The Boston School Committee, once synonymous with fierce resistance to racial integration, took a historic step Wednesday night and threw off the last remnants of a busing system first imposed in 1974 under a federal court desegregation order.
Instead of busing children across town to achieve integration, the plan adopted by the committee is intended to allow more students to attend schools closer to home.
This is a good thing.
But numerous parents and activists complained during a hearing before the committee’s deliberations that the new system would leave some children — mostly black and Hispanic — in the lowest-performing schools.
This is a bad thing but it's not solved by trying to stop the first thing.
It is clear that the funding to schools via property taxes makes for underfunded schools. Obviously places with high property values will be able to spend more on their school systems (and likely have lower density of residents and therefore lower numbers of total students to service). Places with lower incomes and likely higher student density will have less money to spend on schools.
The answer to this problem is clear as day. End the allotment of money via property taxes and replace it with a statewide education fund that distributes money based on student density first, need for improvement (physical and or staffing) second.
That would immediately add needed funds for schools that need it and raise the floor for minimum accepted standards. Schools districts would and should be free to take donations or raise taxes (via referendum) to add more funds to their schools as they see fit. Yes it would still result in "unequal" schools. but "equality" is not going to happen ever. Wherever there is a difference in wealth there will be a difference in "amenities". Deal with it.
The concern here is that bad schools are raised to higher standards and that is entirely possible to do.
