3 ms·

I don't know, how would that play out with school districts?

davidw 4y ago
Where there's demand: build more schools. Where demand falls: decommission or repurpose the schools.
ryukafalz 4y ago
Aren't school districts mostly funded by local tax revenue and by states proportionally to the number of students? More residents (and thus more students) means more funding to work with. They probably would need to expand, though.
- ghaff 4y ago
  > More residents (and thus more students) means more funding to work with. Except in my town, as is fairly common, an incremental student costs more than the contribution from local property taxes and the state. So the fairly rural town of about 7,000 generally resists any plans that would markedly increase the number of students in the town.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    How are you sure they're trying to keep out students and not keep out something else, or trying to pump up something (their home prices on leverage)?
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Because I've heard the discussions at town hall and seen the actual figures. In fact that was just a very contentious vote to rezone some residential land for light industry (like distribution centers) primarily for the financial reasons.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    Is the difference made up by federal funding now then? (I don't know as much about federal school funding but it doesn't seem to scale by the number of students.)
    - ghaff 4y ago
      No. They have to balance the budget which may mean taking money from other things like public services. (Although something like 60% of property taxes already goes to schools.) And, if they can't make that work, there will need to be a vote to raise property taxes.
      - olddustytrail 4y ago
        How does that work? If we fix the school budget as it is, then obviously if you only have one student and one family there's not enough money to run it. So presumably adding more students and families is what makes it affordable. Why does that stop? What's the inflexion point?
        ghaff 4y ago
        You have costs that are fixed in the short run and you have variable costs and costs in between--e.g. you can tweak up class sizes for a while. You can also increase fees, etc. The town hasn't had particularly rapid growth but one of the driving factors behind the rezoning the town just voted on is that there's a new regional high school being built and the town has to chip in a bunch of money for that. It's not that a few students more or less is an issue but if there were a big new development with a lot of families with school-age children that would likely be a problem for the town.

Where there's demand: build more schools. Where demand falls: decommission or repurpose the schools.

Aren't school districts mostly funded by local tax revenue and by states proportionally to the number of students? More residents (and thus more students) means more funding to work with. They probably would need to expand, though.

ghaff 4y ago
> More residents (and thus more students) means more funding to work with. Except in my town, as is fairly common, an incremental student costs more than the contribution from local property taxes and the state. So the fairly rural town of about 7,000 generally resists any plans that would markedly increase the number of students in the town.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  How are you sure they're trying to keep out students and not keep out something else, or trying to pump up something (their home prices on leverage)?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Because I've heard the discussions at town hall and seen the actual figures. In fact that was just a very contentious vote to rezone some residential land for light industry (like distribution centers) primarily for the financial reasons.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Is the difference made up by federal funding now then? (I don't know as much about federal school funding but it doesn't seem to scale by the number of students.)
  - ghaff 4y ago
    No. They have to balance the budget which may mean taking money from other things like public services. (Although something like 60% of property taxes already goes to schools.) And, if they can't make that work, there will need to be a vote to raise property taxes.
    - olddustytrail 4y ago
      How does that work? If we fix the school budget as it is, then obviously if you only have one student and one family there's not enough money to run it. So presumably adding more students and families is what makes it affordable. Why does that stop? What's the inflexion point?
      - ghaff 4y ago
        You have costs that are fixed in the short run and you have variable costs and costs in between--e.g. you can tweak up class sizes for a while. You can also increase fees, etc. The town hasn't had particularly rapid growth but one of the driving factors behind the rezoning the town just voted on is that there's a new regional high school being built and the town has to chip in a bunch of money for that. It's not that a few students more or less is an issue but if there were a big new development with a lot of families with school-age children that would likely be a problem for the town.