Things Fall Apart. Will Public Education?

Image: kelifamily / Shutterstock. Article by Jess Gartner. Dec 22, 2020.

I have been worried about public education for a long time. As a teacher, the long nights and weekends I spent creating and customizing resources, along with the thousands of dollars I spent each year buying classroom supplies, copy paper, books, winter coats, and even food for my students eventually led me to turn my attention to school finance: Why were there never enough resources for my students? And why was it always on me and my overworked, underpaid colleagues to make up the vast difference?

My past eight years working in school finance have painted a more dismal picture: pension liabilities and rising benefit costs are crushing district operating budgets; enrollment declines and an increasingly fractured school landscape are chipping away at economies of scale that help districts thrive; operational technology is decades old, as are most funding formulas (which still prioritize equality over equity); and federal regulations for special-education services, special populations, assessment, reporting, nutrition and transportation have all increased without commensurate funding. […]

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