Schools receive funding for students according to the number of students attending the school. How can this discriminate against rural areas and the poor?
Past School Population vs. Today’s Shrinking Student Numbers
In rural areas throughout the U.S., schools are shrinking because families are smaller and farms are larger. When farmers owned a 120-acre farm and had eight children, each section (640 acres) of land had its own one room schoolhouse. Each square mile of land could easily yield 30-40 children to attend the one room schoolhouse. The farm family raised chickens, cattle, hogs, milk cows, a large garden and the farmers were self-sufficient earning a fairly good living.
Today, farm families are not having eight children but only two or three. And, the average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 55 years of age. It is not uncommon for one farmer to now farm 4,000 acres, which equals more than six sections of land. In the past, those same 4,000 acres could have yielded over 200 students. That 200 has shrunk to three with a few children living in homes still left standing.
Rural Schools Struggle to Provide an Education
To compensate for this situation, rural schools frequently restructure by combining with neighboring school districts. Each time this happens, it upsets the community that loses a school building or its identity. Combining two schools into one usually results in educators losing their jobs, costly building editions and longer bus routes.
The larger the area a school district becomes, the farther the buses must travel and the longer students must sit on buses to get to school and back home. With rising fuel costs, the budgets are stretched to the last cent to heat schools and fuel buses. In a harsh winter, schools are forced for borrow money to pay heating bills. This has forced some districts in desolate areas to hold school only four days a week to cut expenses.
School funding in many states is based on the tax evaluations of property within the district. In isolated areas, the only businesses may be the local farmers and an occasional gas station. In spite of these circumstances, schools are expected to balance the budget with per pupil costs given to them.
Better Neighborhoods Receive Better Funding
If a student lives in an area with a growing and not a shrinking population, the school receives more money per student because the tax evaluations are higher. The difference could be between $5,200 to $12,000 per student. Of course, the students in the school receiving $12,000 per pupil would have air-conditioning, newer buildings, state of the art computers, most current textbooks, more course offerings, top band equipment, and college credit opportunities.
Students living in the more desolate areas of the nation or poor neighborhoods would not be able to fund these same opportunities. The inequities may even be seen in the same city if one school is located in an economically disadvantaged area and another school is located in an upscale neighborhood.
Change School Funding Formulas
Many states offer open enrollment where parents may choose to have their child attend a better school if they wish to cross school district lines. However, the transportation is the responsibility of the parents that often can not afford the transportation costs or the time off work to transport the children. That gives the illusion of giving a choice but in reality there is no choice.
If all children received the same amount of funding for education, smaller schools would be able to offer more to students. However, legislators make these decisions. Rural areas have less influence when it comes to voting for these funding changes. More densely populated areas have stronger voting power.
If rural areas receive $5,500 per child but a densely populated city receives $11,000 per student, the average could be $8,250. This average would be of great benefit for the rural district but a higher income area would never want to have the budget cut by nearly $3,000 per student.
Should All Students Have Equal Funding?
The present situation will force more consolidations of small rural schools, which results in more businesses closing doors, and rural areas becoming more desolate. Surely, there can be a solution to this funding madness.
Ironically, many small rural schools have exceptionally high proficiency scores monitored by No Child Left Behind. The larger cities tend to have higher dropout rates and lower scores. What will happen to state proficiency scores if more and more rural schools close?
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