In schools, as in life, the rich get richer

Editorial by The Fayetteville Observer, January 9, 2018

As lawmakers return to Raleigh today amid calls for better education funding, a new study reveals growing disparities in the way the state’s richest and poorest counties fund their school systems.

In a nutshell, it’s a familiar theme: The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. According to the study, in this region, many of us are educational poor folk.

The study was released Tuesday by the Public School Forum of North Carolina. It found “a chronic and growing gap in public school funding between the highest and lowest-wealth counties in the state.” What the study measured was the contributions to local education by county school systems — especially salary supplements for teachers. “Our poorest counties continue to fall further behind our wealthier counties in terms of resources available to their local schools,” Public School Forum President Keith Poston said. “Young people born into one of the state’s economically thriving counties, typically the more urban centers, have levels of investment in their education not shared elsewhere in the state, especially our rural counties.”

No need to start at the top looking for schools in this region. By most of the measures used in the study, our school systems are in the bottom half of the state’s 100 counties. Two — Hoke and Robeson — are by just about every measure at the bottom of the state’s school systems in local contributions. They were among the counties that filed suit in the original “Leandro” case over school funding. The state Supreme Court ruled in 1997 in that case that the state wasn’t meeting its constitutional requirement to provide a “sound basic education” to every one of the state’s children. Yet despite more than 20 years of efforts to reform state education funding, the poor counties continue to fall behind the rich ones.

It’s not that any county wants to shortchange its kids. The leaders of all our school systems know that the best chance we have for a vibrant statewide economy — and for lifting our poorest children out of deep poverty — is education. But there are massive disparities in our counties’ wealth. The urban school systems in our wealthiest metro areas are the ones that have the greatest ability to supplement school budgets. With booming economies, high residential property values and deep industrial tax bases, places like Wake, Durham, Orange and Mecklenburg counties can afford to reach for excellence. Counties like Hoke and Robeson, with marginal agricultural economies and failed industries, struggle just to keep the school doors open. As the report notes, “the ten counties that spend the most per student would spend, on average, $62,054 per classroom. By contrast, the ten counties that spend the least per child would spend, on average, $14,778 per classroom — a difference of $47,276 per classroom.”

The Leandro case should have been the route to change. But lawmakers at that time, just as today, have shied away from the kind of revamping of school funding that’s needed to create a level playing field. Ironically, North Carolina is better situated than most to shake up its funding formulas, because it’s one of the few states that provide a majority of school funding. In many other states, school budgets are a local issue and state funding is considerably less significant.

And yet, despite state leaders’ repeated vows to find the cures for our extensive rural poverty — helping small towns and rural communities and are still awaiting the end of the recession — there’s been little change in school funding, which may be the most effective way to lift those beleaguered counties.

We don’t expect to see any viable solutions coming from the brief legislative session that begins today, but surely there’s time to create a legislative task force to begin finding better funding formulas. Our kids — all of them, in every county — deserve a better chance at success in life.

http://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20180109/our-view-in-schools-as-in-life-rich-get-richer