Lake Hefner, OKC ID’d by Kevin Berry.
I enjoy our morning paper for reasons that are too personal to elaborate and because I want to stay abreast of local news and events. I also enjoy the editorial page, including the letters, and the Ask Amy column, both of which take me out of my personal bubble and help me keep in touch with what others are thinking. Occasionally commentary on the editorial page inspires me to write a letter to the editor, but never before two in one week.
The first was School funding formula needs to let local cities contribute published October 8 which commented on the work of an interim legislative committee reviewing possible changes to Oklahoma’s state aid funding formula. Here’s the letter I sent that has not been printed:
The World’s praise for recommendations to improve our schools’ state aid funding formula is premature. Oklahoma Watch gave a good explanation of the formula and then summarized three proposed changes. Combining foundation and incentive aid makes sense if done correctly, but the proposals for increasing the low income weight and altering the funding for virtual schools need more explanation, especially funding virtual schools the same as traditional schools when they are not responsible for the safety and transportation of students.
The World then pivots to advocate for allowing “municipalities to add financial support to local schools without it impacting state aid” for which recent proposals would rely on options to increase local property taxes–nice if you live in Tulsa where it takes half the effort it would in Collinsville, or one-tenth the effort needed to do the same for students in Adair County. The World must value its Bixby and Jenks readers twice as much as those in Glenpool and Sand Springs or it would not continue to disparage Oklahoma’s state aid formula that is a good faith effort to assure that educational opportunity for children is not determined by the wealth of their communities.
The state aid formula is no “great mystery”; it can be understood with basic arithmetic and an hour’s concentration. With that understanding perhaps the World might advocate proposals that would empower all who want to improve education, not just those living in wealthy districts.
I’ve requested a copy of the final recommendations by the committee which had not been completed at the time of the editorial. When I see them I’ll have more to say so for now just a couple of quick comments. Recently I wrote a two-part explanation of basic Oklahoma school finance; Follow the Money–Step 2 is about the state aid formula. Combining the Foundation and Salary Incentive programs together is a good recommendation that will help simplify a process that the good editors of the World find “a great mystery”. Hopefully the recommendation will get the math correct.
The second mentioned change, increasing the Economically Disadvantaged pupil weight from 0.25 to 0.5, deserves scrutiny for two reasons. First, is there evidence that low income students require 50% more to be educated successfully rather than the current 25% enhancement, or is the recommendation primarily the result of effective advocacy by school districts that will receive more funding if the change is made? Second, how the number of Economically Disadvantaged students is measured needs to be explained and transparent. The current standard is qualification for a free or reduced price lunch under the federal school lunch program. But new programs that allow districts to provide free lunches for all students may have altered the accuracy and fairness of this as a marker for Economically Disadvantaged. The committee report should clarify this.
The third mentioned change, equalizing funding for virtual charter schools with traditional brick and mortar schools, needs special scrutiny. Much of the general fund revenue that is to be equal for traditional and virtual schools is used by the traditional schools to provide a safe, suitable place (brick and mortar) where children, many of whom are also transported with this funding, can be supervised by responsible adults while their parents are gainfully employed. Virtual schools do none of this. Hopefully they provide an educational service that is comparable to traditional schools (I’m not holding my breath), but they don’t transport children or keep them physically safe while their parents are working. Call it babysitting or child care or school, but the reality is traditional schools provide more than just an education service for children and families. Why is the cost of the bundle of services provided by a traditional school the measure of what a virtual school should be paid? Seems like taxpayers would be better served if virtual providers were required to submit bids, including price, before being chosen.
The rest of my letter is once more taking the World editorial board to task for its advocacy of allowing municipalities to raise taxes, presumably property taxes, for local schools. I addressed this more at length in Cockamamie and will continue to call them out until they acknowledge that using local property taxes, without something like a state aid formula to balance wealthy and poor districts, is simply a huge step backwards in our obligation as Oklahomans to see that all children are educated. Legislation that makes it easy for wealthy districts to increase their funding without providing a similar opportunity for poor districts is not good public policy.
Oklahoma’s state aid formula is complicated when you get into the weeds, though it is much less complex than other states have, like Texas. But its purpose and basic structure is not “cockamamie” or a “great mystery”. Our state constitution sets forth our collective obligation to educate ALL of Oklahoma’s children. Our legislature has determined that “State support should, to assure equal educational opportunity, provide for as large a measure of equalization as possible among districts. The taxing power of the state should be utilized to raise the level of educational opportunity in the financially weakest districts of the state.”
The local funding that is provided to local school districts by our constitution is property taxes and the amounts that individual districts can raise per student vary wildly depending on the property valuation within each district. So the state aid formula simply provides that the more a district can fund per student with local revenues, the less it will receive per student from state aid, and the less a district can fund per student with local revenues, the more it will receive per student from state aid, so that each district will have approximately the same revenue per student to provide for their education. The math involved is simple arithmetic; the principle of equal opportunity for all children is pretty American. There is nothing cockamamie or mysterious about either.
By all means, Tulsa World, advocate for the ability of local citizens to do more than the state is willing to do, but do so in a way that does not blatantly favor children living in districts with great property tax wealth over those not as fortunate.
Next time I’ll post my second letter; in the meantime lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location.