Neighborhood Schools and Prop. H
We invite you to read this great piece written by Byron Thurber, a San Francisco parent, on the importance of neighborhood schools.
The Case for Neighborhood Schools – from a Parent
Have your children been denied access to your local neighborhood school? Mine have. I have two children who attend a public elementary school in San Francisco. When our oldest was entering kindergarten, we filled out our application forms truthfully, and hoped for the best. The school we were assigned to was not one of our seven choices – we were one of the unlucky twenty percent who got zero of seven choices. The school we got is far from where we live. To try to gain a spot at the neighborhood school that’s two blocks from our home, we went through the “Round Two process”, wait pools, and appeal letters, but to no avail.
The school my children do attend is a nice enough place. But it’s very inconvenient. Getting back and forth each day is an unnecessary burden. We have to drive each way – there is no District bus route from our neighborhood to that school – and both my wife and I work full time. It’s a half hour round trip in the car, which is a waste of money and bad for the environment. For the kids, this lost hour per day is also a waste of precious time; time that could be better spent on homework, family dinner, practicing musical instruments, and getting adequate sleep. Multiply that times the number of families in our situation, and you begin to get the picture.
For the past two years, the Board of Education has been deliberating publicly about how to redesign the Student Assignment System. They heard loud and clear that the current system was confusing, time-consuming, complex, unfair, and a lot of other bad words. I attended most of the Student Assignment System Redesign meetings, both at the Board of Education and at community schools. What I heard from my fellow parents is that while some advocate a random lottery or a socioeconomically weighted system, the vast majority of parents simply want to send their kids to the local neighborhood school, and they want that school to be of high quality. They want Quality Neighborhood Schools For All.
After many long meetings and deliberations, a new Student Assignment System was approved by the Board of Education in March 2010. It replaces the former “Diversity Index”, which is four or five socioeconomic factors that are specific to the applicant’s family, with a single socioeconomic factor: Census Tract Integration Preference or “CTIP”. CTIP gives a student top preference if the student’s home address is in a census tract whose students score in the lowest 20% on standardized tests. This new factor has two serious flaws: first, it’s approximate – it asks “do you live generally near low-scoring students” and not “is your family actually disadvantaged”; and second, it is not all that difficult to “game”. I won’t state exactly how, but you can probably imagine, or read about it in the blogs. In the new Student Assignment System, CTIP trumps local residence for seats in elementary and middle schools, and local residence is completely left out of the high school selection process.
Denying neighborhood kids access to neighborhood schools has bad consequences. Besides driving many families completely out of the system, scattering kids across the City has severe negative impacts for those who stay in the system, as my family has:
- Time, money, and carbon footprint of car trips. Even if you don’t have kids and don’t care about school issues, if you commute during rush hour and you breathe air, think of how much better it would be for traffic and air quality to have all those cars off the road.
- Playdates – the social lives of kids outside school. It’s difficult when none of your schoolmates live anywhere near you; just ask my kids. One of ours recently told my wife, “You know what I don’t like about our neighborhood? No kids live here.” Of course that’s not true, many kids live in our neighborhood, but that’s her impression. And it certainly is true that no kids from her school live in our neighborhood, and no other kids from our neighborhood attend her school. How do you explain that to a kid?
- Informal afterschool care. With two working parents, wouldn’t it be great, if both parents need to work late, to be able to call a trusted neighbor and ask if they can watch your kids until 7:00? We simply cannot do this – one of us needs to rush out of work to pick them up.
- Parental involvement. This is big. When kids attend the neighborhood school, families are much more likely to get involved in PTA, various improvement efforts, and the like. I am guilty of being not very involved in my kids’ school. I attended a few PTA meetings at the beginning, but haven’t kept up because, frankly, it’s too much trouble driving back and forth. I would be much more apt to do so if I could walk a few blocks to the school.
- Community. This is the biggest negative consequence of scattering kids across the City – the lost sense of neighborhood community belonging. In a city whose residents are, in many other aspects, passionate about defining and preserving neighborhood character, doesn’t it seem ironic that the Student Assignment System encourages the opposite? Strong neighborhood attendance at the local school builds community ties that extend beyond parental involvement in many ways, to local parks, shops, restaurants, and other places that families go. Parents and kids can walk the neighborhood together, get to know their neighbors and small business owners, and everyone can look out for one another.
Prop H is promoting a Student Assignment System that places local residence near the top of the list of preference factors – second only to siblings. Increased local attendance in neighborhood schools will build better communities, strengthen parental involvement, make playdates and afterschool care easier, and reduce our carbon footprint. And – in a city with one of the lowest percentages of families with children and one of the highest percentages of private school attendance – it will encourage more San Francisco families to choose public schools.
If you agree, please vote “YES” on Prop H, and help us take the first step towards Quality Neighborhood Schools For All.
- Byron Thurber
Footnote: these remarks were written in spring 2010 at the kickoff for Prop H. Subsequently, Mr. Thurber’s children were accepted off the waitlist in November 2010, and received a spot in their neighborhood school (in their third year of trying). They are now much happier – and wish that other San Francisco families could also have the opportunity to attend their local school.
