students and teachers.
Low-income schools have been hit
even harder, with further cuts in basic
materials and activities, deteriorating facilities, and even more students
crammed into already-overcrowded
classrooms. To save funds, schools
sometimes postpone turning on heating
systems until late in the fall, forcing
students to wear their coats in school on
cold days.
Cuts in custodial services compromise sanitation. Bathrooms sometimes
reek. At the school I cofounded in
Dorchester, a low-income Boston community, we’ve had numerous conversations about how to keep mouse crap
out of classrooms and bathrooms. Like
many other school principals, our principal is so caught up in basic operational
and maintenance issues that she often
doesn’t have time to do her most important job—overseeing improvements in
the quality of pedagogy, curriculum,
and school climate.
Cafeterias in many public schools are
financially squeezed. Schools spend just
$1.00 for food in the average school
lunch (School Food Focus, n.d.). As
a result, many schools are limited to
industrial-style food production using
the cheapest ingredients available. As
one report on a California school district
found,
Deciding what goes on the menu is
often an act of juggling pennies, where
spending 30 cents extra on an entrée
could wipe out the entire budget for fruits
and vegetables. (Renner, 2009)
a 715-seat concert hall, 12 Steinway
pianos, 12 practice rooms, and a musical instrument digital interface lab.
Athletics are not slighted. This school
has an acclaimed golf course. Although
it’s hard to find a patch of green grass
around many low-income urban
schools, another New England school
provides 12 athletic fields, 4 athletic
buildings, 17 tennis courts, and 3 full-time athletic trainers, numbers similar
to several other nearby independent
schools.
An urban elementary school principal
told me that because she couldn’t afford
to buy tables of the right size for the
cafeteria, “students’ feet can’t reach the
floor;.;.;.;but most of their food lands on
the floor because their bodies are so far
from the table.”
Compare these schools to those
on the other side of the tracks. Many
independent schools, to be sure, have
purposefully avoided extravagance. But
many others seem engaged in a kind of
decadence Olympics.
Cafeterias bear little resemblance to
the cafeterias most of us were crammed
into as kids. One school’s website
assures potential students that its
renovated dining facility has retained
its marble staircases and mahogany
walls but now includes a larger student
lounge and an outdoor terrace. At a
price tag of $30 million, this dining
facility renovation cost more than the
median expenditure last year in the
United States for an entire new public
high school (McDonald, 2008).
Nor is it easy to make fun of cafeteria
food in many independent schools, a
hallowed childhood tradition. Rather
than offering often-tasteless food with
little nutritional value, cafeterias in
wealthy independent schools often have
gourmet options, elaborate salad bars,
and customized sandwich stations.
When it comes to facilities, one New
England independent school boasts a
black box theater, a 660-seat proscenium theater with a green room, an art
history lecture hall, five visual arts studios, a ceramics studio with two kilns,
a dance studio, a digital media center,
a teaching darkroom with nine enlargers along with four other darkrooms,
a screening room, and a video editing room. Whereas many low-income
schools don’t even have musical instruments, this school has a music center,
Gaps in the Public Sector
The problem is not simply found in
independent schools, however. Some
well-to-do suburban public schools also
house lavish athletic, science, and arts
facilities. Our public education system
was built on principles articulated by
Horace Mann, who imagined a system
that is “one and the same for both rich
and poor” with “all citizens on the same
footing of equality before the law of the
land” (Rebell & Wolff, 2011). Yet the
disparities in public school spending are
large and growing.
Whereas the median cost of a new
U.S. high school was $25 million last
year, the cost of 36 new high schools
in 10 states topped $100 million each
(McDonald, 2008). A recently overhauled school in a Boston suburb,
