I am a mom with two children in the California PUBLIC SCHOOL system. My wish for 2013 is that ‘Educational Foundations’ be a thing of the past. It should be the first step towards equality in PUBLIC SCHOOL. And it would improve education for all children in the long run.

Education is no longer ‘the great equalizer’, because education looks very different in different school districts. Basically Public School is now a reflection of society, with its own 1% of highly privileged schools, another couple of percent of schools with comfortable levels of extra funding, but the majority desperately and increasingly underfunderfunded.

In the San Francisco Bay Area it is obvious how the disparate resources of different communities are making PUBLIC SCHOOL into it’s own class system.

In Los Altos, an affluent district, the Educational Foundation (http://laefonline.net/donate) asks for $ 1000 per child per year (tax deductible!), resulting in $ 3 million of extra funds that translates into smaller class sizes, music from kindergarten and on, art and school gardens etc.

Meanwhile, there are communities with no Educational Foundation.
Maybe a PTA group that scrambles to buy teachers copy paper. Sometimes not even a PTA, and consequently no art, no music, no extra resources.

It is not democracy, it is not equality, and it is not fair to the majority of children in California.

I don’t want to take anything from any child, but it is not right that children with a rich ‘Educational Foundation’ can have art and music in PUBLIC SCHOOL, while children in a less fortunate district can not have it. It is not about programs held outside of school, after school; It is the same, but not equal, ‘PUBLIC SCHOOL’ looking very different depending on the extra funds that parents are able to contribute. Are we going by what the parents are worth to know what a child deserves, in PUBLIC SCHOOL?

Without Educational Foundations and different parcel taxes, students would be equal, parents would be equal and equally upset with the under funding of schools.

Equality in PUBLIC SCHOOL is the Civil Rights issue of our time. Status quo is wrong. Educational Foundations help individual districts make it better for a few kids, but they are the root of inequality in PUBLIC SCHOOL. They are not working in the interest of the majority of children.

I believe that the undoing of Educational Foundations is the fastest way to get all parents to work for all children, and to improve the quality of the whole PUBLIC SCHOOL system.