Informative Essay: Local Funding For Public Schools

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.

To get to this point, Massachusetts had to completely change its educational reform. To achieve a better outcome for the system, school investment had to be doubled. The current total expenditure in Arizona’s K-12 education is clearly not enough. If a real progress wants to be made, a larger amount of funding should be invested. Increasing the amount invested in Arizona’s K-12 education will allow the state government to

The educational funding problem in Michigan takes root back in 1809, when the first public school was founded. While funding was not an issue at the time, the way schools were funded through local property taxes eventually created a large problem. Fast forward to 1985, Michigan has long moved past the rural cities of the 1800’s and into affluent suburbs and cities. The size and taxation pools of cities have greatly changed from 1809 to 1985, but the way schools were funded remained exactly the same. This lack of change led to a large disparity in school funding from richer districts to poorer districts. Coupled together with local governments’ inability to convince citizens to vote in favor of millages and tax hikes, the disparity ballooned. In 1993, Bloomfield Hills ranked in the 99th percentile of Michigan schools, was spending on average $10,294 per-student, while Standish Sterling ranked in the bottom 1st percentile, spent $3,738 per-student, roughly a $6,500 difference per-student (Roy 2003). This inconsistency greatly disadvantaged students all the way to 95th percentile, where there

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

In 2016, Maine citizens passed a citizen’s referendum to allocate long awaited state funding for Maine schools. It was paid for by a 3 percent surcharge on household income exceeding $200,000 per year. The increase in maine income tax can further benefit the school systems by providing funds that could increase the teaching curriculum and equipment needed to provide a stable and strong education to Maine’s youth. Throughout the years, Maine’s education system has lacked the necessary funding to compete with other states educations systems, with sufficient funding Maine schools will be able to compete and produce a top pedigree of student ready for the working world and further education. Three important aspects to this funding are, better

With this, mandates and community desires place pressure on the allocation of personnel across the district. The economy of size allows larger districts to employ more specialized teachers, putting them in a better position to provide a wide range of courses required by state and federal mandates and expected by today’s students and parents. This ability allows for more individualized instruction – by age level, subject level, and level of ability. For example, hiring a full time instrumental music teacher, offering a wider variety of world language courses, or creating specialized special education centers. Personnel in larger systems also often enjoy improved professional development, increased salaries and benefits, and greater job security. With more colleagues, teachers in larger districts benefit from professional learning communities upon which to draw for advice and discussions, interactions that lead to improved effectiveness.

It is stated in School Funding that “Public schools in the united states are funded mainly by state and local taxes. A smaller percentage, usually less than ten percent, comes from the federal government.” (School Funding) This is why schools in many middle class and low class neighborhoods are forced to fundraise. “Many remote small-town and rural areas that are home to working-class and poor residents from various racial and ethnic groups similarly struggle to fund schools because of a weak tax base.” (295 Condron) Schools in higher class neighborhoods have nothing to worry about because higher taxes are paid on the million dollar houses so more tax funding is put towards their schools. Even though the rich schools get more tax funding then the lower schools, both schools received the same amount of federal funding. This inequality in the money schools have is unfair for the poorer schools because they are receiving the same amount of government funding as a rich school, yet the poorer school needs that money more than the rich school does. Government funding is the issue here because the funding is equally spread among all the schools compared to giving the schools that need the money more more money, and the schools that don’t need as much money less money.

