Each parent should be able to find out how much their child’s school spends per student compared to other schools. In 2005, Public Advocates helped make this a reality by co-sponsoring Senate Bill 687, authored by State Senator Joe Simitian (D – Palo Alto), that required districts to report per pupil expenditures school by school. The legislation – the first of its kind in the nation – required districts to publicly report, by individual school, how much each student was funded per teacher and ended the practice by California districts of reporting only district-wide averages to the public. It also required districts to disclose average teacher salaries for each of their school sites. A 2010 report analyzing SB 687 data by the Center for American Progress revealed a pattern of troubling inequities in California schools: the higher the proportion of low-income students at a school, the lower the average salary of the school’s teachers.
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