[quote]Anyone heard McCain’s speech yesterday? The part about his plan for fixing education. He said he’ll give parents choices between private, public, and charter schools. If he gets elected and does follow through with this promise, how would this change the “premium” people put in an area due to schools? If you can send your kids to private schools or schools in CV/Poway/etc. w/out having to live in the area, wouldn’t that eliminate the school “premium”?[/quote]
Not going to happen. It’s been proposed in the past, and lawsuits ensued, and there would be so much red tape, that it won’t get done.
See, here’s the thing. This thing sort of happened where I grew up in a suburb of L.A. Arguably a well to do neighborhood with good schools, the school district was running out of money, namely because enrollment in schools was going lower (families were aging with fewer kids, and more people were sending kids to private schools…BTW i went to all public schools).. Residents were cheap and didn’t want to pay extra taxes to fund the schools they felt didn’t benefit them, so on the verge of bankruptcy, school district proposed joining LA Unified, and the prospects were to bus kids from other parts of LA that had overcrowding to these local schools.
That’s where things stopped. Residents (with and without children and regardless of whether they went to private or public) basically said “hell no, we don’t want folks from south central LA coming to our area, because it will drive up crime, drugs,gangs,etc”. So then came all the lawsuits, and all the generous “donations” from the residence irrespective of whether people used those schools. And because this neighbhorhood housed a good deal of afluent people with connections and financial capital, they pretty much put a stop to this.
Now that said, I have to admit, that living in Carmel Valley, and having paid in premium for homes here. I would fight nail and tooth if at the proposal of allowing anyone not in this area to attend CV schools for the same reasons, simply because I’ve paid for a premium and because the public schools are pretty much fully utilized by residences anyway. And I assure you all the other residents would do the same, regardless of whether or not they have kids going to the school. The fear of getting folks from different social/economic backgrounds would be enough to get those lawyers,and folks of influence to do everything to prevent that from happening. If there’s any doubt of that. Consider this. There is an empty lot right next to Torrey Hills Elementary that the developer has for many years been trying to get something built there. And every single time they try to put something there, the residence have objected and thrown lawsuit after lawsuit to prevent the builder from doing things there.
The first attempt was to build a bio-tech company right across the street from Torrey Hills Elementary that handles bio-hazards. Obviously, the residence objected for the safety of the kids, and lawsuits after lawsuits, the builder were brushed aside.
Now the builder (pissed) decided he wants to put a 4 floor apartment complex. Guess what, the residence are petitioning again and planing to file more lawsuits, citing it violates planning rules, and will overburden the traffic, and overcrowd torrey hills elementary. It’s unknown whether they will prevail this time, but it’s quite possible that if the apartment complex is put there, that school district lines will be drawn so weird that folks in that residence of that complex will have to attend schools on the other side of carmel valley. I don’t blame the residence for objecting, because these schools are already maxed out.
In communities like CV (and elsewhere like LJ), people aren’t going throw money at the problem of public schools and school district, until it becomes a problem that impacts the community. Call it snobby or elitist…I’m not saying it’s a great concept. But it is what it is. And there are generally enough folks that live in this community that have the financial/political clout to make sure such things don’t happen. I believe one of the QCOM founders for instance lives in CV and is one of the generous donors to the CV district.
People that live in these areas have a vested interest in keeping the status quo…Again, read all the controversy that happened in Fremont Unified over redistricting Mission San Jose…. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Unified
