
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 16, 1994                   TAG: 9403170026
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ALAN RAFLO
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE SIZE OF THE SCHOOL PIE MATTERS

RAY GARLAND'S columns of Feb. 24 (``Barbs and bouquets for the legislators assembled'') and March 3 (``How much is enough for Virginia's schools?'') on the issue of disparity in Virginia public-school funding were perceptive and, on the whole, well-balanced. In both columns, however, he overlooked two important points.

First, when Garland maintains that differences in public-school funding aren't large if one leaves out of the discussion ``those few districts at the very top and those at the very bottom,'' he's considering only the number of districts, not the number of students, involved. Of the approximately 1 million students attending Virginia's public schools in the 1988-89 school year, 20 percent were enrolled in the eight highest-spending school districts. In those districts, from $5,770 to $7,820 (from various sources, not just local funds) was spent per student. In the same year, another 20 percent of those 1 million students were enrolled in the 36 lowest-spending school districts. In those districts, less than $3,700 was spent per student. One may argue (as Garland and many others do) that dollar differences don't necessarily mean educational-quality differences. But these figures show that dollar differences do exist and affect a significant number of students.

Second, when Garland examines local-spending effort, he looks only as far as local property-tax rates. But a different perception of local effort emerges if one considers local education spending as a percentage of local discretionary income, that is, of the income available after one considers local residents' spending for food, housing, etc.

Except for a few localities with unique local-finance circumstances, the percentage of discretionary income spent for local public schools varies little. In 1988-89, most districts spent between 1.5 percent and 3 percent of their discretionary income on schools. Moreover, many localities with relatively low discretionary income spent an equal or larger percentage of their available resources on education than did wealthier localities.

Of course, 1.5 percent of Fairfax County's discretionary income is much greater than 1.5 percent of Lee County's. But the point here is the effort of each locality, relative to locally available resources. In essence, most Virginia localities are devoting a comparable proportion of their local ``pie'' to local school funding; the difference is the size of each local pie.

Along with Garland, I applaud the General Assembly's effort to address the funding-disparity issue. As legislators, columnists and other citizens discuss this issue, it's important they have the most complete and accurate facts available. The facts cited here were taken from ``A Citizens' Guide to School Finance,'' a 1992 report by Virginia Tech's Rural Economic Analysis Program.

Alan Raflo is editor of the Rural Economic Analysis Program in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech.

by CNB