DRAWING THE LINE: EdBuild is a nonprofit organization that wants to overhaul the way local schools are funded.
Watchdog.org recently interviewed Zahava Stadler, manager of policy and research at EdBuild, a New Jersey-based nonprofit organization that says it is working to address what it calls antiquated funding formulas for schools across the country.
Stadler explains how she and her small team of colleagues want to shed light on disparities that trap students in under-performing schools while just down the street there are well-resourced and well-functioning districts.
Q: When and why was EdBuild founded? What are you hoping to accomplish and what do you do other groups do not? How large is your staff?
A: EdBuild was founded in 2014 to bring common sense and fairness to the way we fund schools in America. EdBuild works directly with stakeholders in states across the country to modernize school funding systems and seeks to raise national awareness related to the current problems with the current state of education funding though research. The education reform conversation hasn’t emphasized or addressed school finance inequity enough, and we want to change that. We are a team of eight people.
Q: In your most recent report, Fault Lines, you examine how some school districts can be well-funded and functional while nearby districts can be without resources and proper funding. How and why does this happen? What are the most egregious examples?
A: Because we use locally raised, locally governed property taxes as the basis for education funding, school budgets are inexorably tied to neighborhood wealth. When districts raise local property tax revenue, that money almost always stays in the school district where it was collected instead of being pooled more broadly. The connection between property values and school budgets creates a vicious cycle in which wealthy communities get well-funded schools, families with means leave underfunded school districts for better-resourced neighborhoods, and poor communities become poorer, which often further impoverishes their school districts’ tax bases. The result is a downward spiral of school funding inequity.
One particularly egregious example is Birmingham City School District and its neighboring districts in Alabama. The border between Birmingham and Vestavia Hills City School District is the second-most segregating in the country and marks a massive 42 percentage point gap in school-age poverty rates (48.5 percent versus 6.2 percent). Despite having students with much greater needs, Birmingham has $1,480 less in state and local funding to spend per pupil. The disparity in resources between Birmingham and Mountain Brook City School District is even worse. Though students in Mountain Brook are almost as well-off as those in Vestavia Hills, the district has much more money per pupil than Birmingham does: $3,444 more in state and local funding. That’s almost 40 percent more money than Birmingham has to spend per student.
Q: What do you hope readers of the coverage you’ve received on Fault Lines will take away from the report?
A: Borders between school districts have great power to separate students from resources and opportunity. Because our laws automatically defer to school district boundaries, no matter how arbitrarily or even harmfully they are drawn, when a district becomes overwhelmingly poor or wealthy, little can be done to integrate it. The economic segregation created by school district borders seals students into school systems, whether they are well-funded or struggling, creating radical inequality in a system that should be our gateway to opportunity.
Q: How and who can solve the problems identified in Fault Lines?
A: We hope that state policymakers will think hard about the injustices we’ve cataloged in this report and consider measures that could help share resources across district lines. These could include pooling tax revenues at the state or county level, more aggressively equalizing budgets with extra state funding for struggling districts, or redrawing boundaries to create more integrated, equitably funded school systems.
Q: Rather than redrawing boundaries, why not just eliminate them and let parents and students choose the school that best fits their needs?
A: All students should have the opportunity to attend a well-resourced and high-achieving school of their choice. Charter schools can provide this option, but they still have to operate within the financial limits of the surrounding school district. Segregating school borders have an impact on the resources available for students in all types of public schools.