Eradicate racial inequality in school funding

Three-fifths. For most Black Americans, this number conjures the despicable and enduring hold that anti-Black racism has had on our country since its founding, when our Constitution enshrined the idea that Blacks would be valued as three-fifths of whites. This idea that Black people continue to experience the deleterious effects of this historic, yet base and destructive symmetry is most profoundly reflected in the nightmare of the school-to-prison pipeline.

Nationally, Blacks graduate college at three-fifths the rate of whites, while concurrently they are among three-fifths of all incarcerated people, with Black children making up three-fifths of all youth in state prisons.

Perhaps nowhere is this persistent injustice more pronounced than in our great state of New York, where education funding disparities are of herculean proportions. As one of the wealthiest states in our union, New York educates the largest number of Black students in the nation, yet funds the education of Black students at less than three-fifths that of its wealthy white students. This gap is even greater when we focus on charter schools, where per-student funding persistently trails that of all students in the state by thousands of dollars per student, millions of dollars per school.

The funding gap between suburban majority-white public school districts and majority-Black public school districts is enormous, an amount some reports place north of $8,000 per student. At charter schools, where in New York City alone 92 percent of students are Black or Latino, and 77 percent are at or near the poverty line, this gap is gargantuan at more than $11,000 per student.

The result of this discriminatory investment? Sadly, but predictably, Black students graduate high school at about three-fifths the rate of white students. The college readiness gap is even greater, with the rate for Black students nearly 300 percent less than that for white students. Moreover, recent studies indicate that Black males who fail to graduate high school have a 70 percent chance of going to prison. The tragic irony is that if incarcerated here in New York City, young Black men will finally have achieved an elimination of this funding gap, as Riker’s Island will spend north of $160,000 per person per year to provide them with a very different sort of education.

Funding matters. Black children are boys and girls from the most impoverished circumstances. They come to school under siege from both the debilitating social-emotional trauma of poverty and violence, and the endemic institutional racism that prioritizes politics over improving their educational opportunities and resources.

In Albany, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed a budget that can begin to close this funding gap for charter schools by restoring the funding formula, a material step forward that will yield more resources for hundreds of thousands of low-income Black students across the state. Yet too many of our elected leaders, who should be championing this legislation, are instead opposing its importance and significance, seeming to prefer a zero-sum mentality to a zero-tolerance policy on inequity.

Our policymakers should be pushing the governor’s proposal even further to eradicate this funding inequity. Imagine if the Legislature adopted a public investment philosophy that demanded that the most state education dollars per pupil go to the students most in need, the most at risk – by every measure low-income Black students fit the bill. Such thinking might well lead to the application of the special education funding formula to low-income Black and Latino students, a paradigm that recognizes the need for significantly greater dollars to address significantly greater needs. The additional $19,000 per student (currently provided for high-need special education students) would be transformational, eliminating the funding gap for public schools, both traditional and charter, that serve majority Black and low-income students.

Like many in my community, year after year I sit aghast at the vehemence and vitriol that takes hold of our Legislature at the mere mention of incremental funding increases for charter schools, yet nary a tepid objection at the amount taxpayers spend to incarcerate people on Riker’s Island, three-fifths of whom are Black. It seems that funding may only matter when we prioritized the certainty of imprisoning Black bodies, instead of the potential of liberating Black minds.

Until our leaders take more seriously and sincerely how much education funding matters to Black children, these disparities in education and life outcomes will persist.

As a Black man, a founder, leader and teacher at one of the few Black-led charter schools in New York, I call on every one of our legislators and executives to push for transformational change and oppose any tolerance for the persistence of this funding inequity. Our leaders must do their part to ensure that Black children are counted as three-fifths no more. If we accept that #BlackLivesMatter, as we must, then we must similarly and unequivocally demand that funding must matter, too.

Rafiq R. Kalam Id-Din II, Esq., is the founder & managing partner of TFOA-Professional Prep Charter School and the #BlackLedSchoolsMatter initiative. Rafiq is a resident, community leader, social entrepreneur, lawyer and teacher in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.