A new report that tries to identify inadequate school funding says two Georgia school districts -- Clayton and Newton counties -- are among the nation’s 47 most “fiscally disadvantaged.”
The report by the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and the Education Law Center argues that states should amend their funding formulas to account for concentrations of poverty and for the ability of communities to generate enough money for education.
Georgia made the list of 20 states with school districts that have relatively low funding when compared with poverty levels -- even though the report counts Georgia among states with a “more progressive” system of distributing school money. Several other “progressive” states, including Massachusetts, also appear on the list, but most districts on it are in states with funding distribution systems that the authors believe to be “highly regressive.”
The list was constructed by comparing per pupil state and local funding against the poverty rate based on federal data -- within each labor market. The intent is to identify districts with a disadvantage in their ability to offer competitive wages and comparable working conditions.
The authors note that individual district ratings are influenced by those of surrounding districts, so states where all districts are “comparably disadvantaged,” such as Alabama and Mississippi, are unlikely to appear on the list.
Newton Superintendent Samantha Fuhrey said through a spokeswoman that her district has endured a “drastic decrease” in state and local funding as poverty has increased.
Over the past 14 years, she said, Georgia has given the district $109 million less than the state funding formula says the district was due, money that she said could have paid for smaller class sizes and programs to increase student achievement. “We have embraced the mantra of ‘do more with less.’”
Both Newton and Clayton claim academic progress despite, as Clayton superintendent Luvenia Jackson put it, "the austere financial support.”
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