[img]1|left||remove link|no_popup[/img]
The most innovative idea I have heard for cushioning the bruising fallout from state budget cuts in the School District was to assess — perhaps a gentler word was used — families $40 for each day their children are absent from classes.
I was reminded of this merely-explored Culver City scheme the other day when I learned about a much more ambitious strategy in Palos Verdes.
Because the Palos Verdes Peninsula is one of the wealthiest enclaves in Los Angeles, the ladies and gentlemen there can, and do, let their imaginations roam the longitude of the lovely landscape when they chase a lofty objective.
The Daily Breeze reported this week that the goal of the group “Save Our Teachers Now” is to rescue the jobs of 60 teachers. Palos Verdes activists are asking parents to contribute $200 for each student enrolled in the system. They calculate they can raise $1.2 million in the next 60 days.
With 12,000 students in the district, Palos Verdes expects its budget to take a $3.7 million hit from Sacramento.
By contrast, Culver City, with half as many students, stands to lose $3.4 million in state funding.
A 50-50 Proposition
The Palos Verdes activists gauge that at least half of their families will contribute, which strikes me as a terrifically impressive proportion.
From the perspective of Culver City, where 78 percent of registered voters do something else, anything else, on Election Day, 50 percent participation is an eye-popper. I can take the modest crowd at many School Board meetings home in the backseat of my car.
Attitude is integral to success. Palos Verdes has attitude. Says the president of the Peninsula Education Foundation:
“We’re a pro-active community up here. One of the reasons we have some of the highest test scores in the state is not just because our kids are smart, but because the whole community is so engaged in the public schools’ progress.”
He is saying they expect to succeed. Therefore they succeed.
Meanwhile, back in Culver City: During a shmooze with School Board member Scott Zeidman, I raised the notion of the $40 per absence penalty.
“In theory it is good,” Mr. Zeidman said. “In practicality, it does not work.
“It is a wonderful idea for those people with the means because we lose $40 a day (in state funding) for each absent student.”
He worries, though, about households that could not afford the assessment.
“I am not even sure we have right to fine people when their kids miss school,” Mr. Zeidman said. “Would it be only for illnesses or for other reasons?”
He is convinced it could not work on a district-wide basis — some schools undoubtedly would contribute more than others. How, he asks, would such monies then be apportioned among the campuses?
Each on Its Own?
Mr. Zeidman seemed more amenable to the prospect of each school in Culver City deciding separately whether to adopt such an avant-garde policy.
If this were, instead, the 19th century, not a single Culver City resident would be shedding a tear over millions of dollars in lost funding from the state capital.
No such mechanism existed then. In the 1800s, community families assured their children’s education by directly and wholly underwriting the community’s schools. Were those the good old days?
