SF Breeders

California School Funding Slipping to 50th in United States

According to this article in the SF Examiner (here), Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts in the CA school budget will finally drop us to 50th out of 50 states in state funding - now that's quite an achievement.  As a state with the 8th largest economy in the entire world, we now fund our schools at a level lower than Mississippi!

Having just been through this budget discussion at my son's school as a member of the Alvarado Site Council, it's a painful set of reductions to a system that is already under-funded.  At the same time that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (NASDAQ: MSFT) is sitting in front of Congress lamenting the state of science and engineering education in America, we have cut those programs entirely at the public school level.

At a certain point, the Governor must either raise taxes or decide to make other reductions in the budget since these changes will only accelerate the flight out of public schools, right at a time where San Francisco is seeing a recent increase in public school attendance.  Or we could admit Puerto Rico as a 51st state and hopefully be above them in funding for at least one more year...

San Francisco School Lottery Results are Out- SFK Files

This month is the time of tears, joy and lots of angry discussions as the San Francisco public school lottery results were mailed out on Friday, March 7, and the private school decisions are mailed out on March 12th.  As one might imagine in a city with an entirely broken school choice process where neighborhood proximity gets ZERO weighting, parents are a little frustrated at being assigned half-way cross town in many cases.

The best way to follow this discussion is through the amazing blog, the SF K Files (here).  It's a great example of how a single blogger can become the focal point of an entire city's discussion, with her post about the lottery results getting 312 comments so far, including the principal of one of the schools commenting as well.  Just in case someone thinks the lottery is fixed, "Kate" got none of her 7 choices, which only keeps the blog even more relevant since we can now all live through her agony. 

Some of the comments are starting to fray a bit, including an interesting SAHM (Stay at home mom) debate vs working moms, but in general, the discourse is helpful and supportive, and it provides a good place for parents to vent about how broken the system is.   The funniest thread is that a bunch of parents who listed McKinley school didn't get it, while a bunch of parents were assigned to it, but have no interest in going there - it would tend to point to a flaw in the process :)

Now the debate turns to the Phase 2/Appeals process, as well as the Private School admission results this week.  Is it any wonder that this city has the lowest percentage of children of any major city, especially when one has a mayor with ZERO interest in fixing the school system, and a school board generally concerned with irrelevant issues such as protesting the Iraq War?