Robert Reich: How a Wealthy California Town Makes Sure No Poor Kids Attend Its 'Public' School

[MissB]

98. School funding is not fair. Period. (Really long)

Our state has a school funding equalization mechanism. The district that I live in sees most of its property tax based educational money leave the district. That's fair but it still doesn't create equal schools.

When my oldest turned 5, I looked around at the nearby school. Our neighborhood school was a language immersion school. I think that's a fine idea but DH and I had no desire to immerse our kids in this particular language. We could send our kid to a nearby school that was inline with our values (environmental slant). Living in a large school district (at the time) meant we could fairly easily transfer within the district to any school.

But that one - environmental- was expecting 32 kindergarteners that fall. And they had no art teacher, no PE teacher, a librarian only 2 days a week and no music program. Their language instruction was via videotape. I said hell no.

Dh found us a house in a nearby small district. The district is within a certain neighborhood's boundary. My oldest had a class size of 11 for kindergarten and a year later my youngest had a class size of 17. Full time art, music, PE and foreign language teachers. Full time librarian and counselor.

My house isn't upscale. I've often described it as my high-priced hovel. Luckily dh and I are into fixer uppers, even if we have to live in a house constantly in transition (or in disrepair depending on which part of the house you are looking at.)

The average income in the district is six figures, which includes a range of really rich folks to ordinary upper-middle class folks who still rely on a paycheck. It was a stretch for us to move here, but it was the choice we made.

So we are part of the problem. Dh and I were unwilling to sacrifice our kids' education. We didn't want private schools, so we naively selected the best public school we could find in the area and found a house that we could (at the time) barely afford. We were thrilled to find parents that really cared to be involved in their kids' education. We didn't think about whether it was fair or not that we could afford a house in the neighborhood. We were just happy to move to a quieter neighborhood with tons of kids within earshot. We didn't look at the demographics closely to see that there were no kids receiving a free or reduced lunch.

This district is public, but you have to live within the boundaries, receive a transfer from another district or pay tuition. The district has been accused of being quasi-private because of this.

Our school makes up the difference between what the state provides as a fair funding number (all tax monies collected, divided by number of students in state etc) by receiving donations from a foundation. The foundation is private, and families are encouraged to donate annually. The amount of the requested donation is not insignificant.

But what we get for that is: small class sizes. Nearly 100% of high school teachers with master degrees. Excellent test scores. A great college prep high school with a close to 100% graduation rate.

How do we make that fair for other students in the state? I truly don't know the answer (short of pulling a bunch of money from the military-industrial complex.) All kids deserve a fine education. Just like all kids deserve a safe neighborhood to live in, a reliable roof over their heads, and enough food to eat. Until we hit those marks as a society, folks with the means to do so will find a way to provide the best education they can for their kids.

All that being said, I'm utterly appalled by the actions of the district in the article. We've had some kids in the district that were kids of live-in help. I saw first hand how the district's schools made it as easy as possible for those kids to attend the schools with as little hassle as possible.