Schools push the numbers

RALEIGH — In the fight over school funding in Wake, there are a few things that are not debatable.

The Wake County school system has higher test scores than the other large school districts in the state – Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Cumberland counties – yet spends less per student in its operating budget than nearly all of them. Wake also is a wealthy county, by North Carolina standards, with a low property-tax rate and a greater ability to pay than nearly any other community.

But what is debatable is whether these test scores and spending figures justify the school system’s request for an additional $ 30 million this year and $ 93.8 million over three years, which would result in a 5-cent tax-rate increase.

“The startling news is how well we do compared with how little we spend to the other districts,” said Virginia Parker, rally chairwoman of Strengthen Our Schools, a community group formed to promote the tax increase. “It makes me focus on how much more we can do if we spend more.”

But critics argue that the comparisons don’t necessarily justify the funding increase.

“I don’t have the Charlotte budget,” said Jonathan Hill, president of N.C. Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative group opposed to the tax increase. “I don’t have the Guilford budget. I have the Wake budget, and $ 30 million is too large an increase.”

School officials have regularly trotted out the numbers since February to help build enough public support to persuade the county board of commissioners to approve the additional funding June 18.

“The use of comparable districts’ funding should give them [taxpayers] a sense of security that we are not wasting money if we are spending so much less per child than other districts,” said Tom Oxholm, chairman of Wake’s school board’s finance committee.

Wake school board Chairman Bill Fletcher said that the school system isn’t saying it should have more money for money’s sake but that the per-pupil spending difference shows they are being reasonable.

“Is it a realistic amount of money?” Fletcher said. “One way we show it is to compare to other school districts. It’s about reasonability.”

Wake may be overstating the funding disparity, though.

In the 1999-00 school year, Wake school officials say their spending per pupil ranged from $ 453 less than Forsyth to $ 829 less than Mecklenburg. Figures from Durham and Guilford counties also are used.

The numbers are derived from each district’s annual financial report, according to Del Burns, Wake’s associate superintendent for administrative services.

But the latest figures from the state Department of Public Instruction for the 1999-00 school year show a narrower gap between Wake and other districts, ranging from a $ 92 gap with Forsyth to $ 754 gap with Durham, the highest-spending of the largest districts.

Also, Wake school officials do not use figures from Cumberland County, the fourth-largest school system in the state, in their presentations. Although Wake outperforms Cumberland in test scores, that less affluent county also spends less per pupil than Wake.

Wake’s scores on the state end-of-grade tests are considerably higher than any of the state’s largest school systems, however.

While some might question why Wake needs more money if it is doing well with what it has, Wake Schools Superintendent Bill McNeal said he can’t hire more and better teachers and provide more help to struggling students without additional funding.

Wake school officials say they need more money if they are to reach the goal of having 95 percent of third- and eighth-graders pass the state end-of-grade tests by 2003. Officials say their goals are much higher than the other school systems and the most ambitious of any school district in the nation.

Mecklenburg would settle for having 85 percent of their third-graders pass this spring’s end-of-grade reading test. Durham also wants 95 percent passing grades, but only for third- graders in reading, and the district is willing to wait for 2004.

Forsyth and Guilford haven’t set deadlines for any specific goals.

“If you want quality, there’s a cost that comes with quality,” McNeal said. “If you want mediocrity, that comes with a cost, too.”

The goals are reasonable considering Wake can afford to pay more for schools, said Harvey Schmitt, president and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. Wake has a lower tax rate than these other communities, he pointed out.

The owner of a home assessed at $ 100,000 in Wake pays $ 80 less a year in property taxes than the owner of a house assessed at the same price in Guilford County and $ 170 less than one in Mecklenburg.

“A case can be made for us making an investment on a higher level compared to other metropolitan areas,” said Schmitt, whose group endorsed Wake’s funding request. “It’s not the reason you do it. You do it because the investment will pay off in quality and achievement. A case can be made that our market can pay more.”

While Wake’s use of these numbers suggests the district is underfunded, John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, said that wouldn’t necessarily be a logical conclusion to make.

“It’s not clear that Wake County is underfunded,” Hood said. “But you could do the opposite that Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Forsyth are overfunded.”

Hood said Wake isn’t taking into account that the other large school systems have much higher percentages of low-income students who require more services to be educated. According to the state, Wake had 22 percent of its students receiving subsidized lunches in 1999-2000 compared to 36 to 50 percent in the other school systems.

You can’t compare Wake with Mecklenburg, in which 11.5 percent of elementary schools have at least 60 percent of the students receiving subsidized lunches, according to Nora Carr, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s assistant superintendent for public information. None of Wake’s schools has more than 56 percent of its students receiving subsidized lunches.

“We’re similar in size to Wake, but when you delve deeply into the demographics, we’re truly different districts,” Carr said.

Hood said a more accurate way to compare Wake to the other school systems is to include how much taxpayers are also spending on the capital budget, which includes the cost of building and renovating schools. When the capital and operating budgets are combined, only Mecklenburg spends more per pupil than Wake in that group of large districts.

“Wake County taxpayers are paying taxes for both operating expenses and capital expenses,” Hood said.

But McNeal said it is not fair to include capital spending in a comparison because those funds cannot be used for teacher salaries and other expenditures needed to reach Wake’s academic goals. School officials warn that cuts to arts, athletics and air conditioning could be made if they don’t get the funding.

“We’re not going to do it with existing dollars unless there are things you want to decide you’ll do away with,” McNeal said.

GRAPHIC: 1 graphic Large School Districts Frank Medlin staff