5 ms·

As a Canadian, I'm not entirely familiar with your education system. That being said, wouldn't schools receive funding based (at least in part) on the number of

by Permit 15y ago

As a Canadian, I'm not entirely familiar with your education system. That being said, wouldn't schools receive funding based (at least in part) on the number of children enrolled at them? I would have thought that would have made more sense than taking a percentage out of the incomes of the residents in a community and funneling that to the school. The point I'm getting at is Ms. Williams-Bolar pays taxes. If schools receive funding based on enrollment, then her money essentially went to that school regardless.

bd_at_rivenhill 15y ago
Doesn't work that way; property taxes in the geographic region of the school district go to fund the schools in that district and nowhere else (if you ignore the effects of equalization lawsuits). If someone living in a low-tax district puts their child in a school in a high-tax district, they are free-riding. The case in Connecticut involves a mother from Bridgeport, which is a poor area, putting her daughter in school in Norwalk, which is much wealthier.
- aik 15y ago
  In my moms school district it's even worse. If a person from a district attends school in a district that isn't in their district, the school they attend receives no funding for that particular person. Generally schools are funded to a degree by attendance, and kids from other districts are excluded... so that's why the districts are so particular about where the kid comes from.
bzbarsky 15y ago
School funding setups differ wildly in the US. There's a mix of local funding, typically from property taxes (which is independent of number of students enrolled), state funding from state general revenue, and sometimes federal funding. In some school districts, specific school levies may also be passed as sales or property taxes; these may be time-limited to pay for infrastructure or ongoing. The mix of all of the above varies from state to state and school district to school district. The real estate tax funding takes a percentage of the home values of the residents in a community, not a percentage of the incomes, of course. That said, the percentage is typically not fixed. Furthermore, the state funding formulas differ from state to state and are not time-invariant. They do tend to depend on number of student, but not necessarily kind of student (e.g. students in special education programs may or may not get more funding). Note that "depend" doesn't mean "determined by"; in Massachusetts, for example, state funding per student depends on how much money the school district is putting in from its real estate tax base and on the per-student spending in the district; the formula is somewhat complicated but the upshot is that the richer districts get _more_ per-student state funding. Yes, this is way backwards, and isn't even the most screwed up thing about school funding in this country... In any case, in many school districts the bulk of school funding in fact comes from property taxes on the residents of the school district. That's the whole issue in this case: Ms. Williams-Bolar was not in fact paying property taxes in the district in question.

by Permit 15y ago

bd_at_rivenhill 15y ago

Doesn't work that way; property taxes in the geographic region of the school district go to fund the schools in that district and nowhere else (if you ignore the effects of equalization lawsuits). If someone living in a low-tax district puts their child in a school in a high-tax district, they are free-riding. The case in Connecticut involves a mother from Bridgeport, which is a poor area, putting her daughter in school in Norwalk, which is much wealthier.

aik 15y ago
In my moms school district it's even worse. If a person from a district attends school in a district that isn't in their district, the school they attend receives no funding for that particular person. Generally schools are funded to a degree by attendance, and kids from other districts are excluded... so that's why the districts are so particular about where the kid comes from.

bzbarsky 15y ago

School funding setups differ wildly in the US. There's a mix of local funding, typically from property taxes (which is independent of number of students enrolled), state funding from state general revenue, and sometimes federal funding. In some school districts, specific school levies may also be passed as sales or property taxes; these may be time-limited to pay for infrastructure or ongoing. The mix of all of the above varies from state to state and school district to school district. The real estate tax funding takes a percentage of the home values of the residents in a community, not a percentage of the incomes, of course. That said, the percentage is typically not fixed. Furthermore, the state funding formulas differ from state to state and are not time-invariant. They do tend to depend on number of student, but not necessarily kind of student (e.g. students in special education programs may or may not get more funding). Note that "depend" doesn't mean "determined by"; in Massachusetts, for example, state funding per student depends on how much money the school district is putting in from its real estate tax base and on the per-student spending in the district; the formula is somewhat complicated but the upshot is that the richer districts get _more_ per-student state funding. Yes, this is way backwards, and isn't even the most screwed up thing about school funding in this country... In any case, in many school districts the bulk of school funding in fact comes from property taxes on the residents of the school district. That's the whole issue in this case: Ms. Williams-Bolar was not in fact paying property taxes in the district in question.