budgets

States are seeing enormous budget shortfalls because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the consequences for teachers and other public school employees could be dire. At least 640,000 education jobs in state and local government vanished between February and August 2020. The states, which provide an average of about 47% of U.S. public school funding, are cutting school spending because their tax revenue is declining and they have no easy recourse to balance their budgets; unlike the federal government, states can’t just print money. Negotiations continue around another pandemic relief bill, which would include money for states to spend on public education. But lawmakers have passed no measures since May, when the House of Representatives passed a US$3 trillion coronavirus relief bill that ...

State and local tax dollars cover the bulk of U.S. public school funding. The federal government spends just under US$55 billion per year on K-12 education, in addition to outlays for early childhood education and post-secondary programs like loans and grants for college tuition. CC BY-SA That’s just 8% of the total $720 billion it costs to run the nation’s public schools during the 2017-18 school year, the most recent national data available. This amounts to around $1,100 per K-12 student. Federal funding has never surpassed 10% of total public school funding, except from 2010 to 2012 when the federal government sought to reduce the school spending cuts local and state governments made during the Great Recession. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 sent $54 bill...

Tag: budgets

Failure to shore up state budgets may hit women’s wallets especially hard

Federal spending covers only 8% of public school budgets