The School District of Philadelphia. School districts are semi-autonomous administrative units used by different states in the USA to run the public school system. School districts oversee the management of K-12 schools performing functions such as staff hiring, allocation of school funds for special programs and managing school resources. So, How Much Does The School District Of Philadelphia Spend Per Student.
The Amount of Money Allocated Per Student in the School District of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia City School District spends $12,421 per student each year from annual revenue of $3,568,713,000. Overall, the district spends $7,006 million on instruction, $1,199.0 million on support services, $1,565.0 million on administration and $2651.0 million on operations, food service and other expenses.
Basics About the School District of Philadelphia
The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) is one of the 579 school districts in Pennsylvania that range in size and consist of between 200 to 140,000 students each.
The SDP contains 224 schools and 130,617 students. Minority enrollment is 89.7%, and 75% of the student population is economically disadvantaged.
The school district of Philadelphia occupies the city of Philadelphia, whose population is of the low-income bracket. A huge percentage of these urban dwellers work minimum wage jobs, do not own property and live on state and federal subsidies.
Who does the funding for the school district of Philadelphia?
The Federal government, the state and the local authorities all contribute towards funding the school district of Philadelphia. However, more than half of the funds provided come from local authorities.
The Reason School Districts Are Funded.
Funding of school districts is used as a form of affirmative action to account for differences in demographics and local property wealth. The idea here is to provide equity in access to education across the whole student population in a given State.
Other reasons include the provision of a fund for students with disabilities, English language acquisition programs, and teacher training and quality improvement.
Challenges Facing the Funding of the School District of Philadelphia.
Inadequate funds caused a freeze in hiring new staff, ended school feeding programs and removed psycho-social programs such as counselling and crime prevention.
Asa result, there is an increased school dropout rate, a lower than the state average in test scores and significant dilapidation of academic and sports infrastructure.
What caused the funding difficulties?
It was caused by over-reliance on the tax revenue by Pennsylvania as a source of revenue to fund school districts.
Tax revenue allocation is done without considering the income disparities in different regions within Pennsylvania.
What was the public outcome of cuts in school district funding?
In mid-2013, the school district of Philadelphia announced that it was laying off approximately 4000 workers. The excuse given for this undertaking was that the SDP faced a huge budget deficit that required a significant reduction in the school district workforce. The scale of such drastic action was unprecedented, and there was a widespread public outcry. A few parents and employees went on hunger strike and demanded a reversal of that directive.
With the absence of adequate staff to look after the welfare of students at school, tragic events gradually unfolded. A case in point was when Laporshia Massey, 12, a student at Bryant Elementary School, became ill at school and died later that day. A Sixth-grader, Laporshia Massey died from asthma complications because there was no one to attend to her. On another occasion, a 7-year-old Philadelphia public school student died after falling ill at a school where no nurse was on duty.
Pennsylvania lawmakers got sued by school districts and parents who argued that the state of Pennsylvania contravened their constitutional rights by failing to provide fair and equitable access to school funding to all. The petitioners asked the court to declare the actions by the state legislators as wrong, unlawful and illegal. Nine years have passed since this lawsuit was filed and the courts are yet to deliver their ruling.
Conclusion – The Way Forward
There needs to be a structural change in how tax is collected and in the formula used to allocate funds to school districts in Pennsylvania.
The taxes levied on the property and income within the district cannot sustainably fund the education system. The average income falls far below the state’s average despite having one of the highest populations.
The new formula must consider income disparity levels and distribution of wealth across the state when deciding how much money to allocate per school district.
The state must also proactively allocate more funds to the school district of Philadelphia and other urban school districts where student populations require more assistance through an equalization fund.
High-income districts and wealthy suburban areas should not be completely cut off from funding but must be used as a benchmark to determine what level of investments are required in the poorer regions.
