Gated Neighborhoods in Nice Suburbs

Parent Cafe
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<p>BlahDeBlah, You my not have seen the results of all the Abbott funding, but it was sent your way. Leaking roofs and ancient furnaces and trailers are common in my suburban district, too. No pool here. So no swim team. We have traffic cones keeping kids out of certain playgrounds because the ancient bricks are crumbling and falling off the building. Yes, the schools are LITERALLY crumbling. So Kluge, welcome to my reality: the suburbs are being bled dry. BlahDeBlah’s school wasn’t a beneficiary, so…</p>

<p>Did the money get ‘lost?’ No. It lines the pockets of the poverty-pimps. New, hi-tech schools HAVE been built in Abbott districts. Sounds as if BDB was stuck in one of the more nasty schools. </p>

<p>Wanting equal education is a good thing. Liberals have no monoploy on that goal. However, throwing millions at failing districts will not magically achieve that it.</p>

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<p>Allmusic: You might be interested in all the great music programs available to Newark kids. Tons of partnerships with NJPerforming Arts Center. A performing arts magnet h.s. Many, many professional/school partnerships are happening, mostly due to professional musicians (lots of Jazz artists & dancers) reaching out to Newark kids. Lots of funding is national. Free private lessons with instruments provided. I don’t believe the Abbott decisions had anything to do with these successful initiatives.</p>

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<p>“No one said that the Abbott money was being spent wisely - just that it is being spent.”</p>

<p>FF, keep posting if you have time. As a NJ resident I’m so used to corruption & waste, that I sometimes become complacent. Your fiance’s experiences are well worth sharing.</p>

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<p>Those initiatives sound fantastic, Stickershock. Is the funding private, or from what sources? What terrific opportunities!</p>

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<p>So basically you’re saying that if I had a horse in this race – a horse whose speed I cared about more than anything else in the world – then I’d be better able to judge whether the race is fair for all the horses?</p>

<p>If anything, I suspect the opposite is true.</p>

<p>We seem to be bunching many problems together that are in fact separate problems. Corruption and the waste it causes is one problem. Trying to fix failing schools by throwing money at them, without doing anything more, is a second. But I’m really focusing on the third, unequal resources, which is an independent issue. What I’m hearing from posters around the country is that a couple of states that have tried to address the third problem have messed up the job and become mired in the first two. But that doesn’t mean that the third problem isn’t a big problem, or that we should stop trying to fix it.</p>

<p>In other words, yes, it’s a very bad thing for a bunch of taxpayer money to go to a electronics system that no one can use. But it’s also a very bad thing for Fairfield Academy to have only 17 1990’s-era computers for its 700+ students, so that my co-workers and I had to come in and put tens of thousands of our charity dollars into what every suburban school in the state rightly considers basic infrastructure. That’s outrageously unfair to the kids in the 485 remaining Chicago public elementary schools that don’t have a corporate law firm looking out for them. I don’t believe that resource starvation and rampant waste are the only two possibilities for operating inner city schools. But in my state, we can’t even begin a conversation about how to improve the schools wisely because the teachers at Fairfield are literally paying for their own chalk. Without reform of the funding system, there just isn’t anywhere to begin.</p>

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<p>Hanna posted: “So basically you’re saying that if I had a horse in this race – a horse whose speed I cared about more than anything else in the world – then I’d be better able to judge whether the race is fair for all the horses?
If anything, I suspect the opposite is true.”</p>

<p>Which puts me in mind of the sampler my mother stitched for me when I was pregnant with my first child and knew absolutely everything there was to know. It said “with the pitter patter of little feet come one hundred thousand words to eat.” It didn’t take long after childbirth to learn how true it was and remains.</p>

187

<p>I don’t have any doubt that parents prioritize the needs of their own children ahead of what may be best for American children in general. That’s fine. But I don’t feel that this quality confers on you the unique ability to create wise public policy. </p>

<p>There’s a reason that they put the President’s kids in the nuclear bunker along with him when war is threatened. If he were worried about his kids’ fates, he might prioritize their safety ahead of the best strategy for defending everyone. I think a much milder version of the same phenomenon may be at work here.</p>

<p>I don’t claim to know what’s best for your child. I’m talking about public policy across thousands of children, about the future electorate and future workforce. An overwhelming investment in one kid’s outcome is, at best, not a preresquisite for an informed opinion on that topic.</p>

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<p>I call it the “Never say Never” rule of parenting.</p>

<p>I know for a fact, that I have done many of the things I said I would <em>never</em> do when I was a parent. So, there ya go.</p>

189

<p>Hana, I happen to agree, 100%, with you last paragraph. And of Bush putting the girls in the bunker, as opposed to on the battle field in Iraq.</p>

