Friday
August 22, 2008
by desertjim
In 1991, Jonathan Kozol published Savage Inequalities decrying the horrible inequities in school funding between rich suburban school districts and poorer urban and rural districts. Lucy Klocksin addressed the issue in her post on TEN last month. Seventeen years after Kozol’s book, the issue has reached the boiling point in Illinois.
State Senator James Meeks (Chicago-Democrat) has been urging students in his district to skip the first day of school in protest to the unequal funding. Meeks even suggests the Chicago students use the time to apply for admission at New Trier High School in Winnetka. He points out that this year, Chicago schools will spend $10,409 on each child, while New Trier will have $16,856 available for each student. Despite some local support for the boycott, Mayor Daley and the Baptist Ministers Conference of Chicago and Vicinity want students to attend school starting the first day of class (September 2, this year) and not waste a day of their education.
A different approach to the problem has been put forward by the Chicago Urban League. The League is suing the State of Illinois to force the state to alter the education funding system.Currently, Illinois ranks 49th of the 50 states in the state-contributed portion of school funding. 62% of school funding in Illinois comes from local sources. (Nationally the rate is 50%). Affluent communities can fund their schools much more easily than poor ones. The per-pupil funding ranges from $23,000 down to districts that can only afford $6,000.
The Urban League suit argues that, “The disparities in funding discriminate against black and Hispanic children. Schools in poorer minority communities - such as Chicago - receive funding at a dramatically lower rate than affluent white scool districts”
Inequities in school funding are not limited to Illinois (although the ranking as 49th out of 50 should wake up some state legislators). It is long past time that we seriously consider what is best for our children, and whose responsibility it is to pay for public education.
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