Interpreting Maps

NPR provided an interesting recent post (and program) on spending for public education.

A topic within the presentation concerned the use of property tax revenue expressed as per pupil expenditure above. I certainly understand why public schools focus on property taxes. Schools need predictable revenue sources and the value of property is slower to react to economic ups and downs. However, it produces some interesting and uneven experiences for learners. In the past few years, I have lived in Grand Forks, ND (working at the university), a suburb of Minneapolis (our retirement home), and on a lake in the north woods of Wisconsin (a home we purchased with inherited money). The map above (check the article for a better view) provides per pupil expenditures for these areas. Grand Forks and MSP are relatively wealthy areas with active business, health care, universities, etc. Our lake place is located in one of the poorest counties in Wisconsin.

What I find interesting from looking at the specific revenue going to schools in the regions I am familiar is the weird funding disparity. Despite the relative poverty of lake country, the revenue for education is the best. This results from a low population density and the inflated property values for lake homes many of which are second properties so any students using these properties attend school elsewhere. Minneapolis and Grand Forks spend less per pupil despite having far better economic circumstances.

I am not anti-tax. My father, a farmer, always told me to be satisfied with making the kind of money that required me to pay the taxes I do. I try to remember that even in retirement.

As a life-long educator, I have always been interested in the way education is funded. Public colleges are not tax supported in the way public K-12 education is tax supported. As a retired professor, it always puzzled me that the % of university costs funded through taxes declined drastically over the years and yet elected politicians can both determine the money institutions receive from taxes and also control tuition increases. I understand this is what is meant by “public institution”, but I don’t think the “public” really understands how it works. State-controlled and state subsidized is a more accurate description than state funded. The level of control is out of balance with the level of funding.

UND was always a regional university and we were lucky to attract as many students as we had from Minnesota. I suppose some locals feel the “tax supported” institution was be exploited by those who did not pay taxes. Well, ND students could attend MN schools via the same agreement. We were lucky that so many MN students came our way. Higher ed also requires a certain scale to provide quality experiences and the untaxed students from elsewhere were necessary to achieve the scale necessary for a true university.

Enough ab0ut funding. I no longer have to worry about such issues, but it obviously irks me that so many are unwilling to take the time to understand how this actually works.