Tomorrow night, the school board will be discussing the short-term kindergarten enrollment policy issue (G-1 Revision of Enrollment Policy AR 5116.1 Inf/60). This issue has raised a lot of concern in the Edison district, but appears to not have caught too much fire around the rest of the district.
Mike McMahon’s most excellent website has many of letters that the board members have received on the issue.
The Edison School Neighborhood Network (open to all), has been the primary force in pushing this issue, and should be commended for increasing raising issues that should be raised. I don’t personally agree with their conclusions, and it appears that the group has no consensus conclusions at this point (in fact it seems that there are some pretty diametrically opposed positions in the group), but they have certainly asked the school district to step up their outreach, and the district has done so.
I won’t write another defense of a single-school lottery for cases of over-enrollment (which could happen whether boundaries are shifted, facilities expanded, etc.). Andy Currid’s comment response did a good job of voicing a different opinion for those interested in another take.
Reading through the questions posted on the ESNN site, there seem to be three concerns that come up, Property Values, Neighborhood Schools, and who gets to attend Edison? I’ll discuss these with regards to Edison District, though really the arguments hold for any school.
The three don’t seem to connect very well to the issue of “the lottery.” The argument regarding property values goes like this:
By adding uncertainty to whether one’s child is guaranteed a spot at Edison, property values decline.
This may very much be so. First off, clearly schools affect property values, I don’t know too many who would argue that. But I’m not sure that our educational system is based on creating high property values. Good schools certainly help property values, and so those who are concerned about property values should support creating good schools. But the reverse argument that property values should drive school decisions doesn’t hold much water. No one is arguing that the quality of the school will drop, only that property prices might.
This doesn’t hold either. For the past decades, there has been exactly the same uncertainty about a child’s ability to attend Edison. The existing first-come, first-serve system creates the exact same amount of uncertainty. Things have been certain for families that enrolled while the number of children on the East End had declined, now that there a spike, all of the households in the Edison District have the same amount of uncertainty.
Two of the most touted solutions, re-districting or buffer zones, add certainty to those households that are re-districted into the Edison. Those households that end up in another district are immediately affected by the feared property devaluation.
By randomly choosing families to divert to other schools, walkability and community are negatively affected, and therefore re-districting should work to keep neighbors in the same school.
I’m a big fan of the neighborhood schools. HUGE FAN (see the allcaps? I’m serious). This argument doesn’t work in Alameda’s East End. At the end of the day, there are two parts of the Edison Zone that could be redistricted so as to lower the number of Kindergarteners. Neighborhood 1: The area between Broadway and Park, which would ironically cause households that live a block for them school to travel nearly a mile to Haight school (not many kindergartners will be making this walk, so walkability is out). Neighborhood 2: The area between High and San Leandro Bay, which is the furthest from Edison but even further from Haight School, and ironically, contains a number of key parents in the “no lottery” camp.
The Buffer Zone idea combines these first two ideas, giving certainty of property values and enrollment to a set, small group of households, while adding more uncertainty to those not deemed appropriately close to school and does nothing to address the issue of walkability to schools or keeping kids together with their neighbors.
Who gets to attend Edison? Priority to Owners? Length of residency?
A number of the questions, and comments, on the ESNN address the idea of having people register when they move into Edison’s area, with a couple of comments being made that perhaps owners should receive preference over renters. Beyond the bureaucratic nightmare that maintaining the types of lists, etc. would create, I have to wonder whether Alameda really wants to go down the road of saying that a family that moves into the Edison District in November has fewer rights to attend the public school of their choice, than someone who’s lived in Alameda for 6 years or more.
With property values rising, the more recent arrivals are paying more to schools than long-time residents as it is. Should we also create a tiered system that makes them second-class educational citizens?
I am not attacking the free-flow of ideas that ESNN has developed, it’s great to see the outside-the-box thinking that is going on, and to see the district responding to it. However, I think the ideas themselves need to be thoughtfully discussed. And especially on the “priority” issues for enrollment, we ought to consider exactly how egalitarian we want our school system to be.
On a related side note: Sibling priority is not as fair as an all-in lottery, but I think that a solid case can be made for it. The benefits (keeping families together, reducing the need to drive to school to drop kids off at schools a mile apart, etc) outweigh the negatives (it gives some families priority, though in fact, most families will have two kids, and so the sibling priority will benefit a large majority of families over time, though admittedly not all.)
The issue of school is a big one for parents, I completely respect the urge for parents with the ability to stand in line for 12 – 24 hours to try and maintain that sense of personal control. However, it’s the job of the elected officials on the school board to look out for the interests of all the families and kids in the district and I don’t see how they are doing that if they decide to create an unlevel playing field.
At the end of the day, the district needs to look hard at what appears to be a bubble of enrollment over the next 2-5 years and see if they can increase the facilities at schools that need them, to include all students. But no matter what, they will need a kindergarten enrollment policy for those times when they are caught off-guard by a major spike in enrollment.
