EFFINGHAM, Kansas ? In 2014, a cash-strapped school district in rural northeast Kansas turned to its residents with a plea: Pay a little more in taxes annually so we can renovate classrooms, update the wiring and give students better spaces to learn.
Voters rejected the measure by a margin of 54 to 46 percent. While disappointing, the results were hardly surprising to the district?s leaders. Atchison County Community Schools, or Unified School District 377, has tried ? and failed ? to pass measures for capital construction five times in 18 years. The last successful school bond campaign was in 1974.
Since then, maintenance problems have compounded. One snowy morning this January, the 26-year-old boiler in the district?s central office building, which also houses the preschool and kindergarten classes, sputtered to a stop.
Replacing it would cost as much as $50,000, said Superintendent Andrew Gaddis. The best-case scenario would be an affordable patch job that would last through the winter, buying the school board a little more time.
?We?ll have to find the money somewhere,? said Gaddis in his office later that month, sporting a small blue and gold ?Kansans Can? pin on the lapel of his blazer. ?Any teacher will tell you kids can?t learn if they?re not comfortable.?
The nation?s school districts spend about $46 billion less per year on facility upkeep than is needed to maintain ?healthy and safe? learning environments, according to a 2016 report from the 21st Century School Fund, a research and advocacy organization.
In February, the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing on ?Underpaid Teachers and Crumbling Schools,? where witnesses spoke about facilities problems. Anna King, a vice president of the National PTA, who lives in Oklahoma, spoke about poor districts in the state struggling to borrow money.
?While areas like Oklahoma City and Tulsa can use bonds to try to close the gap, other parts of the state are in disrepair and are too poor to finance through bonds,? she said.
Although most states help pay for some construction costs, almost half, including Kansas, pay less than 10 percent.
That means that, for the most part, districts in those states are at the mercy of voters to finance capital projects, such as building new schools and making major renovations to existing ones.
Affluent communities with a strong tax base can borrow money and pass bond measures, while low-wealth districts ? particularly in rural areas ? struggle to do so.
The funding structure ?is inherently and persistently inequitable,? the 21st Century School Fund report authors concluded. The research and advocacy organization EdBuild called states? education funding systems outdated, arbitrary, and segregating.
In Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and other cities, districts have struggled to maintain elderly buildings plagued by significant health risks like mold, contaminated water, asbestos and inadequate heating and cooling ? all conditions considered nonnegotiable in affluent communities, said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund. Rural districts pour money into buildings that are long past their prime in a desperate fight to stave off closure or consolidation.
?It?s just one more nail in the coffin of small towns that are already struggling,? Filardo said. ?The county hospital closed, and the mom-and-pop shops are gone because Walmart opened. When you lose the schools, you lose the community.?
Kansas districts saw their financial problems amplified by Republican then-Gov. Sam Brownback?s controversial 2012 tax cuts that limited the available dollars for capital construction, renovations and repairs and contributed to a chaotic restructuring of school funding.
