Revenue from an extra penny for schools on the county sales tax rate has built a score of new school buildings in the Atlanta Public Schools in the past 20 years.
Less than a quarter of the new APS schools built by the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax opened their doors to students who were mostly affluent, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution data analysis showed.
But not everyone in metro school districts has reaped the benefits of a new school from the E-SPLOST funds, the AJC found. The majority of E-SPLOST funded schools built by three of the largest districts served more affluent student bodies.
The percentage of children in APS who are poor has risen over the lifespan of the SPLOST program — from nearly two out of three in 1997 to three children out of four today.
Meanwhile, population growth has been a significant factor in where new schools are placed. Nearly two-thirds of the new SPLOST schools in APS were built inside or within a mile of a census tract where the population grew by 25 percent or more between the 2000 and 2010 Censuses, the AJC found.
To learn more about how E-SPLOST funding is doled out, see our interactive map of SPLOST-funded schools and check out MyAJC.com.
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