The Steep Price of School Underfunding

By Fedrick C. Ingram | Word In Black (WIB) – There are numbers you know, and then there are numbers you feel.  For instance, I know that Black children make up 15% of this country’s K-12 public schools.& READ MORE:& For Black Kids, Underfunded Public Schools Are Inequality Factories I also know that Black folks make up roughly the same percentage of U.S. citizens.& But when I read& The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems, a report& from& the Albert Shanker Institute, and saw that Black children are 3.5 times& more& likely than white children to be in chronically underfunded school districts, well, I can feel that number.& That’s because I was that number.& & What should feel like a lifetime ago feels like yesterday for me growing up as a Black boy in a tough part of Miami. I know what it feels like to read from outdated textbooks and play music with broken instruments. Those experiences propelled me to pursue higher education at Bethune-Cookman University. It inspired me to become an educator, and to return to the classrooms and communities that have been economically forgotten.& & Yet as sobering as the report is for Black K-12...