"Well, we can disagree about this, but many school districts are losing students, which creates a financial crisis, which in turn causes more students to leave, which in turn...
What drives the departures is a growing recognition of government school failure. I believe that if the system lost between 15% to 20% of its students that the system would go into a financial death spiral and be publicly delegitimized. The government school coalition of special interests simply can't adjust to declining top line revenue. "
I dont quite understand the financial math here. The revenue is tax money, which is still there whether the student is in public or private school.
If a student leaves, the property tax money is the same, so the $ per pupil can go up. There may be some state and Federal money they lose ... but it still should work to the schools benefit on a $ per pupil basis.
A greater portion of the funding comes from state and federal government funding which is based on student population. This is one of the reasons that public schools dislike homeschoolers. If the student is not in school, the school loses money they count on.
Not all of the tax money is left. Every state that I am aware of pays districts a per capita amount for each student. If the the number of students goes down, the funding is reduced. Now, you are right that the per student amount goes up because part of the money is from local taxes. Nevertheless, you need to understand that the system is a spoils system. What really matters is topline revenue, not the per student spending. If schools were run in an economically rational manner, then suitable adjustments could be made and the system would survive on a smaller scale. But, again, this is a spoils system. When topline revenue declines some element or other of the special interest coalition must take a hit, and this they will fight to the death to avoid. So, for example, in St. Louis a rational financial restructuring could not take place because it would have closed some schools and eliminated some jobs (the school board meetings nearly ended in riots). In SF the board needed to close 25 schools, but was prevented by various interests from closing more than 12. Consequently the financial problems of the SF district are continuing to grow - and more families are leaving. In Seattle they needed to close or consolidate a number of schools, but the opposition was so strong that it is unclear what will happen - other than the fact that a capable superintendent was effectively forced to resign for trying to fix the district's financial problems. In small town America a number of districts are struggling to lure heomschool and private school students back because of the financial issue. The system has heavy fixed costs (bonded indebtedness), union contracts, and a number of other things what make it impossible, as a practical matter, to adjust financially.There is a lot of financial pressure building in the system already. A few more departures would just hasten the inevitable ;-)