190

<p>Have I made any predictions in this thread about what I would do as a parent? Has any other poster?</p>

191

<p>Hanna, the parents are saying that you, too, have picked a horse in this race. With comments like this, “…all that richly deserved Lake Forest money isn’t thrown away on kids in East St. Louis,” you paint parents who are advocated for their own kids as selfish people who care nothing about underprivleged kids. Abbott districts in NJ get ALL their funding from the state. My district relies primarily on property taxes. Twice as much is spent on the Abbott kids as mine. I’d call that outrageously unfair. </p>

<p>You state that “every suburban school in the state” has a basic computer infrastructure in place that the inner city schools can only attain through charity. Do you really know that EVERY suburban kid is getting what he needs? I can tell you that NJ kids are not. A 1990’s era computer isn’t uncommon in the suburbs, trust me.</p>

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<p>AllMusic: They are funded in a variety of ways. Nat’l Endowment for the Arts, NJ arts funding, donations. Suburban parents such as myself, with extremely musical kids, sit and drool. We’re not eliglible (even if we were willing to pay the cost.) I’m thrilled for the kdis who can take advantage, don’t get me wrong. But middle-class suburbanites like us are largely left to fend for ourselves & seek out music enrichment opportunities. My family does, and we make music a priority in our home. But quality arts programs are very hit or miss in NJ public school districts.</p>

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<p>One more post on computers in the schools: At a technology orientation at our local elementary school, I sat with my friend who is a MIS/IT exec. (Or whatever it’s called nowadays.) After the presentation he turned to me and said, “I don’t know what is sadder…How lame the technology is, or how proud of it they are.”</p>

194

<p>My “horse” is for all the horses to cross the finish line ready to keep running. If you consider that a bias, the same way feeding one horse oats and the other horse straw is a bias, then so be it. We differ.</p>

<p>The last paragraph in my post #185 refers specifically to Illinois. I should have said “99% of suburban schools,” since there are a couple of segregated towns whose kids are just as deprived as the ones at Fairfield.</p>

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<p>Well, the wealthiest suburban districts in Illinois get three times as much as the poorest districts in East St. Louis. (Edit: 3 times as much in high school; 4 times as much in elementary school.)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=15556[/url]”>http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=15556&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If you are as outraged by that as you are by the Abbott situation, then I take back the implication that you would be a lot less angry if your kids were the ones getting the Olympic pool.</p>

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<p>Hanna stated: “I don’t claim to know what’s best for your child. I’m talking about public policy across thousands of children, about the future electorate and future workforce. An overwhelming investment in one kid’s outcome is, at best, not a preresquisite for an informed opinion on that topic”</p>

<p>Which is a totally, completely valid point of view, but there is more to the picture than just that. I believe most people would agree with you and aspire to that outcome. It’s the getting there that’s the problem. There really is a tipping point at which the rights of the hardworking, middle class people are trampled on and their quality of life damaged. You can only tax so much and you can only take so much, especially with no accountability as is so often the case, before people become resentful and angry. The taxes that support public schools are part of a much larger picture than just educating kids. There’s also the point of personal responsibility at many levels. I respect your opinion completely, but I think your focus is narrower than some others.</p>

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<p>Hanna, I have the utmost respect for you and your abilities, but you need to live in NJ to understand what’s going on. I live in a town which is about one step higher socio-economically than the Abbot districts, but because we’re not one, our per pupil spending is half what theirs is. We do not have the money to raise taxes any further to change that. Our students feel the lack. So do the students in the ABbot districts, because the money is not going to them. They do have more art programs, pools (we don’t have any) etc, than we do, but not nearly enough to account for that rate of spending. We have loads and loads of low income, minority kids in our system, whose parents are paying taxes that do not go to help their kids.</p>

<p>I deplore unequal spending like what you describe in other areas of the country, but I can’t change that, and that’s not what’s happening here.</p>

<p>I don’t feel “bled dry” but I do think it’s a dang shame that all that money seems to be disappearing. I don’t see anyone really benefiting. and I know that a lot of people who do feel “bled dry” will leave the state, to everyone’s detriment.</p>

<p>It’s really an untenable situation.</p>

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<p>I see what you’re talking about. My focus is definitely narrower; that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to tease out the various threads of corruption, waste, incompetent decision-making by public leaders, etc. Most of the time any given system has so many entangled problems that it’s hard to even tell what you’re really fighting against (or for).</p>

