“The pandemic not only illuminated inexcusable conditions in public schools, including subpar air quality, insufficient staffing, crowded classrooms and outdated technology, but also set in motion a retrenchment in state and local funding that must be counteracted immediately, especially as federal pandemic-era funding ends.”
That’s according to Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center and co-author of a new report that uncovers how fears of economic downturn due to global COVID shutdowns led to state and local policies that negatively impacted public schools.
The report documents school funding in states during the 2020-21 school year, the first complete school year after the COVID outbreak. The researchers found significant gaps in funding across states fueled by a lack of resources and policy decisions even in areas with sufficient fiscal capacity.
In response to the pandemic shutdown, state and local policymakers in many states in the spring of 2020 pulled back education funding. Some areas significantly cut state and local revenue for districts while others failed to provide planned funding increases. By 2021, at least 14 states reduced their total state and local funding for pre-K12 education, marking the largest “disinvestment” since the 2008 Great Recession.
For instance, states like Utah, Delaware and Minnesota’s per-pupil funding in high-poverty districts exceeded funding in low-poverty districts by 30% or more. In contrast, “regressive” states like Oregon and Nevada gave high-poverty districts 30% less per pupil than low-poverty states.
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The researchers also documented the impact the pandemic had on public school funding by tracking changes in “fairness measures” between 2020 and 2021. Across the nation, pre-K12 education had the smallest annual increase in combined state and local funding yet, resulting in the largest number of states ever to have cut state and local revenue since the great recession.
States like New York and Vermont were recorded to have the highest cost-adjusted per-pupil funding in 2021, whereas states like Arizona and Idaho ranked the lowest at around $5,500 below the national average.
“History tells us that school funding can lag well behind financial recovery,” Danielle Farrie, ELC research director and co-author of the report, said in a statement. “Advocates and policymakers must make use of the current focus on student wellbeing to increase funding and ensure the necessary resources are available for students, no matter where they are located.”
