School Funding Blues

Red states have tons of financial issues, you only have to look at what Sam Brownback and the GOP did to Kansas or what Matt Bevin has done in just over two years as governor of Kentucky.  Oklahoma schools are only open four days out of the week now and it's only going to get worse as red state economies are wrecked by Trump's trade war.

But that doesn't mean blue states don't have serious inequality issues.  West coast housing is in a massive bubble right now, and when that pops it's going to take millions of jobs and billions of dollars with it.  And Massachusetts still has a school funding disparity where the poorest districts are so underfunded that they are rightfully suing the state on civil rights grounds.

Twenty-five years after the state enacted its landmark Education Reform Act, which pumped millions of dollars into public education, enormous funding gaps exist between poor and affluent school systems. By many accounts, the gaps are widening. 

Now, Brockton is exploring a lawsuit against the state — challenging the funding system — and is lining up other school districts to join it. Worcester, another struggling city, decided last month to jump in. 

Brockton and Worcester school leaders view the funding inequities as a civil rights issue, depriving their students, who are largely poor, minority, and immigrants, the right to an equal education. The chief culprit, they argue, is the state’s formula for doling out aid, which favors poorer districts but has failed, by a wide margin, to keep pace with the actual cost of providing a public education. 

Real estate taxes fund most of the rest of school spending, a fact that further locks in inequality of opportunity. Wealthy communities have an obvious, systemic advantage; they can make up the difference and then some, while others, like Brockton, are barely scraping by. A legislative commission highlighted this divide 2½ years ago and implored lawmakers to update the state formula to reflect the true cost of an education. 

But the new legislation, which would likely require the state to spend hundreds of millions of additional dollars, has moved slowly on Beacon Hill. 

Superintendent Smith, who began as a teacher in Brockton four decades ago, said she never thought she would see the return of the days when Brockton had 38 students in a class, not enough desks, and not enough books. She said she spent much of last summer fretting about how deeply she would need to cut. 

“We waited all summer to see if this money would come in or that money,” Smith said in a recent interview. “It was just devastating all the way through. . . . We are hanging on by a thread.” 

State data reveal huge gulfs in the wealth of the state’s school systems. In Brockton, household income on a per-pupil basis is $95,000. Yet 30 miles away in Weston, it is $1.5 million per student. Brockton’s equalized property valuation on a per-pupil basis is $309,000; in Weston, $2.6 million. 

Overall, Brockton spent $14,778 per student, while Weston spent $24,458. Seventy percent of Brockton’s students are economically disadvantaged, lack English fluency, or have disabilities, which means they cost more to educate because they often require specialized programs or extra tutoring. In Weston only 24 percent of students fall into one of those categories, and yet the town spends vastly more on its schools — because it wants to and can.

At every turn, and it seems like in every state, it's black and brown students who have the worst schools because school funding is nearly always tied to property taxes and home values.  The rich kids get funding and good schools, the poor kids get cut programs, 20 year old textbooks that are falling apart, and schools that can't even keep the heat on.

Blue states are trying, sort of, to fix the problem.  But even people there are having to turn to the courts for relief.  The big difference there is Trump hasn't completely stacked the federal circuits in New England at the West Coast with conservatives.

Yet.