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Inequity in school funding

“Nationally, high-poverty districts spend 15.6 percent less per student than low-poverty districts do,” says the U.S. Department of Education. This is unjust to the children in these high poverty school districts.

Whether or not a parent is making large amounts of money, the child should not have to suffer through an underfunded school district because of it. The structures in the funding systems are the main issue. Most of it is based on the average income in the surrounding neighborhood. Recently, there have been newer ideas to fix this issue of unequal funding.

Decentralization is a new idea among school systems that involves delegating certain accounting jobs and funding issues to the individual school districts. This is a big step, instead of a few people deciding a broad funding structure, there can be a specific structure to form to the needs of each school. However, this is a problem that needs to be heard more and solved rapidly.

Jim Orchard

Cheney

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