According to the Boston Globe in a speech before the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, Governor Deval Patrick: ..issued some of his most pointed comments to date, saying the state can no longer afford to rely on the local property tax to fund public education.
“It seems to me the time is at hand, and the appetite is right among you and the folks you represent and so many others, to get back to basics and figure out how to do this right,” Patrick said. “The property tax is not working.”
The Globe story also reported:
Under the existing system, school districts are financed with a combination of local property taxes and state aid, which is distributed by a highly complex formula that has long been subject to legislative tussles over how much different communities receive… currently, the state covers less than 40 percent of the cost of local education, with cities and towns picking up the rest through the property tax. While it is a stable source of revenue, it places a sometimes difficult burden on the elderly or people with fixed incomes, and some argue it increases the disparity between communities based on personal income and property value.
What the Globe story did not report is that the “highly complex formula” is also highly re-distributive. It channels state education funding towards poorer communities and away from wealthier ones. State aid provides 40% of education funding statewide, but it provides over 80% of the school budget for the poorest cities, but less than 20% for the wealthiest towns (click the chart above).
The chart above shows the 10 lowest and 10 highest districts in terms of the percentage of state aid in their target budgets. There are many other (generally wealthier) towns also operating at the same 82.5% fraction of local school funding.
The formula is based on both the total assessed value of property in each district and the total personal income in each district. These are factored into a “local contribution” that is limited to a maximum of 82.5% (click the picture below).
The details of these calculations are online in a spreadsheet maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Education. See this page and the item entitled “Complete formula spreadsheet.”
Though the Globe is correct to say that the formula is complex, the formula is essentially a re-distribution of educational funding. Failure to report this fundamental aspect of state aid for education is either negligent or distorted reporting.
The Governor claimed that “the property tax is not working”. But the property tax represents only 20 cents out of every dollar spent on schools in
In general wealthier communities, rather than poor ones, are the ones who now rely more on the local property tax to fund their schools.
4 comments:
For better or worse, good or bad, here in New Hampshire we have a high property tax but we also have the clarity of knowing that our tax dollars are staying within our town. Some might see that as being selfish, and some others might wonder how much of a gap there is between the 'wealthy' towns and those not-so-wealthy. But looked at another way, one would EXPECT that the 'Robin Hood' approach that Liberals and Socialists so love--the Massachusetts model--would yield marvelous schools in places like Lawrence, Lowell, Holyoke, Worcester, and New Bedford. Isn't that the whole idea? In the end, our 'low end' schools in NH are no worse than the 'low end' schools in Massachusetts. So the 're-distribution' approach doesn't yield appreciably better results, although pundits would like to suggest otherwise.
By target local share, the local tax burden is a flat tax. That is to say, the goal of target share reform (which is nowhere near complete) is to have each city and town taxed at the same rate on their aggregate wealth, in property and income.
The notion that every child in every city and town should receive the same educational opportunities is redistributive. But it is also a largely decided question, both in Massachusetts and in the nation at large.
Currently in Mass, lots of comparable cities and towns get very different levels of support from the state. The graph in that article - showing target local share - does not come close to representing the actual distribution of burdens and aid allocations across the state. Some locales are required to pay up to 59% above their target. Others receive considerably more state aid than their target.
Target local share will hypothetically be achieved four years from now - and at that point, the property tax burden for schools will be equitably distributed across the state.
I was not arguing that state aid should not be redistributive. I was pointing out that it is misleading or deceptive to write a front page newspaper story about state aid without mentioning it, and instead noting only the average 40% fraction of state aid.
I will happily recreate a chart with the accurate distributions if Massparent will point me to the location of this data within the spreadsheet.
The state doesn't give you a convenient table showing actual contributions as a fraction of target share or as a fraction of foundation.
You can calculate it by dividing the "required contribution FY08" (row V of townwide contributions) by the "foundation budget" (row H).
I think that's the same plot as the percentage figures you did show in the chart, substituting actual required spending for target share spending.
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