Letters to the Editor
September 26, 2003
Supply and Demand
DEAR EDITOR: I am an active parent and serve on the School Site Council at two San Francisco public schools where my children attend.
The recent parents’ protest (“Parents Keep Kids Out of First Day of School,” Aug. 28) is symptomatic of deep underlying problems with public schooling in the city.
On the one hand, the school district must allocate a limited number of student slots to the “more desirable” schools in the most equitable manner possible, while staying within the court-mandated “consent decree,” which requires diversity balance within the schools.
On the other hand, parents are highly motivated to place their children in the more desirable schools in competition with more children than these schools can accommodate.
The result is a perennial scramble for scarce space in the district’s annual lottery for the more desirable schools and the resulting protest by disaffected parents whose children did not get assigned to one of these coveted slots.
In an ideal world, all parents have genuine choice of schools either because there are plenty of openings at the more desirable schools or because all schools are of top quality.
In the real world, however, the underlying economic principle of supply and demand appears to be at work. Here, the demand for the more desirable schools far outstrips the supply of such schools. Hence, the mad dash for the limited supply of student slots at these more desirable schools.
One solution is to build and staff new, quality schools to meet the demand, particularly in the neighborhoods where there is greatest demand (and oftentimes where the protesting parents reside).
For the present, though, this rather idealistic proposal is highly unlikely to occur given limited budgets and recessionary economic times.
And given the recent allegations of fiscal mismanagement and of millions of dollars embezzled or misspent, it is questionable whether even in good economic times the school district can build anything new in the foreseeable future.
Even now, it remains to be seen if the school district can regain the public trust in order to have the proposed $230 million bond issue approved in the upcoming November election for even the limited purpose of repair and maintenance of decades-old existing structures.
A more limited solution, as suggested by many, is to improve the quality of various schools throughout the district. This is a more practical solution. And if voters pass the proposed bond issue, an improved teaching and learning environment may be more readily brought about.
Even so, no school district can control the quality of the student body. That issue is better addressed by parents who oversee the education of their children. As some parents become disgruntled with the public school system, they are more likely to opt out of the public school system entirely and to send their children to parochial or other private schools.
The practical effect is a reduction in the number of quality students, thereby making it that much more difficult to maintain well-balanced quality schools. Thus, until the number of quality students increase, even better schools, teachers and curricula may not be the complete solution.
The missing ingredient, despite all the rhetoric against the school district, is the vital role which parents have to play in monitoring their children’s educational progress and in doing their part to improve the schools where their children are attending, regardless of whether the reputed status of that particular schools is more desirable or not.
John S. Chang
San Francisco
Action, Not Words
DEAR EDITOR: Thank you for your cover article on the neighborhood school issue (“Parent Group Fights for Neighborhood Schools,” Sept. 18). When individuals such as San Francisco school board member Eric Mar use terms such as “institutionalized racism” and make assertions such as “Should the diversity index be dismantled, more affluent students would be in much better schools, and the low-income APA and minority students would be in the absolute worst schools,” we should all be concerned.
Any parent with common sense would want their kids to go to the school closest to their home and want that to happen because they care about their kids. Mar has chosen to play the blame-somebody, affluent vs. non-affluent, race-card game. This is a cheap way to sound like one cares about the situation; however, it is an unproductive and divisive game to play. Schools are good partly because of the core of families supporting them — that support comes from neighborhoods.
Notwithstanding Mar’s attempt to make this an “us vs. them” issue, I am sure that parents and students on both the East and the Westsides would prefer to go to school in their own neighborhood. That should be Mar’s first priority.
Matt Mitguard
San Francisco
Initiate Racial Privacy
DEAR EDITOR: I read your newspaper regularly and I am getting a bit annoyed at Emil Guillermo’s continuous references to Asians being APAs. I am a Filipino American, only if one asks, and a United States citizen. I am not an APA, or any other PA. I dislike being lumped together with other groups who have hardly any similarity with my racial origin other than the fact that we originated from a geographical area called Asia which is located in the Pacific Ocean.
I will vote for Prop. 54 since it is about time we stop to continuously try to divide this country between whites, blacks, browns, yellows, reds and greens.
I will also vote for [Arnold] Schwarzenegger, even if I can hardly spell his family name correctly, since Gov. Gray Davis is more concerned with raising money from labor unions and other vested interests and has no clue on how to cure the economic problems of the state. People cannot find jobs and all Davis cares about is preserving his job. That job must be a gold mine!
Conrado F. Suzara
San Francisco
Comments
Got something to say?