Issue of Equity

Issue of Equity

The Seattle School District is preparing to end its school choice program, which has allowed parents to send their kids to any school in town which has room, with the school district providing free busing. The fiscally-challenged district is trying to save money by axing the busing which costs $3 million a year.

But they're going beyond that and ending school choice altogether, even for parents who want to drive their own kids to school:

Chief Academic Officer Steve Wilson has dismissed the idea of allowing elementary parents to transport their children themselves to schools outside their cluster. "The haves get to do something and the have-nots do not," Wilson said. "That's a serious equity issue."

Well yes, but the "haves" who are unhappy with their neighborhood school have the options of moving to the nicest neighborhoods, bailing out of the school district for private school, or leaving Seattle for communities with better public schools. Indeed, these are options, unlike providing one's own transportation, that are available only to the haviest of the haves.

So by its brainless attempt to preserve "equity", the school district is only increasing inequity in access to education. More of the families who are faced with the prospect of either moving or going to private school will leave Seattle altogether, leaving the "have nots" captive to a school district where even the Chief Academic Officer appears to be an idiot.