The 74 reports that we’re seeing an epidemic of suburban areas seceding from big urban school districts:
EdBuild argues that residents who push to create their own school systems are often motivated by one overarching factor: school funding. “We are seeing over and over that it’s about the money,” said Zahava Stadler, director of policy at EdBuild, a think tank focused on education funding equity.
….When one district splits into two, the move often creates a wealthy school system that leaves behind one with high poverty and poor funding. Since 2000, at least 128 communities have launched campaigns to secede from their local school districts to create their own, smaller education systems. Of those, 74 have been successful, 11 of them finalized in just the past few years. Another 16 secession efforts are currently underway.
Secession efforts of any kind are almost always about money.¹ Rich areas want to keep their money to themselves, and the way to do it is to secede. They generally also want to stay white, and secession paves the way for that too. The whole thing is loathsome and offensive.
However, it’s not really very widespread. It turns out that of the 74 school district secessions, 47 are in Maine and Alabama and another six took place in Shelby County, Tennessee, a year after a school district merger. Outside of that, there have been 21 secessions since 2000, or about one per year in a country with more than 13,000 school districts. In other words, we might have a Maine and Alabama problem, but in the other 48 states there’s not really much going on.
¹On a national level, language often plays a role too. But even then, there’s usually a money angle as well.
