Milwalkee riots

[A Theist]

In the state that I live schools aren't solely funded through just property taxes. The state also kicks in a good portion of the funding, although not as much as is received through property tax levies, but still a good portion. The federal government also kicks in a little money as well. In our school district better than 75% of its funding expenditures go to salaries and benefits packages for district employees. The rest of the 25% goes to various other expenditures. Very little left over for text books, computers, and other learning materials for the students. A few years ago our state offered matching funds for each district that passed a bond issue, which goes to building new schools and for maintenance and upkeep of its buildings. We also had an incident a few years back where a large school district  falsified student records to get more funding from the state. Needless to say the district superintendent and other district officials lost their jobs. Also in our state, if a student leaves the public school system and goes to a charter or private school, the school district which the student lives in still gets the money from property taxes, only the state money follows the student. That means the district is getting money for a student that doesn't attend its schools. Funding variables for schools are different from state to state in this country.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to reply earlier to this post; I was on my phone and cannot really deal with complex posts in such a limited medium.

You're absolutely right that funding does vary by state, but the fact is that the Federal government contributes less than 10% of the money -- 7% is the number I see most often. At the state level, the money is usually derived from sales taxes, and the state's contribution comes to about 46% (on average) of any particular school's funding. The rest comes from the local district. So you're right that property taxes aren't the only source, but it seems apparent to me that when 47% of your funding is set to such a widely-ranging variable, you're going to get inequities in funding no matter what.

As for how your local district spends its money, that is something for you locals to address; that is exactly the rationale behind having education controlled on the local level. I trust you attend school-board meetings and have your input into the matter? And if not, I trust that you vote for these very important down-ballot elections?

Not knowing where you live, and you having not given any reading material for the other stuff, I can't really address your points about bonds or per-student payouts. Thanks, though, for coloring in greater detail than I provided.

I've been a regular at our district's school board meetings. A few years back I led a fairly successful campaign effort against our district's school levy proposal that was on the ballot. I did quite a bit of research on how our schools were funded and where the money actually went. State boards of education should have the stats on funding, student population, etc on their web sites. Also, district's administrators will also answer any questions you may have. The district that was defrauding our state of funds was the Columbus City Schools District. There was a big shake up over that one.