For children who must attend school in low wealth counties, the educational result of this resource gap is profound. State funding alone is not sufficient to provide adequate schools. Local operational funding is an essential and basic requirement for quality schools, and has been for many years. Where counties can not provide such funding, quality suffers and so does student achievement. Where we have good schools, it is because local governments supplement state appropriations to provide the basic educational offerings and programs.
Local funding is essential to the basic educational program in our current funding system.
This dependence on local operational funding hurts children who must be educated in low wealth counties that can not provide the necessary local resources for the educational program. Money may not be everything in education, but good schools require adequate resources. Educational quality in a state system should not have severe variances based on geography and local wealth. Inadequate resources can cause major deficiencies in course offerings, instructional quality and the overall educational experience in low wealth counties. Most of our poor performing schools are in low wealth systems, and always will be until we address this problem.