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Money For Schools That Need It
October 12th, 2007

In an attempt to distribute funding to schools more equitably, Mayor Michael Bloomberg began allocating funds this year under a new needs based approach called Fair Student Funding. And as an example of why this was needed, a report released this week by the Independent Budget Office showed just how vast the disparity in funds between schools was.

The difference in 2005 classroom spending per pupil at its most extreme, according to the report, differed by a striking $6,000 per student, with a low of $2,511 to a high of $8,569. (The average classroom spending per student was $4,642 and the difference between schools in the middle range of funding stayed within $1,420.) Furthermore, the IBO found any evidence that the distribution of funds in 2005 was based on need to be very weak at best.

Opposition to this new methodology had led the mayor to phase the process in over two years. This year, no schools will lose funds, and caps are placed on schools gaining funds. Many were worried that schools with high teacher salary averages would no longer be able to afford their staff.

But the IBO report showed that the number of students per teacher accounted for the biggest discrepancy between schools. The more students per teacher, the less spending per student. Teacher salaries did indeed play a role in explaining differences from school to school, but it wasn’t nearly as important as the number of students per teacher.

The way money was spent on individual schools was largely a hold over from when the city would distribute funds to the school districts, who would then spread the funds amongst the schools within their districts as they saw fit. While the mayor tried to change that in 2003, and distribute funds to individual schools, he backed off that proposal and largely continued distributing funds to districts until now. (With new funding from the state as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, he now has more money to spread around.)

Another report published this month, this one in the Economics of Education Review, also argued that spending by district is not an efficient way to distribute resources. The study - by three professors from New York University and one from Syracuse University - found serious discrepancies in spending within school districts in New York City and other large cities.

While the new school budget represents the beginning of more equitable system, it also serves as a window into how far the city needs to go. This year, the city spent more money to keep spending from dropping at schools that were over-funded than it did to raise spending at under-funded schools.

By Mike Muller on October 12, 2007, 4:06 am
In category: Education, Finance
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