Project Oklahoma: Report finds minority schools receive less funding in Oklahoma.

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — Oklahoma spends less money per student if that student is in a poor minority community according to a newly released study by the national nonprofit EdBuild. The research took aim at gaps in funding that exist in how states fund public schools.

The EdBuild report shows minority schools in poor communities across the country received $23 billion dollars less in funding. Oklahoma’s results were similar to other states when it came to the racial funding discrepancies.

“Oklahoma, from the state's perspective, is actually sending more money to those communities,” EdBuild CEO Rebecca Sibilia told FOX 25, “The state is sending more money to nonwhite communities and poor nonwhite communities; the problem is the state just cannot keep up with a growing gap of wealth.”

When you dig deeper into the organization’s new report you find in Oklahoma not only are high-poverty school districts getting less per pupil funds, but high poverty non-white schools receive on average $2,496 dollars less per student than high poverty white school districts.

“School funding and wealth is still largely driven by where people live,” Sibilia said.

Sibilia says generations ago laws and society dictated where minorities lived and while laws and society have changed we are still seeing the effects of that segregation. Poor minority communities lack the property tax base to fund their neighborhood schools and without funding education suffers.

“If students are not learning they will never be able to leave the communities in which they are currently residing,” Sibilia said.

For its part, Oklahoma has been working on ways to update the school funding formula. However, the state’s formula has been praised by other states as being a fair distribution. State funding, though, cannot make up for the gaps that exist in local property tax collections that are often dependent on what development exists in an area. EdBuild argues states need to find a way to provide more equalization across districts so where a student lives does not determine the resources available to their school.