If boundaries are changed to address a short-term bubble, ironically, the end-result could be what we’ve seen on the West End, the closing of Edison School for cost savings once enrollment begins to decline, which it will. (The obvious retort is “We’ll just change the boundaries” but of course that gets back to adding a lot of uncertainty to the district)
Hopefully, tomorrow night, the board will move forward with this part of the plan while waiting to dig in deeper into the facility and district boundary discussions that are coming up soon.
I’m sorry John, but the sibling priority as proposed, does not keep families together … it merely keeps some families together.
The school district can not guarantee the siblings of a diverted student the possibility of attending the same school, because no out-of-zone student can be given priority over an in-zone student, sibling or not. If the school to which a student is diverted is at capacity when his younger siblings apply for Kindergarten, those siblings will be diverted to other schools.
The sibling priority only protects the siblings of currently enrolled students. The siblings of diverted students can end up at any number of different schools. This is a huge flaw that must be addressed before any policy is enacted.
This is very confusing, so please allow an example of a family at our preschool. Their eldest son will apply for Kindergarten next year. There’s a good chance he will be diverted as he is the oldest sibling in his family (which is a very real possibility given the proposed enrollment policy and the overcapacity facing a number of schools). He could be diverted to school X. When middle brother applies for Kindergarten, he can not be guaranteed a spot at school X, because they are technically an “out-of-zone” family. The sibling priority does not apply. The second son could be diverted to school Y. Their third son, for all the same reasons, could end up at an entirely different school from the other two. Where is the sibling priority to protect this real family who stand a very good chance of having 3 children in 3 different elementary schools?
This is the problem with the proposed sibling priority.
No one wants to see siblings separated … but we need a policy that protects all siblings, and not just the siblings of currently enrolled students.
John:
Another border change idea would be the strip from Central up to Santa Clara. Why didn’t you suggest that?
Dave,
I think you’re trying to accuse me of hypocrisy, however I had thought that discussion would happen during the long-term/boundary adjustment discussion, not the current discussion and so saw no need for discussing possible boundary shifts.
Thus my comment Hopefully, tomorrow night, the board will move forward with this part of the plan while waiting to dig in deeper into the facility and district boundary discussions that are coming up soon.
I’m not entirely sure that some of the conclusions posed in the hypothetical in comment #1 are entirely accurate. There are a number of variables that would apply in that family’s case, such as Child 1 being offered a spot back at Edison after being diverted, diverted kids, as explained at the Ruby Bridges meeting, have first dibs to return to their “home school.” Thereby trigging the sibling priority at the home school.
I believe another variable would be if the parents of Child 1 chose to keep Child 1 at School X, it was my understanding that the school district would allow the sibling priority to apply for the diverted child’s sibling. Of course, I am basing this on my often faulty memory, but I recall a similar question being asked during the Ruby Bridges meeting. After all, that would be the equitable way of handling an unwanted diversion to another school.
Of course the largest variable of them all is this hypothetical only comes into play if there are more kids enrolled than there are spaces AND if the district can’t add any more capacity to the school to accomodate additional students.
John, you doth protest too much…
In response to Lauren’s comments:
“I believe another variable would be if the parents of Child 1 chose to keep Child 1 at School X, it was my understanding that the school district would allow the sibling priority to apply for the diverted child’s sibling”
I don’t think there is any need to state beliefs, let’s just stick with the text that the District have proposed. You cannot assert sibling priority unless you are resident in the school’s attendance zone. So Child 1 remaining at School X would not be able to assert priority for their younger silbing also wishing to attend School X, unless they moved to be resident within School X’s attendance zone.
Of course, the District (i.e. Mr. Dierking) may wave their hands around and assert that they’d cover this special case. But why are the Board Of Education not holding them to a better standard than this hand-waved crap they keep coming up with?
It’s not that hard to write a document that covers this stuff unambiguously. If I were a Board member, the minimum I would have demanded is that the District go away and come back with a written document that unambiguously describes what their policy actually is. And if the policy doesn’t allow the notional diverted Child 1 in School X to assert sibling priority, hold their feet to the fire and justify why the hell it does not.
Yea verily! Andy for School Board!
I have a suggestion. Since most everyone here is in favor of diversity and affirmative action, let’s do the following: Send approximately one-half of the white students at Edison to other schools in the district, except for Franklin.* Then replace these students with other non-white students taken from other schools in the district (but a 10% fewer number than those sent elsewhere).
This will achieve three things:
1) It will move Edison’s racial profile closer towards Alameda’s overall school profile
2) It will reduce Edison’s enrollment to a manageable number
3) The “lucky” Edison students going to other schools will have the advantage of experiencing more diversity first-hand than their peers remaining at Edison. **
This is effectively what happens in San Francisco’s public schools and, of course, at the University of California. Except it’s the Asian students who are displaced by others. All in the name of diversity, of course.
Since you are mostly enlightened progressives, this plan should pose no problems for you.
* Along with Franklin (~50%), Edison is one of two elementary schools out of ten in Alameda with a majority white student enrollment.
** By far, Edison has the highest white student enrollment of any other Alameda elementary school (~70%)
Pass.