Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times wrote a great, yet saddening, column this morning about how his daughter’s school is now asking parents to make up the $180,000 that is expected to be cut from their budget next year.
“I feel more than a little lucky to live in a good neighborhood with a great public school that parents are passionate about,” Lopez writes. “At the same time, I can’t help but think about the impact of budget cuts at schools where there’s not a chance of parents raising anywhere near $180,000.”
Despite its faults, public education has been an equalizing force in the United States for generations. Efforts like these, while understandable, stand to further rub salt in the wounds of school funding inequality and expand the chasm between high-income and low-income schools.
Many schools can’t, or won’t, choose to tax their parents for what was supposed to be a free, high-quality education. They shouldn’t have to. Educating tomorrow’s leaders is a communal responsibility and something that needs to be fixed in the halls of the capitol in Sacramento.
Join with the Right To Learn Campaign in demanding that Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature find a better solution to California’s budget crisis.
Tags: budget, funding, governor, inequality, legislature
April 14, 2008 at 1:42 am
Sadly, I have to say that I’m not too surprised. My school is down by $1.3 million and I’m 99% certain we can’t raise that. Yeah, so I won’t be at this school anymore after this year. Yeah, so it won’t affect me. It doesn’t matter. I hate to see this happening. Sometimes, I DO wonder what we could do…