Reply to RHEE-SULTS: A LITTLE RED MEAT FOR THOSE senti-MENTAL Rhee/Kaya supporters... ENJOY!! Fight Back!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]
Do you think a school system should focus on educating children? Or on righting all the wrongs of society? People often point to the per pupil spending in DCPS as evidence of its wastefulness. But that's not really fair when in reality it's both a shitty school system and a shitty social services system.
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You seem to be promoting a socio-economic based version of "The Plan" in which poor people are somehow swept out of the District, leaving it to the gentrifiers. Given the likely race of the poor, that's not far from the original "The Plan". Rather than running the poor out, why not try to lift them up so that they are not poor? I can't remember all of the details, but in one of the school reform plans that the Council approved, there were plans for wrap-around services to be provided at schools. Things like health clinics and adult education that would make the schools a hub for addressing a host of neighborhood needs. Not all of those programs need to be run by the schools and their purpose is not to provide employment, but to deal with actual needs. It seems like a reasonable idea to at least test.
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Actually, no I don't propose to sweep all poor people out of the District. What I propose is to allow the percentage of poor people living in DC to fall to some number higher than, but comparable to, the suburbs. It should be a policy goal of the DC government to ensure that people of *all* socioeconomic levels are represented in DC. It should not be the policy goal of the DC government to fight to make DC the jurisdiction of choice for the poorest of the poor and the homeless.

You say, "why not try to lift them up so that they are not poor?" But we do that.  The dynamic currently is that we fund lots of services, and those services have real benefits. The children of the poor go to school and get educated. They grow up and get jobs. And then, largely, they move to the suburbs and pay lots of taxes. Those who "fail to launch" stay here in the District and are supported by DC taxpayers. People who fall through the cracks while living in MD and VA move into the District to take advantage of the more generous benefits (or move in with their elderly DC-resident parents). And the cycle continues.

DC spends enormous amounts of cash on poor DC residents. Some of those residents make good, get jobs, and move to the suburbs. Then they pay taxes in MD or VA. Some MD and VA residents fall out of the middle-class. So they move to DC and add to the social burden. Ironically DC's social programs get a lot of criticism because "they don't work!" After all the poverty numbers never seem to fall. But "DC's poor" are not static. The people who make up that group are constantly changing.

In a place like Chicago or NYC, the city is economically integrated with the suburbs. People in the city pay state taxes. People in the suburbs pay state taxes. And social services are largely funded through state and federal spending. In DC there is no economic integration between DC and its suburbs. The suburbs win to the extent that they can make DC "the place where all the poor people live." It's akin to residents of Wards 1-6 arguing that they shouldn't have any responsibility towards the poor in Wards 7 and 8 because, after all, the poor are citizens of Wards 7 and 8. Therefore they're not the responsibility of the wealthier wards.

If I have a Plan it's that at some point the region's poor will be more evenly distributed between the various jurisdictions so that DC's demographic profile looks similar to (but not exactly like) that of its neighbors.

[img]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0AuPLqI8p4QJgdDc0MWkwazJDWTJJV2pUREY1RERLYXc&oid=1&zx=nn3vh9acuv50[/img][/quote]

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