Opinion
TIMES EDITORIAL: Are students in city worth more than in county?
As the debate over local school taxes flared up again this past week, we were struck by one fact on which the entire issue hinges.
There’s a huge equity gap between city and county students, as the county educators who are pushing for a new tax so frequently point out. If your child is in the Cullman City Schools, they get $1,550 in local funding. But if they attend the Cullman County Schools, they only get $550 — about one-third the amount spent on their counterparts in the City of Cullman.
How could this happen?
Now, this gap alone doesn’t mean the county should automatically pass the new tax. There are other things to consider, like the effect of an increased tax burden on an already overstressed economy and whether the schools have a bloated budget that needs to be slashed.
But the fact that such drastic inequity could exist in the first place makes it obvious that Alabama’s education funding system needs a major overhaul.
To be sure, Alabama isn’t alone in facing this problem. All over the country, wealthy school districts spend lavishly in the classroom compared to the poorer rural and inner-city school systems.
But that doesn’t make it right.
We don’t believe students who happen to live in higher-income neighborhoods are any better than those in poor areas. They don’t deserve any more money spent on them based merely on where their parents choose to live because, as American history has so frequently shown, wild success can be rooted in even the humblest of circumstances.
On the flip side, you could make the case that students in poorer areas should have more funds devoted to them than wealthy areas. They need more help because the best predictor of success in the classroom is household income, so poor students need more resources than rich ones.
Still, that wouldn’t be fair.
We think the best way to fund schools is to dole out money on a completely equal basis. A weighted per-capita system — where schools all get the same amount of money for each student with minor adjustments for things like the population of special-needs students — is the best way to make sure all Alabama children get a fair shake.
To blame the funding gap we see in Cullman County entirely on the county commissioners is a mistake. The problems we’re seeing here are merely the symptoms of a flawed system.
It’s unfortunate that Cullman County educators are having to lobby for something that should be a given. After all, equality for our children should never be a choice someone has to make.
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TIMES EDITORIAL: Steady hand needed on water supply
