Title: How School Funding's Reliance On Property Taxes Fails Children : NPR
Headings: Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem
Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem
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About The 'School Money' Project
The Simple Answer
School district spending per student
What districts spend across the U.S.
Notes
The Old Deluder
Sumter County, Ala.
The Lawsuit Phenomenon
School Funding In Texas
Desperate Measures
School Funding In Arizona
The Cost Of Poverty
The Math
For Many Schools The Recession Never Ended
State And Local School Funding Has Declined In Most States Since 2008
An analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, adjusting for inflation, state and local spending per pupil declined in 36 states between 2008 and 2014.

Content: That $9,794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost differences). It's well below that year's national average of $11,841. Ridge's two elementary campuses and one middle school sit along Chicago's southern edge. Roughly two-thirds of its students come from low-income families, and a third are learning English as a second language. Here, one nurse commutes between three schools, and the two elementary schools share an art teacher and a music teacher. They spend the first half of the year at different schools, then, come January, box up their supplies and swap classrooms. "We don't have a lot of the extra things that other districts may have, simply because we can't afford them," says Ridge Superintendent Kevin Russell. One of those other districts sits less than an hour north, in Chicago's affluent suburbs, nestled into a warren of corporate offices: Rondout School, the only campus in Rondout District 72. It has 22 teachers and 145 students, and spent $28,639 on each one of them.