Why School Boards Channel Funds to Swing Neighborhoods

What The Study Asks

Brian T. Hamel investigates how locally elected school board members decide which schools receive discretionary modernization dollars. The paper asks whether electoral incentives — the desire to win future elections — shape how funds are distributed across neighborhoods within a single large district.

Data and Research Design

The analysis draws on administrative records of a discretionary school modernization program in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Hamel links grant decisions to neighborhood-level measures of electoral support, competitiveness, and election timing, and uses statistical models to test whether board members preferentially allocate resources where it is most electorally advantageous.

Key Findings

• Board members concentrate funding on schools located in competitive neighborhoods and in areas that are moderately supportive of the incumbent board member, rather than on uniformly supportive or uniformly opposed neighborhoods.
• The electoral pattern is strongest in on-cycle elections, when parents are a larger share of the electorate and when student performance matters more for electoral outcomes.
• Schools in overwhelmingly opposed or overwhelmingly supportive neighborhoods are less likely to receive modernization dollars, suggesting strategic targeting rather than needs-based or equalizing allocation.

Why This Matters For Policy and Inequality

These findings indicate that local democratic control can produce unequal school investments when elected officials use discretionary funds to maximize electoral returns. The results raise concerns about reliance on locally controlled discretionary programs for equitable school improvement and suggest a role for policy reforms that limit politically motivated targeting of capital resources.

Author and Contribution

Brian T. Hamel provides empirical evidence linking electoral incentives to the micro-level distribution of education finance within a major urban district, advancing understanding of how electoral dynamics shape subnational public goods provision.