3. The public school funding divide

Property taxes are the oxygen that makes public schools thrive, allowing districts with large, wealthy tax bases to offer better educational opportunities to their students while leaving districts with smaller tax bases starved for cash.

Why it matters: The gap plays an outsized role in perpetuating inequality in U.S. schools. Black and Latino students are likely to live in poorer neighborhoods and therefore attend poorer schools — shortchanging their education and producing consequences that snowball throughout K-12 and beyond.

Property taxes are the oxygen that makes public schools thrive, allowing districts with large, wealthy tax bases to offer better educational opportunities to their students while leaving districts with smaller tax bases starved for cash.

Why it matters: The gap plays an outsized role in perpetuating inequality in U.S. schools. Black and Latino students are likely to live in poorer neighborhoods and therefore attend poorer schools — shortchanging their education and producing consequences that snowball throughout K-12 and beyond.

Between the lines: The United States is the only industrialized nation in the world where the wealth of your neighborhood plays a pivotal role in the quality of your public school education.

• Restrictive housing policies, including redlining and property covenants that locked out Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, led to segregated neighborhoods — and in turn, segregated schools — across the United States.
• “Redlining did not allow Black people into schools that were better funded or higher quality,” Travis Bristol, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, tells Axios.

The big picture: A school district's budget determines everything from the quality of the teachers to the availability of after-school programs, honors courses and even the quality of lunch.

• Better outcomes for lower-income students are directly linked to better funding for public schools, according to a study by Northwestern University and UC Berkeley.
• Increases in per-pupil spending lead to more years of completed education, higher pay, and a lower chance of adult poverty.

The state of play: The funding disparities can be vast, not only within states but sometimes in neighboring school districts.

• Detroit’s public school district, which is 98% non-white, gets roughly $11,200 in local and state funding combined per pupil.
• Across the district boundary lies affluent Gross Pointe, which is 25% non-white, has one-seventh the number of students Detroit has, and spends upwards of $3,000 more per student, according to an EdBuild analysis of the 2017-2018 school year.

The role of states: The formulas that determine how much state money school districts get and how schools distribute those funds varies from state to state.

• Some states make up the difference between what they determine to be adequate spending per student and what the property taxes cover in poorer districts.
• Still, it's rarely enough to close the funding gap between rich and poor schools. And state budget constraints often put this school funding at risk.

The role of federal government: Federal funding plays a small role, contributing about 8% for overall funding for K-12 public schools.

• Schools on Native American reservations, however, are almost entirely supported by federal funds. About 7% of Native American students attend those schools.

Driving the news: The pandemic has laid bare how poor schools have had to scramble to adjust to virtual learning.

• One example: In poorer schools, many students share computers or laptops, said Darnisa Amante-Jackson, co-founder of Disruptive Equity Education Project, an organization that consults with public schools across 60 districts.
• Underfunded schools can't provide the same resources for individual students, such as laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots, that richer schools can.
• The result is that students fall behind, losing months of learning.

What to watch: The pandemic’s squeeze on state finances could jeopardize how much states contribute to school budgets.

• California has already deferred part of its school funding contribution, possibly aggravating the divide.