Funding Of Small Schools example essay topic

In contrast to schools with the big number of students, such a special attention towards each student is not possible. Besides, social factors (family income level) play also an important role. The reason for this is the desire of a student to be socially acceptable, and to be noticed, which is a normal thing. However, it all becomes harder to do in the place with a big concentration of people, such as huge urban school. Unfortunately, each year it becomes harder to find small public school. Since the beginning of the century, the number of small schools had dropped significantly.

The reason for this was the growth of population in urban areas. I think that there is not need to accent on the growth of population in the New York City, where even today it is continuing to increase. Small public school started to be less effective in providing education, especially in the highly populated areas. This was primarily due to their disability to give a place for studying for too many students.

After this, the projects of development of education were aimed on the building of new big schools. Basically, the industrial principle the bigger the better drove consolidation efforts that eliminated thousands of small schools being replaced with big ones. School funding policies with the common view on the effectiveness of small schools were supporting more funding of big schools and this had caused smaller portions of financial support to small schools to be issued. Current funding does not meet the demands of these small schools, which eventually results into inadequate level of education among students of these schools. However, today across the nation small schools are returning. They exist in every state in rural, urban, and suburban areas.

There had been many ideas presented on how to improve funding of small schools. The need to change unequal funding had been of a great importance. The basic strategies for improving the financial situation at small rural and urban schools are: increasing of the basic budget along with changing the state funding formula, using already existing resources more effectively, and capturing new funds from alternative sources. The first strategy is very effective, however it requires the longest time and needs to change many minds, while working at a distance. The second approach is the most popular, because it is much easier to rethink, how the work had been accomplished and what positive effects it had made. The third strategy takes the shortest amount of time, but it cannot be considered as the main trait to success and will not result into continuous improvement, because it only may solve problems on local level.

Despite the differences in purpose and payoff, each of before mentioned strategies works the best when the responsibility for securing the resources is widely shared, inside and outside the school. How it is possible to increase state funding? In each state funds are located according to dollar amount per student for operating expenses. This system appears to be fair, indeed in New York City the salary for qualified teachers should be bigger than in other places. Besides, the facility maintenance costs are also higher than in rural areas. When state per pupil investment is stretched over these comparatively higher costs, there are fewer dollars to invest in salaries, materials, and equipment.

This causes the lack of funds for sufficient maintenance and small salary for teachers is not attracting qualified professionals. Local districts have a permission to tax themselves to add-on to state funding, however, inequities can be found here as well. For instance, the amount of money available from local taxes depends on the local tax base and on the level to which people vote to tax themselves. However, if to take urban area with low-income population, certainly the taxes cannot be raised. This is the primary reason for low funding of schools in these areas.