Reply to Kaya Leaving; John Davis in as interim

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Reply to "Kaya Leaving; John Davis in as interim"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that the problem with the boundary review process that Abigail Smith presided over was that it was far too susceptible to objections that were based on individual rather than collective interest. The idea that people's personal real estate choices must be validated by the education system was outrageous to me then and it remains outrageous now. When you buy a particular house, you assume certain things, but they are not guarantees. That a particular school will ALWAYS be tied to a particular address is a ridiculous assumption, and the idea that that is a "right" is even more ridiculous.

The system we have now sets up enclaves of success that motivated students hope to get into, while leaving an educational quality desert surrounding them. If posters want to sit there and pretend that their objections to things like boundary revisions that redistrict people from Deal to Hardy or the construction of homeless shelters in boundary for a high performing elementary are NOT motivated by person reasons, frankly, I don't believe you.[/quote]

You send your children to a low-performing school and work tirelessly to solve problems within the school thst are impossible for the school to solve, right?[/quote]

PP here. For starters, yes, I send my child to our inbounds school that is low performing and volunteer there in a variety of ways that solves some of the problems. For example, if the problem is that the school needs to have a supply of uniforms for children who can't afford them or forget them at home, that is a problem I can solve by raising money to buy a supply of uniforms. If the problem is that the school needs volunteers to supervise field trips or recess, that is a problem I can solve using my own time and the time of others who I recruit.

But also, like the PP said, you are missing my point, which was that improving a dysfunctional system requires contributions AND sacrifices from everyone participating in that system. I don't know how to fix the system, but what I do know is that at this point, most elementary schools are pronounced to be "acceptable" in preschool at the very least and there are not enough out of bounds spaces for every high achieving child to flee their local school. Something has to change, and refusing to even consider kinds of change that would require disruption of certain kinds of status quo is crazy to me.

What is the solution? I don't know, but I would guess that it starts with considering all ideas in depth before discarding any of them. I'm as unthrilled as the next person about a citywide lottery, but if a citywide lottery caused schools to improve, that's something I'd learn to live with. We have charter parents responding to concerns about long commutes saying, "If you were really committed to the school, you'd have no problem making the trip." I feel similarly about high quality public education.[/quote]

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