Alongside with political influence, economic expenditures that occur in and out of schools have significant impact on the value of education. Regarding public schools, each school is given the same relative funding for the education of its students. In 2012, the average funding that was given to a student’s education was $10,608, which is the most out of many different modern-day democratic nations, such as France, Great Britain, and Germany (Levin 73-76). Logically, one may be confused on the difference of education between public schools since they receive the same amount of funding. What truly influences schools is the quality of the socio-economics of the surrounding neighborhoods. For example, Troy High School, a school surrounded by a middle class neighborhood, is considered to many as a “good school” with “good students” while another school named Santa Ana High School, a school surrounded by families living in poverty and violent gangs is considered a “bad school” (Putnam 139-141). Both of these schools contain the relatively same demographics regarding race and gender, indicating the

As our populace ages, especially in small, old towns, more and more voters begrudge spending on schools, students and teachers. School board candidates, knowing who votes, campaign as "taxpayer advocates" much more often than they run as "student advocates." The voters want to pay as little as possible and get acceptable results. For many of them, acceptable results means graduating most of their students with as few problems as possible. Innovation is seen as an expensive, unproven luxury that taxpayers on fixed incomes cannot afford. Buildings are maintained at the lowest possible functional level; aesthetic improvements rank very low in budget priorities.

When it comes to education, it is generally agreed that money matters. What is not as apparent are questions like: In what ways does money matter? How does money impact the achievement and opportunities of the students? Are there predictable affects of increasing or decreasing spending in a school system? These questions are important for a number of reasons. Funding for public education is a limited resource and knowing how to utilize those limited funds efficiently and effectively is a goal school administrators seek to achieve. There is also the issue of equality. Since a significant portion of a school 's budget is allocated through the local tax base, school districts may have more or less funding available to them depending on which community they are located in. If school spending is tied to student performance or opportunities, and different school systems have different levels of funds available to them, then it can be said that educational opportunities for students will be different depending on which school district they belong to. In an attempt to seek the connections between money and education, I will look at three research papers which investigates this matter.

    This article looks at public school districts in Washington that spent roughly 6.1 billion dollars to educate 949,000 students in 1998-99. This expense works out to be $6,404 per pupil. Such a statistic includes fiscal data from very different programs. Vocational-technical schools cost $6,150 per pupil for 46,988 students. Special education programs required an expenditure of $13,700 per pupil with an enrollment of 47,069

One of the biggest issues within these urban public schools have been the budget cuts that will not allow certain resources to be provided to the students in need. With budget cuts comes the cut back on the number of teachers in the schools,

    I concur with Congress that “[equity justifies federal support for high-quality public schools” (House Report 111-100, 2009 sec. 3). Since Congress has highlighted the importance of federal investment in public school buildings (House Report 111–100, 2009), the Green High-Performing Public Schools Facilities Act (H.R. 3021) has enacted policies by which states can set higher values for low-income schools and the populations of minority children who attend

In The Story of the Education Dollar, Odden, Monk, Nakib and Picus describe some basic facts about education spending in the United States to facilitate an understanding of the level and uses of the federal government's policies on education funding. The purpose of the authors' discussion is to argue that public education facilities need to change their focus on the consumption of educational resources to a focus on producing high levels of student achievement. They contend that such a redirection in focus will require large improvements in student achievement, given that only about 10 percent of students currently attain the desired level of achievement across the board in mathematics, science, writing,

“This political resistance to schooling at home came from those who saw, and see, this movement as detrimental to the “common good” and to the equity and quality of education for all” (Cooper & Sureau, 2007). To further complicate things, many homeschooling families, private school families and families without children are resistant to the need for them to pay taxes through yearly property taxes. On one hand, many will argue that citizens do not have a say in what the government utilizes their tax dollars for. In the end, all citizens paying taxes do so because they live in a community and that money is being used for the better of the community. On the other hand, homeschoolers, private school patrons and families without children are requesting a tax credits or changes to the tax laws that would allow them to opt out. “Under a properly structured tax credit program, the tuition money never goes to the government. Rather, that money is retained by taxpayers who opt into the program for use on education in the private market” (LaFerrara, 2011). Structured tax credit programs would then provide homeschooling and private school parents with funds to finance the education of their children outside of government run schools. Ultimately, politicians can not deny the popularity of homeschooling and provide adequate tax credits to them. Homeschooling cannot be stereotyped anymore as the