$113 Million

The stark figure in today's San Francisco Chronicle, related to school funding: $113 million. That's the projected deficit over the next two years for the San Francisco Unified School District. They predict that class sizes will inevitably increase to help make up the difference.

I'm pretty sure that a big part of the problem in this particular city is that not enough rich people give a damn about public schools. Those with the real financial clout are usually sending their kids to private schools (and paying an arm and a leg for them). $113 million over two years? "Not so bad--just reduce administrative costs, fire a few incompetent teachers..."

No. The difference won't be made up so painlessly. That much I'm sure about. Teachers will be paying for their classroom supplies out of their own pockets (the ones that can afford to do this) or the kids in these more-and-more-crowded classrooms will be going without.

And the kids in poorer neighborhoods will have to make do with even less. Two other depressing numbers in today's paper: $170,000 versus $21,000. That's the difference between what schools in richer communities in California receive in the way of donations, versus what the schools in impoverished areas receive.

What should be done? How to shake people out of their apathy? What if we passed a law saying that anyone who lives in San Francisco has to spend at least 10 hours in a public school in an impoverished neighborhood? Not so that these public schools will receive volunteer assistance--no, the visitors might be more of a burden for the hosts than a welcome presence. But at least, everyone should know what these less-well-off schools are really like, even in a rich city like San Francisco.

I do speak from some experience (not much, I'll admit), having worked as a teacher's aide for a year and a half in a poorer neighborhood in the City. It was an exhausting job, even though I only worked there part-time. It was also appalling to see what kind of conditions these kids were asked to learn in.

On the upside--these kids were wonderful. I've never heard so many cheerful voices saying my name in greeting as I did at this school, and I never will again. The classrooms I worked in were a mini United Nations, with about fifteen different nationalities represented; and though it would be wrong to say all these different nationalities and ethnicities mingled perfectly, it would also be wrong to say that the kids from different backgrounds did not respect each other on a basic level.

This is perhaps what breaks my heart the most when I think about the current imbalances in our funding for education: that these kids who had the least, of all the kids I've ever worked with, were the most generous in their outlook towards each other, and, in many instances, towards the adults in their lives. Where are they all now? And where are they sending their children to school?