http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/images/CA_edu_fund.jpg

We’re not cancelling science labs because of those danged minorities. We’re cancelling science labs because we’re not willing to pay for them.

Cite, please?

It is simply not believable that, just coincidentally, the school district which has never shown any interest in compliance with ed code all of a sudden finds this particular violation just when they’re hunting for a new excuse to grab money from the large school to give even more money to the small schools.

So until BUSD presents the evidence that 0/7 periods violate the ed code, we parents have to assume it’s another load of baloney.

As for those Dickensian children being taken care of by devoted high schooler siblings–those high schoolers can’t make it to high school by 8:30 either if they’re getting their younger siblings to elementary school. All these arguments (including how kids couldn’t possibly participate in sports or work, both of which my son does just fine while taking 0 and 7th period labs) for why we need to get rid of 0/7th periods dissolve under the lightest scrutiny.

You say: “I think you this entirely backwards. Cal subsidizes Berkeley by bringing in students, professors and other employees who purchase food, housing and other items of commerce. No offense to our neighbors, but without Cal, face it, we’d just be Albany, Oakland or Emeryville.”

That’s not *entirely* false but I think it is misleading. Cal avoids property taxes on prime real estate. It consumes a lot in City services. It consumes a lot on false-start projects like the hotel down-town. A lot of the money spent by students and faculty, and for capital equipment and services, goes to firms based out of town so there is much profit extraction without much recirculation. I agree with you to the extent that we would be a far, far less interesting and culturally rich town without Cal but I think Cal’s presence is a pretty heavy bottom line burden on City taxpayers. As far as I can tell, anyway.

Please understand that I’m not saying Cal should be giving the City much more actual dollars. Rather, I’m saying that Cal has the excess capacity to contribute quite a lot more than they do to BUSD’s efforts for what amounts to pennies on the dollar. Cal is in a position to contribute more labor and facilities at low price to them, but at very high value to the City. Cal can afford to contribute educational participation that we could not, as a city, afford to buy even under the most ideal circumstances. It would be nice to see them make an effort to bend over a bit in trying circumstances like the present one, and help make us feel better about the trade-offs of hosting them.

You ask: “Do you pay property taxes?”

As a renter who occupied my current unit scarcely more than a year ago after previous tenants left, I presumably not only (with one step of indirection) pay property taxes, but pay property taxes plus some profit on them for my landlord. (My landlord is excellent and among his many virtues, I don’t think he is claiming any unjust profits on the portion of our rent that helps settle the tax bill sent in his name. He’s a rare bird, in my experience in Berkeley.)

You remark: “Most of the folks with less means pay rent, which means they are already getting the break you refer to.”

Are you so sure about that? It doesn’t look to be the case in my neighborhood. Don’t forget that state-mandated vacancy decontrol resets rent levels to market levels during most ordinary changes of occupancy. I’m certain that there are many tenants in Berkeley living in sub-market units under rent stabilization but you are making the much stronger claim that “most” students in AP classes who come from families that rent are enjoying substantially sub-market rent levels. I’m not certain you’re wrong but it looks to me like a pretty dubious claim. The City is a lot less “renter friendly” in *some* respects than it was back in the heyday of rent control.

You say: “With that said, I don’t find anything wrong with asking for contributions from parents to support schools, and I suspect those with means would contribute more. We certainly donate above and beyond the property tax threshold every year.”

I gather, though, that you would not want that formalized or made mandatory in the form of sliding-scale usage fees? To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the progressively assessed usage fees should cover the entire cost. In fact, they should be capped at a level that makes them attractive compared to buying college course hours a la carte.

Finally: about small schools… I’m starting to wonder what the (still standing) “pro” arguments are. Yes, I like the idea of individualized attention and multi-year peer associations but tying that to academic concentrations with a lock-in lottery system and factionalized faculty fighting over budget seems, well, just dumb. I wonder what *you* might think, at least off the cuff as a starting point, of the house/cluster/independent-advocate advisory system I crudely outlined as an alternative. (Although, again, it’s not obvious to me we have a faculty who are up to the challenge.)

You write:

“How is it that Cal appears to be more heavily subsidized by Berkeley taxpayers than by a typical Californian and yet is just a bit limp in creative participation in our schools?”

I think you this entirely backwards. Cal subsidizes Berkeley by bringing in students, professors and other employees who purchase food, housing and other items of commerce. No offense to our neighbors, but without Cal, face it, we’d just be Albany, Oakland or Emeryville.

You then say:

“..Why not sliding-scale use fees for the outside-hours supplements to the core curriculum, tied to household incomes and assets?”

Do you pay property taxes? I know I do, and they are directly tied to my income since I bought a house here a few years back and there is a direct correlation between the two. As a property owner I also get the privilege of paying the supplemental school tax as well by the way.

Most of the folks with less means pay rent, which means they are already getting the break you refer to.

With that said, I don’t find anything wrong with asking for contributions from parents to support schools, and I suspect those with means would contribute more. We certainly donate above and beyond the property tax threshold every year.

