Blog Prompt #2: Social-Design Issue in the Twin Cities
Schools are funded by property taxes. Property taxes are based on the value of an owners home and other assets. When areas of a city have a high level of low income housing concentrated in a certain school district, the school being funded by that areas property taxes has the severe drawback of being underfunded. The quality of education and school resources is adversely affected by the lack of funding. After years of a school being funded by property taxes of a poor neighborhood, the school system deteriorates and the quality of the students and education being produced decreases in response to this. Due to this situation, a certain area and school district ends up stuck in a perpetual cycle of poverty and less than adequate education being provided.
Many areas have dealt with this problem but have had trouble fixing the issue due to the obvious reasons of changing the property or amount of property tax revenue being collected in that specific area.
Some governments of states have affectively implemented changes to help fix this problem by using a different method of funding public schools. Washington state, for example, has set up school districts to receive equal portions of the entire states collected property taxes. Under this funding set-up, every school is given equal funding which is not dependent on a certain school districts property taxes. This way of funding public schools helps to effectively distribute the money collected through property taxes is a way which does not cause the deterioration of certain districts schools.