As tough economic times spread from coast to coast, a glance at the evening news offers images of hardship and despair. Down-on-their-luck workers standing in unemployment lines; small businesses shuttered; foreclosure notices on house after house. But here's another sorry sign of the times: more schools slamming doors shut to keep certain children out.
For ages, some high-performing, elite school systems have hired border guards and sleuths to detect and deter kids sneaking across the district lines to attend their schools. It's one of the ugliest features of American public education. And the recession is making it worse by slamming more doors, sometimes in really nasty ways.
Just last week, a Clayton County (Georgia) mother and her brother-in-law were convicted of felony misrepresentation because the mother allegedly moved in with her sister in nearby Henry County in order to enroll her son in a Henry County high school. The court ordered Mom to pay back $1,200 in school fees, amongst other things. Clayton County has been bleeding students since last fall when it lost accreditation. But instead of picking itself up and dusting itself off, the county government is determined to sequester students in Clayton's failing schools--and arrest parents trying to do right by their children.
Then there's Beverly Hills School District in sunny California. Yes, that Beverly Hills. For many years, they offered a variety of "opportunity" permits to students living outside the district, in part to encourage greater socioeconomic diversity in their schools. Until now, the district has received approximately $6,000 in state aid per out-of-boundary student. But Beverly Hills is about to become one of California's "basic aid" districts, like other wealthy enclaves such as Palo Alto, Montecito, and Carmel, meaning that it will receive minimal dollars from state coffers. And guess what: Non-resident students parents are starting to be called "freeloaders." The district has already decided to issue no new permits; now it's contemplating kicking out permit students already enrolled.
As John Edwards might have said, it doesn't have to be this way. Consider Arizona, which boasts one of the best "open enrollment" programs in the land. There, kids may attend any school in the entire state. (There are, admittedly, practical geographic and school capacity limitations to this arrangement.) And, importantly, state dollars follow kids to their new schools. As a result, schools in financially-strapped Mesa, for example, are competing for students as a way to raise revenue and closet budget shortfalls. In other words, Arizona's system encourages schools to open their doors to non-residents, rather than shut them.
Budgets are only bound to get tighter. States should incentivize districts to serve as many children as they can, regardless of their zip code. Public education is meant to be just that: public. Such policies might even bring some happier images to the evening news.
