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throwaway2037

    > Property taxes pay for schools.

I know this is true for the US. The vast majority of public school budgets are paid from local property taxes. This gives wealthy communities a significant advantage. Princeton, New Jersey is famous for its high property taxes and excellent public schools.

Are there any other countries that use a local-tax funding model for public schools? Most other nations that I know use a national funding model.

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This is not true. Only half of public school spending comes from local taxes. The other half comes from state funds and offsets the local property tax differences.

Here is the breakdown for Maryland: https://dls.maryland.gov/pubs/prod/NoPblTabPDF/2024PubSchool.... My county, Anne Arundel, received half the state funding of poorer counties. In terms of total funding, it’s below the median, but has above average schools for the state because school quality is more a function of the types of kids in the school moreso than funding.

My country uses a national funding model but most people would still strongly prefer to go to a public school in an affluent neighborhood. Even if the funding is exactly the same, you are still much more likely to get more "desirable" classmates (fewer chance of migrants, drug use, etc. as well higher overall academic motivation, more involved parents who contribute to the school community, etc.).

I went to public schools near the city center and/or with a good reputation and I got a retrospectively insane proportion of wealthy schoolmates mixed with a few lower class ones. And an even more insane number of serious crimes: bribery (multiples), manslaughter, contraband, murder.

Note in some European contexts (like UK) "public school" means something more along the lines of "private school" in the US. They have selective admissions, there's usually tuition, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)

> The schools are "public" from a historical schooling context in the sense of being open to pupils irrespective of locality, denomination or paternal trade or profession or family affiliation with governing or military service, and also not being run for the profit of a private owner.

Exactly. Most private schools were meant for weak students, wealthy but pathetically snob families, or often both; a specific high school, run by nuns and now disbanded, distinguished itself with even greater occurrences of newsworthy criminals and psychopaths.

Baltimore is famous for its high per student funding of public schools ($21,000 per student in 2023). It's also famous for the terrible outcomes of its public school students.

Yeah but how is that funding actually applied?

You could throw an extreme amount of money at schools but require it be spent on specific initiatives. Things like resource officers, hiring someone with specific qualifications, and boatloads of staff training.

You can average that out to a per student basis and say "look we're spending so much on education" but if the money is going to train teachers how to deal with crisis situations like school shooters, it's not really being spent on educating the student. How that money actually gets allocated matters.

This is a common misconception. The high per capita funding is partially due to required emergency funding of repairs resulting from deferred maintenance - both in the literal sense, and in reference to the hollowing out of the city's industry and, therefore, capacity for stable community and family life. Baltimore is a Rust Belt city smack dab in the middle of a region that happily moved on to the service economy; poorer Baltimore residents are surrounded by people who can bid up the rates of goods in the area (and they do).

Other jurisdictions don't have to put so much into student funding directly.

This doesn’t pass a smell test. You are saying that maintenance spend is significant fraction of school fundings. Let’s say that that fraction is 20% of funding (if it was much lower, your argument doesn’t make sense, because it would make the maintenance spend irrelevant). That’s over $2M/school/year. This is enough to entirely rebuild a school from the ground up every 10 years.

A few Baltimore schools had to close down a few years ago because they had no working heat/AC. Asbestos is an issue. As are pests. It's not that it was uncomfortable to be in some of these buildings, it was literally unsafe. When things get this dire, they cost a lot more to fix. Anything you move in to do uncovers other issues, and contractors can bend you over on change orders because it simply has to get done. I wouldn't be surprised to find some amount of graft involved, either.

So, yes, maintenance is a significant portion of spend. The schools were allowed to get into really bad shape, physically, in a way that doesn't at all reflect on the enthusiasm or capability of students or teachers.

If schools get $20k+ per student, but somehow fails to keep AC working, then it is a clear case of extreme incompetence at best, likely pointing to criminal levels of mismanagement. You don’t solve that problem with shoveling even more money into the fire, you fire everyone involved and start over.

> Are there any other countries that use a local-tax funding model for public schools?

Doubt it. In my province of Canada (Alberta), school is paid for by provincial taxes and money is distributed based on the amount of students.

That being said, since kids are assigned to schools based on proximity, it's still worthwhile being in a nicer neighbourhood since the kids will come from more affluent families...

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