The Houses Are Different, The People The Same

While walking through the Haight district the beautifully decorated De Avila school caught my eye. It was too good to be true. An article in the SF Chronicle pointed to the same problems we have in New York:"Sarah's, Arthur's and Julian's families did give the public school system a chance. They submitted a list of their top choices to the San Francisco Unified School District, which each winter runs a computerized lottery using those lists and a family's socioeconomic background to make assignments. The system is designed to ensure diversity in schools and is mandated by a federal court order. Since the Cole Valley families are middle-class and well-educated, their socioeconomic status worked against them in getting their children into the most popular, high-achieving elementary schools, including Rooftop, Lilienthal, Clarendon and Jefferson. Some might say that these are just the kinds of families the school district should be clamoring to keep, but all three families wound up being assigned to the struggling De Avila Elementary on Haight Street, which wasn't on their lists. The school is only about a half-mile from Cole Valley, but it enrolled mostly special education and homeless students and suffered from declining enrollment and poor test scores. None of the Cole Valley families considered it a viable option; the Board of Education didn't either, shutting it down in the spring in order to save money."