5 ms·

Apparently this school has an emphasis on sports and the arts. Couldn't he have chosen a different school? (I know next to nothing about the U.S. system, and Wi

by gpvos 14y ago

Apparently this school has an emphasis on sports and the arts. Couldn't he have chosen a different school? (I know next to nothing about the U.S. system, and Wikipedia doesn't help me.)

jauer 14y ago
That is actually a large controversy right now. Generally speaking you have to attend the government school in the same tax district as your residence. Unless of course you have enough money to go to a religious or independent school but those can cost $20,000+ per year. There is a push for "school vouchers" that allow you to move between government schools or use government funds to pay for tuition at a non-government school. This is opposed by the teacher's union as it will "drain funds from schools that need most" (schools are funded by property tax with per-student funds from the state and federal government). Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_choice#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_choice#United_States
aidenn0 14y ago
It's complicated. Government funded schools (they are funded by a combination of local, state, and federal funds) are tied to a district. Some districts have multiple schools, in which case you have a school based upon your address that you are supposed to go to (typically based upon highly gerrymandered boundaries since school quality has a large affect on housing prices), but you can usually apply to go to a different school within the district, for which there are various rules that decide which requests are approved assuming there are more transfer requests than the school can accommodate. Where I grew up, things weren't quite so bad, since the school-system was county wide, but you still got things where parents "in the know" would have their kids transfer from less desirable "school A" to more desirable "school B" based upon manufactured reasons like "My kid wants to take Japanese, and school A doesn't offer it. Where I live now, things are much worse. For example: 1) The wealthiest part of town has a school district with exactly one school in it. As a large fraction of school funding comes from local property taxes (split among the district), the budget for that single school is much larger than all other schools in the town 2) The boundaries for determining your school in the main school district are badly gerrymandered. There are many cases in which people living in traditionally hispanic parts of the town will have to cross-through a the region for a more desirable school in order to get to the school to which they are assigned.

by gpvos 14y ago

Apparently this school has an emphasis on sports and the arts. Couldn't he have chosen a different school? (I know next to nothing about the U.S. system, and Wikipedia doesn't help me.)

jauer 14y ago

That is actually a large controversy right now. Generally speaking you have to attend the government school in the same tax district as your residence. Unless of course you have enough money to go to a religious or independent school but those can cost $20,000+ per year. There is a push for "school vouchers" that allow you to move between government schools or use government funds to pay for tuition at a non-government school. This is opposed by the teacher's union as it will "drain funds from schools that need most" (schools are funded by property tax with per-student funds from the state and federal government). Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_choice#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_choice#United_States

aidenn0 14y ago

It's complicated. Government funded schools (they are funded by a combination of local, state, and federal funds) are tied to a district. Some districts have multiple schools, in which case you have a school based upon your address that you are supposed to go to (typically based upon highly gerrymandered boundaries since school quality has a large affect on housing prices), but you can usually apply to go to a different school within the district, for which there are various rules that decide which requests are approved assuming there are more transfer requests than the school can accommodate. Where I grew up, things weren't quite so bad, since the school-system was county wide, but you still got things where parents "in the know" would have their kids transfer from less desirable "school A" to more desirable "school B" based upon manufactured reasons like "My kid wants to take Japanese, and school A doesn't offer it. Where I live now, things are much worse. For example: 1) The wealthiest part of town has a school district with exactly one school in it. As a large fraction of school funding comes from local property taxes (split among the district), the budget for that single school is much larger than all other schools in the town 2) The boundaries for determining your school in the main school district are badly gerrymandered. There are many cases in which people living in traditionally hispanic parts of the town will have to cross-through a the region for a more desirable school in order to get to the school to which they are assigned.