Is Gov. Brown Right to Dole Out Money to Marin's Public Schools Unequally?

This is what California public education looks like after the Great Recession: 

Between 2007 and 2010, the number of teachers in the state's K-12 classrooms shrunk by 11 percent. Reading specialists, librarians, and other school employees helping students learn declined by 14 percent. Front offices took the hardest blow, with the number of administrators dropping by 16 percent. All these cuts hit schools even as the total enrollment held steady at around 6.2 million students. 

Now that California is looking at its first budget without a deficit in five years, Gov. Jerry Brown's budget calls for restoring some money to the state's public schools. But, he does not want to distribute the money equally.

[For differences in revenues between Marin County school districts during the 2010-11 school year, see the tables at the bottom of this article.]

"Aristotle said, 'Treating unequals equally is not justice.' And people are in different situations. Growing up in Compton or Richmond is not like it is to grow up in Los Gatos or Beverly Hills or Piedmont," Brown said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

There are already big differences in the sums school districts get from the state.

Consider two very different communities in Marin, Mill Valley and Novato. In the 2010-11 school year, the Mill Valley School District received $10,895 for every student. The Novato Unified School District received $8,575 per student.

But while $3,908 of Novato's per-student funding came from the state, Mill Valley received negative-$25 per student due to so-called state "take-backs." That’s largely because of the different revenue structures for those two districts. As a basic aid district, Mill Valley receives the lion's share of its revenue, or $5,604 per student, from local property taxes. It also receive $4,443 per student from its annual parcel tax, which was increased by voters in the November 2012 election.

By contrast, Novato is a revenue limit district, receiving nearly half of its revenue from the state.

Under Gov. Brown's proposed budget, which has $3 billion more than last year for K-12 and community colleges, underprivileged schools would get more per-student funding than other schools. That means that funding would be weighted towards those schools with higher percentages of English language learners and the number of students who receive federally subsidized lunches for low-income residents, according to Marin County Office of Education officials.

The differences in those areas within Marin are stark.

For instance, while the Ross Valley Elementary School District recorded 3.1 percent English Learners in the 2009-2010, the San Rafael City Elementary District recorded 51.5 percent English Learners.

"Our future depends not on across-the-board funding, but disproportionately funding those schools that have disproportionate challenges," Brown said in a press conference last week. 

Will Gov. Brown's proposed shift in funding be enough to bridge the economic gap that contributes to the achievement gap? Does more money improve student performance? 

Mill Valley Elementary School District Revenue for 2010-11

110%

131%

Source: California Department of Education, Ed-Data