Education

There are certainly others in my position.

I moved three times in my career to have my children in districts where I wanted them to go. It cost me to do so, but I thought the kids were worth it. I didn't expect for people in a district to pay for my kids. That is my responsibility.

Yes, I think I've heard that "personal responsibility" lecture before. Maybe Ayn Rand. "If you loved your daughter more, you'd have worked harder and had more money so you could afford to move when you wanted. Poverty is the result of bad decision making, laziness, etc." Never mind that I had temporary employment status for a full year ("just til desert storm ends&quot . If I loved her more I probably would have had a better job.

Personal attacks on me aside though, I think your post gets to the heart of the structural problems in the public school system. If I can't physically get my daughter to a school in my district, even though I pay taxes, I'm perceived as "stealing" if I want her to be able to attend a public school in another district. And the reason is that those tax dollars are unique in a way other tax dollars aren't. We claim the tax dollars are for the public good, to ensure access to public education for all children.

But what we really mean, on some level, is that we want to ensure access to public education because it helps protect our property values. It's a little bit of an "ours ours ours" mentality. Imagine if other public services were like that. What if I wasn't allowed to drive on roads in other counties because those roads were paid for by those tax dollars. Or if I had an accident and the ambulance checked my residency and then announced they wouldn't transport me because the ambulance service was for their county residents only. Why is "protecting my county's dollars" more important than "making sure all children are able to attend a public school"?

The perception that the tax dollars are about protecting community resources is THE biggest structural problem in the public education system. It's what causes the gross inequalities among districts that allow one district in a rich area to have indoor swimming pools, state of the art technology centers, and so on, while leaving those in poor districts trying to function in buildings that don't even have electricity on all floors. When we talk about the cycle of poverty and how low class mobility is, it's in large part because of schools being funded based on local property values, and the rich areas being able to afford millages to raise sometimes obscene amounts of money for luxuries, while the schools dealing with a legacy of underfunded maintenance problems can't raise the funds to get to a decent level.

I do think the public education system needs an overhaul in that regard (unrelated to NCLB shit that I abhor). It needs an overhaul so that resources are equitable and public schools are open to the public, not to a public that is restricted to those who are able to afford to live by a good school (or in my case a school near where they work).

Anyway, I know you don't intent it as a compliment, but I do appreciate that you find the way we are operating to be outstanding enough to be called "magical." Coming from someone who hates the charter schools, it does mean something that you describe our school that way.