A stubborn gap
Wednesday, December 28th, 2005
By Chris Fitzsimon
The state’s investment in poorer counties’ schools continues to lag. That’s unfair to kids who need more state help, not less A widening gap between spending on schools in North Carolina’s poor counties and in rich ones sounds familiar, because it is. The N.C. Public School Forum, a Raleigh-based research group dedicated to improving the quality of the state’s schools, has been monitoring the gap for nearly two decades and has found it yawning wider every year.
Some may see that depressing record as reason to abandon poorer counties. They would be so wrong.
Consider, for example, the situation in struggling Hoke County, west of Fayetteville. Schools there are showing improvement for the first time since extra state money was allocated to them.
Still, Hoke’s schools are handicapped by the meager local revenues produced by the county’s low-value tax base. As long as that’s a problem for more than two-thirds of North Carolina counties, the state must continue to find money to help those counties out. Indeed, it must strengthen those efforts. (The state pays for the bulk of school operating expenses, but local funds can be an important factor. Local money also pays for school construction.) (more…)
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