An extra penny for schools on the county sales tax rate has built more than three dozen new Fulton County school buildings in the past 20 years.
But not everyone has reaped the benefits of a new school from the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax.
More than half of the new SPLOST-funded schools built in Fulton opened their doors to students that were mostly affluent, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution data analysis showed.
Fulton school officials say they don’t take socio-economic factors or race into consideration in deciding who gets a new school. For the past several years, the school board has used an outside consultant to provide an objective voice on what schools and areas have the greatest needs for SPLOST funds.
The percentage of children in Fulton schools who are poor has risen over the lifespan of the SPLOST program — from about one child in three in 1997 to nearly every other child today.
Meanwhile, population growth in certain parts of north and south Fulton has been a significant factor in where new schools are placed. Nearly three-fourths of the new SPLOST schools in Fulton were built inside or within a mile of a census tract where the population grew by 25 percent or more between 2000 and 2010, the AJC found.
Read more about how E-SPLOST funding is doled out, see a map of the locations of SPLOST-funded schools and check out interactive graphics with lots of other information onMyAJC.com.
To learn more about how E-SPLOST funding is doled out, check out MyAjc.com.
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