How can different school districts spend such different amounts of money per student when LCFF funding from the state of California is the same for each student, with supplemental money that goes largely to poorer districts? Last spring I looked at parcel taxes, which mostly benefit wealthier districts and at the same time reinforce inequality within districts. Some districts, almost all urban, spend a greater percentage on administration, reducing what’s available to spend on actual education for student.  Funding for school bonds is unequal.

But the most  outrageous funding inequalities between districts (see Palo Alto in Is School Funding Equal?) are seen in the Basic Aid districts. When the California Supreme Court in 1971 decided that school funding based entirely on property taxes was so unequal that it violated the California constitution the state had to come up with a different system for funding schools. The result was a system in which the state got all local property taxes and then distributed them, along with money from the state general fund, and then allocated them more equally. At first this was based on ‘restricted’ state funding for many different different aspects of education and more recently based on ‘unrestricted’ LCFF  funding.  But when the original state funding plan was developed the richest (and therefore politically influential) communities objected to the resulting reduced funding for their districts.  The result was Basic Aid.  Under Basic Aid, districts whose property taxes exceeded the proposed state funding were allowed to keep all of their property taxes to fund their schools, recieving only some categorical ‘basic aid’ from the state.  Thus the wealthiest school districts were allowed  to have more school funding per student than other districts.  

Currently only about 3% of school districts are Basic Aid— but they create the most unequal school funding in the state. These Basic Aid districts are mainly in three areas: areas with very high property values like Silicon Valley (in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties) and wealthy southern California coastal enclaves (mostly in Orange County) and in areas with very few students per capita (the Eastern Sierra in Mono and Inyo counties). Many of the districts in the first two also have large parcel taxes so that Palo Alto, with both ‘extra’ funding sources can spend more than twice what Oakland or Richmond can for each student, while the state trumpets its “equal school funding”. Equal— except for the rich.

David  de Leeuw, OEA retired

Also see the article on funding per pupil just before this and on parcel taxes in #15

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