White Papers

The PAUSD Financial Analysis Series

Palo Alto Unified Financial Issues -- Part.I

The following papers look at various issues and matters associated with local school finance, and the PAUSD in particular. The papers in this section were written during the Measure I timeframe.

Palo Alto Unified Financial Issues -- Part.II

The following papers look at various issues and matters associated with local school finance, and the PAUSD in particular. Part.II looks at some of the financials in light of the claims of Measure A.

Palo Alto Unified Financial Issues -- Part.III

These papers are a continuation of the Part.II series.

Topics on US Education

The School System in the US is fundamentally a local, or state, obligation. The US Government is not constitutionally tasked with funding education. The original Department of Education was created in 1867 to collect information on schools and teaching that would help the States establish effective school systems. While the agency's name and location within the Executive Branch have changed over the past 130 years, this early emphasis on getting information on what works in education to teachers and education policymakers continues down to the present day.

The US Department of Education collects information about the performance of school districts throughout the US, aggregating this data on a national and state level, to provide evidence of the absolute, and relative, performance of each state system, and the nation as a whole.

The following papers have been drawn from sources within the US Department of Education WEB-site, providing a disturbing look at the cost and performance of the nation’s educational delivery system.

US Education System

Topics on California Education Funding

This set of papers was written as background to the issues of education in general. The set looks at the cost of the US Educational System over the past 30 years, compared with the academic results of this spending.

CA School System Funding

The California School System is the largest in the US, with a budget of over $50B for 2004-05, providing educational services to over 6M students. This set of articles, taken in large part from a series in the Sacramento Bee called: “Paying for Our Schools” provides much needed information about how confused the funding mechanisms for the California School System have become.