The San Diego Union-Tribune spent time at Mountain Empire Unified — a small, rural district in the mountains east of San Diego — to document what facility neglect looks like up close. Sara Hinkley explained why rural districts face a structural disadvantage that goes beyond geography.

“There’s another reason it’s harder for rural districts to pass bonds,” Hinkley told the Union-Tribune. “Rural districts tend to have far less commercial property wealth to draw on for bond revenue than their urban and suburban counterparts, so it costs them more per taxpayer to fund school facilities. It’s not that their voters don’t want to support their schools. It’s that it’s more costly.” CC+S research found that the highest-capacity districts have received nearly eight times the state bond funding per student as the lowest-capacity districts over the life of the program.