Study shows wealthy reaping far more of California school bonds funding

Inequities: Payouts tied to property values; some schools get as much as $270,000 per pupil, some receive nothing

Schools in California’s wealthier communities have been reaping far more local bond money than poorer districts, a CAL matters analysis shows — a reality that amplifies existing inequities for the state’s public school students.

Districts with the lowest concentrations of students on free or reduced lunch, a poverty indicator, have averaged more than twice as many local bond dollars per student since 1998 as the most impoverished districts.

And depending on where your children go to school, they could be benefitting from as much as $270,000 per pupil in local bond money over the past two decades, or as little as $838 — or nothing.

The amounts of local bonds, typically used for school facilities, are heavily reliant on local property values — a clear advantage to schools ensconced in the tonier parts of California.

Disparities in local school bonds are also reflected in state school bonds, although experts say the differences aren’t as stark. Nonetheless, state bonds are often awarded as matching dollars for local bonds. That means richer school districts are typically able to get more bang for their local bucks, because they’re able to collect more state matching money and hire staff to navigate the state’s cumbersome application process.

The result: While voters in many communities have approved unprecedented amounts of local school bonds to modernize facilities, some students, many of them poor, have remained in crumbling classrooms that haven’t been substantially renovated since they were first built in the 1950s or 60s.

These imbalances in school facilities across California are “pretty evident and pretty stark,” said Shin Green, an Oaklandbased school infrastructure financing consultant. “In my heart of hearts, I think this is something we should address.

“I think just because your family decided to live in a rural community, you don’t punish a kid by

putting them in a substandard school. They had no choice in that.”

Local bond dollars make up the greatest share of money that school districts use to pay for the construction of new buildings, renovations to older facilities, and technology and infrastructure.

Our analysis of the history of school bonds over the past two decades found a lopsided effect that appears to not only favor wealthier communities, but also make it harder for smaller and rural districts to maximize local dollars.

Example: Hilmar Unified, in a Merced County community situated in the quiet farmlands between Interstate 5 and Highway 99. About 60 percent of the district’s 2,400 students last year were on free or reduced lunch, according to state data. Hilmar passed just one local bond in the past 20 years worth $2 million. That amounts to about $838 per pupil.

During the same period, voters in Beverly Hills Unified, with nearly 4,000 students enrolled as of last year, approved more than $1 billion in local bonds — that’s $271,803 per pupil.

Local school bond measures exploded in California. In Tuesday’s election, voters will be asked to approve 100 local bond measures totaling $12 billion. Over the past 20 years, voters across 660 California school districts have passed local bonds worth about $113 billion.

Yet in the same time, more than 350 school districts with a combined 430,000 students have not passed a single local school bond.

One of those is the Pleasant View Elementary School District, west of Porterville Tulare County, where some school buildings date back to the 1940s. Much of the renovations to the small Central Valley district of about 475 came from pennypinching, and from a state “hardship” fund. To qualify, school districts must have a total bonding capacity of less than $5 million, exhausted other funding and have needs that present “an imminent threat to the health and safety of the pupils.”

It hasn’t been enough, said Mark Odsather, Pleasant View’s superintendent, and a local bond is out of the question because the district’s $1.5 million bonding capacity is so low “it wouldn’t build anything.”

For years, researchers and education advocates have sounded alarms over how public schools in California receive funding for their facilities.

A Stanford study published in September found California public schools will need about $117 billion for facilities construction and repairs over the next decade. The study also found that the wide disparities in school facilities funding “systematically related to school district property wealth, income, and students’ backgrounds result in a relatively regressive finance system.”