York City School District by the Pennsylvania Department of Education have intrigued me since the day I started working at Jackson Elementary there three years ago. YCSD ranked 490th out of 496th school districts in the state of Pennsylvania in 2015. Last school year they did not improve as expected, according to the latest reports just released by the State Department of Education. The district has some goals to meet, which include cutting in half the gap between the district’s reading and math Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) scores and the state average, as well as cutting the gap between the district’s third grade reading scores and the state average.

Public education is under funded, especially in the state of Alabama. I attended public school in the state of Alabama so I experienced it first hand. Low funds for the arts department and many of the science experiments are just some of the areas that are affected by the low funding. In the 2012-2013 school years, Alabama had over 744,637 students enrolled in a total of 1,637 schools. Alabama’s school funding has gone down 14% since 2008. Many school systems have to spend additional money from local revenue on top of what the state provides because it is not enough. Low funding in Alabama is a problem that could be fixed through a lottery system and a weighted school system.

Department of Education, “documents that schools serving low-income students are being shortchanged because school districts across the country are inequitably distributing their state and local funds”. (Education, 2011). Students that come from low income families are not given the equal chance to get the education that students from high income families get. If students are not given the tools they need to be educated, then they will have a poor chance of succeeding in the world.

In the United States, public schools get their funding from their respective state. As a student, it can be seen as concerning when one compares how much states spend on their schools. Many schools are inadequate in both an aspect of safety and effectiveness of the learning environment. As a result of inadequate subsidy across America, schools resort to taking drastic measures. Not only are the unequal sources of subsidy a difficulty, but the concept and execution of budget cuts also exacerbate the issue. In order to give every student in America equal opportunities for success, funding should be controlled by the federal government with a policy that enforces equity rather than equality. This is also a viable option that could be carried

Budget cuts in schools cause turmoil and stress among the students and faculty. Drastic changes in the budgets have caused schools to negatively impact the people around them. With the lack of funding, schools are facing difficult decisions on what to do to stay within their budget. Supervision is facing much scrutiny on how to handle the lack of funding in their school districts. A solution needs to be made to improve the distribution of funding to our schools in order to keep them operating and thriving for our children to obtain their education. Budget cuts in schools have shown negative effects on employee positions, supplies, extracurricular activities.

The sad reality of it all is that gross funding inequities continue to persist in the U.S and no one seems to be working steadily to rid this problem. When putting funding into education equity should be focused on rather than equality. According to the National Report card there are core fairness principles that must be followed to maintain equal opportunity. The 3rd principle states that the level of funding in a district should increase relative to the level of concentrated student poverty rate. Therefore state finance systems should provide more funding to districts serving larger share of students in poverty (Is School Funding Fair? 7). Examining the school district of Philadelphia one could see that this principle is not being followed. The No Child Left Behind Act was created in 2001 to ensure that no later than 12 years after 2001 (2013) all students will meet the states standards. The act