Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

The headline of this post captures the essence of this NYTimes article by Eleni Shirmer, a research associate with The Future of Finance Initiative at U.C.L.A.’s Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, an article that opens with a description of the financing methods forced upon the Philadelphia School district and contains some stunning national data like this:

In 2012, state and local governments across the country paid an estimated $3.8 billion just in bond issuance fees — more than twice the amount used to fund pre-K education across New York State in 2014. In 2021, the Philadelphia School District paid $311.5 million to service its debt. More than half — $162 million — went to Wall Street creditors as interest payments.

The problem is only getting bigger. In 2019, K-12 school debt across the country nearly reached $500 billion, a 118 percent increase from 2002.

The bottom line?

As long as bond markets finance so many of our country’s public schools, dreams of education equality will remain thwarted. The bloodless logic of credit and debt markets ensures that those with the least pay the most.

Imagine if we funded schools through interest-free loans from our own central bank or by taxing rich residents and corporations, instead of borrowing from them and paying for the privilege of using their money. “We really can do this without Wall Street,” ACRE’s deputy research director, Britt Alston, told me. “We have the tools. Our public systems, while flawed, have the ability to serve our communities beyond what Wall Street could ever imagine.”

The money exists to transform this corrosive financial architecture; does the political will?

As one who prepared budgets for public school systems for nearly three decades I doubt that we do. In order to REALLY realize the dreams of education equality a complete overhaul of the STATE taxing systems would be needed, an overhaul that would eliminate over-reliance on property taxes and (gasp) require the redistribution of broad-based tax revenues. Early in my career in New Hampshire, I thought that such a transformation in that state was plausible and possible…. over 30 years later, I’m discouraged.