I also agree we should kill the small schools, probably for different reasons. It strikes me that the old system was dismantled in favor of a system that merely made achievement gaps even worse b/c there was no longer any accountability. The small schools have merely allowed for the further amplification and masking of the problem until is laid bare at the end of the year by standardized testing.

Take care

First, I should mention that I searched the web for your name to figure out whether I should use “Ms.” or “Mr.” – your name is ambiguous that way. Having searched, I’ve come to have a greater appreciation of who you are and what kinds of things you do.

Second, about your proposals:

Generally, they are very good.

Isn’t one of the issues here, though, that “equity grants” for tutoring and high levels of funding for AP courses are competing for the same dollars? In other words, I think its those “extra hours” that make the funding problem that have brought us to the point. I haven’t discovered enough transparency in the budget situation to tell but that seems to be the story behind the infamous action plan. What budget transparency I can find is consistent with albeit it not confirming of that story. So, all else being equal, it may come down to those extra hour advance courses vs. enhanced advisory / tutoring.

I have a couple of strawman alternatives to toss back at you:

1) “Hey, Bayer, I’m lookin’ at you (and your ilk).”

How is that Berkeley is trying to become a big (for its geographic and population size) hub, and occupies some of the sweetest real estate in the world, and yet an org. like Bayer is simultaneously weak on contributing directly to educational opportunities *and* extorting tax breaks? How is it that Cal appears to be more heavily subsidized by Berkeley taxpayers than by a typical Californian and yet is just a bit limp in creative participation in our schools?

Orgs such as those two can both supplement the BSEP budget *and* help lower the costs of AP (and beyond) education. I think we need better social organizing outside of the narrow confines of the BUSD structure and budget per se.

2) “The Universally Offensive Sliding Scale Fee Notion”

I think a lot of people will hate this idea and it is probably therefore not viable but, maybe I’m wrong about that:

Why not sliding-scale use fees for the outside-hours supplements to the core curriculum, tied to household incomes and assets? The “right” balance would be something like kids from families below the poverty line get in for free or damn cheap, but it costs more a few tiers above. In every case the fees should be lower than buying similar credit hours at a regional college – so it should still be a good deal. That probably wouldn’t pay for the programs but it could substantially help.

It also creates some nice feed-back circuits: The greater the degree to which such programs exclusively benefit students from upper-tier socio-economic classes, the more those families carry the budget (up to a point). The greater the degree to which, over the years, the program raises families out of poverty – the more evenly distributed this part of the budget becomes. The more effective these advanced programs are while still beating colleges on the price of credit hours, the more those who can will be willing to pay the fees that apply their socio-economic tier.

———–

Almost finally: when it comes to folding required labs into the ordinary schedule, I think you’ll have a hard time beating the 5×3 trimester system like the one I linked to. It’s a nice system because you can squeeze in a bunch of electives and still have year-long 6 hour courses. The prep school I’m linking to there does, indeed, have extra-hours (even Saturday) classes, especially (perhaps exclusively) for esoteric electives and hyper-advanced courses – so the system doesn’t magic eliminate the need for the kind of extra-hours thing you are talking about. But it goes a long way to improving the regular-hours opportunities.

Finally: what is your take on “small schools”? I think we ought to both kill them off and have a trimester system. Kids should be afforded the opportunity for academic specialization (e.g., following recommended curriculum tracks in a trimester system) without the lock-in and faculty factions. In its place, divide the kids into advisory houses (2-3 faculty per house), the houses into clusters (10-15 house faculty per cluster), and orthogonally assign each kid an out-of-house, out-of-cluster advisor who’s job is basically to adversarially monitor outcome vs.the cluster and house (e.g., to challenge the quality of advising). It’s unclear to me, however, that we have a faculty who are by in large up to it. For that matter, it’s unclear to me that we have a faculty up to filling out a catalog for a 5×3 trimester system.

For whatever it’s worth, here’s my proposal:
–Require ALL students at Berkeley High School to take at least two years of college-preparatory lab science (i.e. Advanced Biology, Chemistry, and/or Physics).
–Integrate required labs for these courses into the ordinary instructional day.
–Allow highly-motivated students to enroll concurrently in an additional AP section (funded with BSEP money) that would meet outside of the ordinary day (at least one hour a week but preferably more).*
–Use “equity grants” to increase tutoring support for struggling students to enable all BHS grads to meet the minimum eligibility requirements in science for UC/CSU.
–Integrate required labs for AP Environmental Science into the ordinary school day while seeking funds from other sources (e.g. BHSDG and BPEF) for field trips.*
*The rationale for funding extra time for AP Chem, AP Bio, and AP Physics but not AP Enviro Sci, is simple: the first three courses cover a year of high school science plus at least a semester of college science in a single year whereas AP Environmental Science covers a semester’s worth of college material in a year.

Visit Berkeley High. Check out the scene near the school at lunch time. Read the posts here, at BPN and review the SCG and 2020 Vision meeting minutes. Then put your kid in the picture.

If you see the need for change, you need to start now. If you wait till they’re freshmen, it will be too late. By the time you learn how to effect change, you’ll already be getting ready to leave.