Long Island, New York, including Nassau and Suffolk Counties, is a patchwork of small ethnically, racially, and economically segregated towns organized into 126 school districts. School funding patterns and problems conform to racial, ethnic, and class lines. Predominantly minority school districts generally have higher property tax rates, fewer commercial properties, lower per-pupil spending, and the least satisfactory academic performance as measured by standardized tests. During the last decade, active anti-tax, anti-government, conservative political groups, elected officials, and school boards have emerged in a number of Long Island communities. These groups tend to oppose increased school funding, but support the local property tax system because it allows for greater local control over spending and tax rates. In many communities, the overwhelming issue is the objection to paying to educate "other people's children." Support for costly microdistricts (taxpayers are also opposed to district consolidation) and local control over schools on Long Island is also a result of deep racial and class division. The system that promotes inequalities in education reflects the desire of relatively affluent predominantly White and Asian communities to avoid responsibility for problems in neighboring communities where students are largely African American and Latino. The situation on Long Island has national significance, in that the pattern and politics of Long Island's public school system may well be replicated on a broader scale. In this unjust system, school funding that wins majority support denies equal education to minority children. (Contains 45 references.) (SLD)