<p>I’m now in a tax bracket where you couldn’t avoid caring about government waste if you tried. I’ve actually seen a lot of improvement in the government of Chicago over my lifetime (although we had a heck of a long way to go), and that’s one of the reasons that I am focused on trying to change the schools here. Middle-class flight has been operating in reverse for over a decade, and it’s bringing a mix of more empowered voters into the picture (as well as spreading the tax burden more evenly), and they’ve demanded and gotten more magnet schools, more political accountability, among other things. This comes full circle into the original topic of the thread…when those better-educated and better-off families are living in the city as well as outside, they bring middle-class demands with collateral benefits for others. I hope it keeps going.</p>

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<p>“This comes full circle into the original topic of the thread…when those better-educated and better-off families are living in the city as well as outside, they bring middle-class demands with collateral benefits for others. I hope it keeps going.”</p>

<p>With that, I can totally agree. It is exactly why we decided to put our gifted child into an inner city high school. The opportunities are, quite simply, without equal. Not just public money, but private money as well. MIddle class schools don’t get those grants and donations and volunteers on the private level, either. Which sucks to me because what we’re saying to the hardworking people who do the right thing is that we’re going to make your success that much harder and put your interests behind those of the unions, the bureaucrats, and the members of the community who don’t do the right thing.</p>

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<p>In California we have a state-wide funding system. All the property tax money goes to Sacramento, and then is shipped back to the school districts under a formula that was designed to address different cost issues. It was based on a court decision which said that since the state constitution guarantees the right to a public school education for all children, and also guaranteed equal protection of law, it was illegal to provide less money to educate the kids who lived in poor districts than those who lived in wealthy ones. Add in Prop. 13 and a lot of politics since then and it’s kind of a mess at this point, but the basic system is designed to provide a little more money for schools with “special needs” and less for those that don’t face as many challenges. I live in one of the latter areas, and our schools get less funding than pretty much everywhere else in the state.</p>

<p>But we’ve got computers and sports teams and band and all the other good stuff, because we can raise extra cash from the affluent parents, and we pass local bonds to build and renovate the structures. So our kids end up with more money being spent on them anyway – not a problem. I’ve been to schools in the poorer areas of Northern California, and despite getting more state funding they have fewer resources. We’ve built new pools at both of our local high schools with little or no state money. Obviously that’s a problem in less affluent areas. </p>

<p>The problem with trying to have a rational policy-level discussion about schools is that they are visible targets for every conceivable grievance. If a private company hires some incompetent middle managers, but there’s enough people working there who have just enough on the ball that the company manages earn enough profit to survive, nobody notices. In fact, that’s a pretty fair description of most of America’s businesses. That’s not an indictment or a criticism, just an observation that there is inefficiency and less-than perfect execution of work responsibilities everywhere - that’s just human nature. </p>

<p>But if a school principal is less-than-ideal the parents of the kids at that school are understandable unhappy about it. And yes, parents are not the most rational of creatures when it comes to things involving their own kids (Trust me - I spent years coaching and serving on the board of a Little League!) There is waste, fraud and inefficiency in every budget, and in every organization. Every business, every governmental agency - heck - every household. But the schools, as a local governmental agency dealing with people’s children, are put under a microscope and held to a standard that few businesses or other entities could meet, either. And the failure to meet that standard in any particular is then used as an excuse to attack the institution as a whole.</p>

<p>And that’s what you’re seeing in this thread. If you point out a general, policy based aspect of the situation, you get buried in outraged cries of how incompetent and corrupt the school officials are in whatever neck of the woods the venting posters live in. And there’s undoubtedly some truth to what they say, because (repeat after me) there’s waste, fraud and inefficiency in every economic organization. And the less an individual actually knows about the actual workings of that organization the more certain and emphatic their opinion will be about how badly they are run. Oddly, you rarely hear those cries of outrage from anyone who actually has detailed personal knowledge of the budget decisions and how they are made instead of just isolated anecdotes. In many cases the military’s $200 hammers and $800 toilet seats actually make sense if you understand where the $200 figure comes from; but if you don’t, it’s just a stupid $200 hammer. And the anecdotes will be true, because there is waste, fraud and ineff… well, you get the idea. Schools are imperfect. Parents should work with them to make them as good as can reasonably be expected. But they never will be perfect, and they never will satisfy all parents.</p>

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<p>Zoosermom (and others): In the school district that I lived in for middle and high school, every high school in the district - no matter how rich or poor - had a magnet program of some sort. The magnets ranged from math/science/tech, to aviation, to law and public policy, to public safety. And you could either go to your home school, or apply to any other school’s magnet. The nice thing about the magnets was that they meant that every school brought in some decent resources (both from the government and from outside entities with an interest in that particular magnet). Do you think that such a system would help with the funding inequities that you cite while still helping out schools in poor neighborhoods?</p>