ND Democrat Minority Leader Merle Boucher has an op/ed in the Grand Forks Herald today making a predictable call for more money for North Dakota’s public schools.  I know that school funding is a sacred cow in political circles.  If you oppose raising school funding you’re going to be cast as an ignoramus who wants to keep kids stupid and illiterate, but before we all jump on Boucher’s “throw money at ‘em” bandwagon I think we need to take a long, hard look at school spending in North Dakota to date.

What seems to be driving most of this concern over school spending is the fact that a lot of North Dakotans are unhappy about the amount they pay in property taxes.  People like Boucher are calling for more money for North Dakota schools not because the schools necessarily need it (though what school administrator has ever said they have enough money?) but rather because they want to lower the property taxes we pay.  I see two problems with this line of thinking, however.

1. Shifting the burden for school funding from local taxes to the state doesn’t really reduce the burden that school spending represents for tax payers.  Whether it is paid for with property taxes or state taxes North Dakota’s citizens are still paying for it.
2. Why aren’t we looking at why ND’s schools are costing so much in the first place?

According to this spreadsheet from the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction approximately 118,089 students attend public schools in the state in 1985.  In 2005 that number was 102,096.  That’s a decrease of 15,993 students state wide.

According to that same spread sheet, school spending was $379,050,929 in 1985.  In 2005 school spending was $829,206,450.

If we adjust the 1985 school spending for inflation into 2005 dollars we get $672,687,034, meaning that from 1985 to 2005 we’ve seen a real increase of 23% in school spending in North Dakota to educate 15,993 fewer students.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but that doesn’t make any sense.  And if North Dakota citizens want to be upset about high property taxes they should be upset with school districts that are clearly spending more than they need rather than the state for not sending enough tax dollars.

And rather than looking at ways to spend more on education, I think we should be looking at ways to spend less.  Or, at the very least, make what we’re spending now go further.