Commentary; Posted: 1/21/04

Time to change school funding ways

Don Mitchell
Guest Columnist

Itís time for a change. Minnesotaís school funding system is far too complicated, and patently unfair.

I can name a dozen people from the Forest Lake School District who sacrificed their family lives to work evenings and weekends on the issue of disparate school opportunities for children. For some it meant strenuous, often thankless committee or school board service.

For others it was an overload of PTA fund raising, or leadership in community-wide campaigns for better facilities or programs in the schools. In every case it was time away from our primary ëjobíóas parents.

I do not believe it would have been necessary, had the Legislature attended to its responsibility for fairness and adequacy in funding. In all the testimony before the Task Force, has anyone reminded the group of this clear and controlling requirement?

Article 8, Section 1 of the Minnesota Constitution:

UNIFORM SYSTEM OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.

Imagine yourself a school board member or school administrator, in casual conversation with a district resident who has asked an innocent question about funding.

Earnestly, you wade into ìTotal PK-12 Operating Expenditures, Excluding Capital Expenditures, per Average Daily Membership Served.î

The citizenís eyes glaze over.

In another moment you have lost her, and with a polite good-bye she leaves youóno doubt wondering if you lost your sanity when you gained your office.

The funding discussion resorts to such complicated semantics because it has toóit is difficult (perhaps impossible) to fairly compare educational resources and expenditures from district to district. Yet we need to make such comparisons, both because the stateís constitution requires uniformity, and because all Minnesota kids deserve fair access to the opportunities education provides.

In the complexity of a statistic like ìTotal PK-12 Operating Expenditures, Excluding Capital Expenditures, per Average Daily Membership Served,î we lose sight of some very important, simple details. This is per-pupil expenditure per-yearóa useful yardstick.

If you quickly glance at this column in the tables provided on the State Department of Education website, you see surprising differences across districts.

Set aside the most glaring discrepanciesóthe urban districts, the Native American reservation districts, and the wealthiest suburban districts, where special factors come into play and severely skew the numbers (rightly or wronglyóthat is not my issue).

But because of its scale, a relatively small difference in this column of data, from one ordinary district to another, makes a huge difference in the lives of our children. Here is why:

The school experience for most kids is not individualóit is a classroom environment shared with 25 (or recently, 35 or even more) other students.

Thus when Fridleyís expenditure is $7779 per pupil and Forest Lakeís is $6615, in two classrooms of 25 students each, Fridleyís funding is $194,475, and Forest Lakeís is $165,375. (Remember, this is teacher, bus driver, share-of-principal, share-of-counselor, share-of-superintendent, materials, heating, lighting, school bus, and all other overhead.)

Can anyone imagine a difference of $29,100 would not create obvious disparities in the classroom experiences of these 50 children?

Further, per pupil expenditure is an annual statistic. A studentís career with a district, however, is 13 years long.

At graduation, the difference in investment between the 25 Fridley kids and the 25 Forest Lake kids is $378,300.

Can anyone imagine these kids have had equivalent (or, in the wording of the state constitution, ëuniformí) educational opportunities?

Please do not suggest that Forest Lake make up this difference by putting 30 students in a classroom to Fridleyís 25óremember, we are looking for fairness and uniformity.

In this comparison I arbitrarily used two typical and reasonably comparable districts. I could have made the numbers far more dramatic with other choices.

My point, however, is that even among comparable districts, slight discrepancies in per-pupil-per-year amounts make huge differences in the school lives of Minnesotaís children.

Based on many years of chasing these issues in discussions with legislators, education professionals, and typical citizens, I have these suggestions for reform:

1. Simplify the formula. All the exceptions and adjustments were probably well-intentioned, and were done in the name of fairness.

The results, however, are gross inequities, most of them more dramatic than the example I have provided.

Worse, the result is a loss of credibility for the entire funding process.

2. Make it both adequate and equitable. Take the influence of local property-wealth out of it. Make sure the basic per-pupil allotment represents what we as a state want our investment in children to be.

Let wealthy districts add on if they will, but make sure there is guaranteed support for academic excellence in the poorest district in the state.

In a property-poor district under the present system, the homeowner tax effort required to achieve equity is far beyond reach.

3. Remember that education is a state responsibilityónot a district responsibility. Please do not perpetuate a process that makes time-starved parents and activist volunteers try (often in vain) to compensate for the inadequacies of legislative oversight.

Writer Don Mitchell lives in Scandia and is a former school board member in ISD 831. The letter was submitted by the writer to the Governorís Task Force on School Finance Reform.

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