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Comment by birdymcbird | Hacker News Reader

‘The system is only failing black and hispanic students.’

What is “the system”? you mean to say the school is racist or unfair to black kids..hispanic kids? who is responsible in your opinion?

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Outside of the funding issue, most of this comes down to socioeconomic status and cultures of ethic groups. For example, a student in a wealthy household might be given support and the space to not have any other responsibility outside of academic achievement while a student in a lower income household might be expected to contribute to their household by doing more domestic chores and child/elder care. The student in the later situation will obviously have less free time for studying but, perhaps the more damaging aspect, may also be less engaged at school because they already have a mountain of responsibilities at home.

6 hours a day, 5 days a week, in class is plenty of time to learn math. Far more than enough.

That's undoubtedly true, but time alone isn't enough. Achievement in poorer schools is lower as well; in some schools the only math that students really care about is decreasing their odds of being assaulted between classes, and doing well in class (esp math) isn't helping those odds

If you've had enough food, enough sleep, etc.

None of which you can take for granted in the lower socioeconomic areas.

The poor aren't starving in America. Besides, they get the free school lunch.

I don’t think your realize just how out touch you sound. If you grew up in a well-off family where a traditional work ethic is highly valued, I can see how easy it is to arrive at a simplification like this. Getting a menial free lunch does not fix the other problems a student may face when going home, whether that be the parents not able to feed their children properly or maybe they are in an overcrowded house with no space of their own. This family may not have access to health care outside of the most basic of services and similarly, maintenance on their vehicles because they can’t afford that and to eat that month.

Maintaining government benefits quickly becomes a full time job because of arcane requirements written by uncaring people. Those in poverty might find themselves disincentivized from seeking higher paying work due to the “welfare cliff” where once the make over X amount, benefits start to go away. In some cases, if they suddenly make nothing (as if they’ve just lost a job or had hours cut), healthcare benefits are yanked away just when they need it most.

It’s very easy to see this as a moral failing, but if you’ve not lived through this situation, you cannot possibly understand the toll that poverty takes on you both physically and mentally. The truth, like with most things, is more complicated.

The current public school system does not work. My proposal won't solve every problem. But it will do much better.

> Besides, they get the free school lunch.

IF their parents filed a bunch of paperwork--which presupposes the time, literacy and desire to do so. Children don't get to choose their parents.

This is one of the reasons why making school lunches a standard part of school (they're not "free" as they're just part of the budget) is so important.

People dunk on the public schools, but, if there was anything that the webcam schooling of Covid lockdowns showed us, it's that the home lives of a LOT of children in lower socioeconomic areas are really terrible (and also how bad the home lives of a lot of children who nominally aren't in lower socioeconomic areas--but that's a totally different discussion). The fact that public schools tended to provide an oasis in the middle of that chaos became terribly apparent.

As long as you want to do it

Teenagers aren't really aware of how not learning fucks their chances

I've learned math mostly outside the school.

The system in this case is using property taxes as the primary funding for schools, so children in poorer neighborhoods get worse funding and worse outcomes.

Incorrect. Half of school funding comes from property taxes. The other half comes from state and federal sources to offset the disparity from property taxes. Here is a good breakdown of per student spending in Maryland as an example: https://conduitstreet.mdcounties.org/2019/02/20/funding-per-.... Notice how federal and state funding is used to offset (often more than offset) differences in local funding.

There's nothing "incorrect" about what the parent commenter said. Compare Frederick Douglas Academy in Austin to OPRF in Oak Park, a 15 minute walk away. Urban schools get state and federal dollars --- but so do wealthy suburban schools. It is in fact the case that wealthy families opt in to de facto private school systems; no jazz-hands about subsidies and mismanagement gets you around that fact.

Yes. To give a concrete example, California schools on the whole spend about $14,913 per student [1], while Palo Alto spends $23,038 [2].

[1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/financing-californias-publi...

[2]: https://papie.org/about/f-a-q/

A more accurate and comparable figure is $16,085 per pupil[0]. And that has grown very much since then to now $20,855 per pupil, a record-breaking figure (like all the years in the preceding decade--just look at that chart!)[1]. Also consider that in California under-privileged (low-income, ESL, foster children) schools do indeed get lots of extra resources and grants[2].

Your figure is apparently only for "current operations (e.g., staff, materials)" from 2018-19. But that doesn't reflect the already-absurd and ever-growing true cost of California's broken education system. And it isn't directly comparable to your figure for PAUSD's total budget.

"Reflecting the changes to Proposition 98 funding noted above, total per-pupil expenditures from all sources are projected to be $15,654 in 2017-18 and $16,085 in 2018-19"[0]

"K-12 per-pupil funding [in 2022-23] totals $15,261 Proposition 98 General Fund—its highest level ever—and $20,855 per pupil when accounting for all funding sources."[1]

[0]: https://ebudget.ca.gov/2018-19/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Educati... (p. 2)

[1]: https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2022-23/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Edu... (p. 3)

[2]: https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2021-22/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Edu... (pp. 11-16)

I'm not sure how you're getting that figure for $23,038. Also, accordion drop downs from an FAQ page may not be the best place to cite information from (too much irrelevant information to sift through)

Click on "Why do Palo Alto schools need PiE?"

Interestingly enough, the page later says that the annual budget is 294M on a student body of ~10k. That's more like 28K per student (making the above point that rich districts pay more per student stronger).

It’s incorrect to say local property taxes are the “primary” mechanism for school funding because state funding exceeds local funding. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...

> States contribute a total of $357.0 billion to K-12 public education or $7,058 per student.

> Local governments contribute $347.4 billion total or $6,868 per student.

I’m assuming the “system” here is talking about the national education system, since that seems to be the topic of the immediately preceding posts. California and SFUD might be different.

Okay, I am corrected. Only ~$350 billion out of ~$750 billion is local. So it's not the majority nationwide. It's still 7 out of 15 dollars. That's a substantial enough minority to have very disparate outcomes.

You can just take pairs of schools in adjoining neighborhoods/municipalities and compare. Their budgets are all public. That's what I did here.

I know people who go to private schools because they don't want to put a burden on the state.

You see the same phenomenon in California and funds have been allocated Statewide since the 70s or 80s. The problem is more complicated than that

WA is the same since 2013. A lot correlation is simply in socio economic demographics when the schools are well funded all around. Also, richer schools will have more parents volunteering for things, but that reflects in a better home life as well. Rich people can just afford to spend more time and resources on their kids even when the schools are funded equally.

Only ~50-60% of the money comes from the state. ~30-40% comes from the local governments. (The last ~10% comes from the federal government).

San Francisco busses kids across the city all over the place to ensure the students are evenly mixed and ensure the best outcome for all students.

The result is that one third of students (22,000) are now in private schools, the remainder (50,000) are in public schools. A lot of SF parents move out of the city 1) for a bigger house and 2) more reliable schooling solution 3) access to GATE programs.

There is a lot of value in being walking distance from your child's elementary school. In SF there is no guarantee where in the city your child will go to school.

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