What’s the principle?

[This is the text of a comment I gave (editing on the fly) at the community comment period of tonight’s school board meeting.]

I’m here with a couple of thoughts about the proposals to redraw elementary boundaries and possibly pair some schools toward the goal of reducing socioeconomic disparities between school populations.

As you all know, I was on the school board two years ago when the board decided to redistrict the high schools and junior highs in the name of that same goal. I found it a very difficult issue with good arguments on both sides. I ended up voting against the plan because I thought the potential benefits—and there were some—were outweighed by the costs, and especially because I didn’t think the plan had the support of the families it was most intended to benefit. (See this post.)

When it comes to the elementary proposals you’re now considering, I think those issues are also difficult and again there are arguments to consider on both sides. And I don’t know what the right answer is. But I do know this: It would be very difficult to square the board’s decision on high school boundaries with a decision not to pursue balance at the elementary level.

At the elementary school level, the FRL (free-and-reduced-lunch rate) disparities between schools are much greater than they were at the high school level—ranging from a projected 2% at one school to a projected 75% at other schools. The empirical research on academic benefits is also stronger at the elementary school level, because the empirical studies that support it are mostly on elementary kids, and because at the elementary level there’s less tracking that can end up creating classroom-by-classroom disparities even within the same building. Finally, at least as to some of the pairings being suggested, there are actually cost savings instead of higher expenditures. We were told that the balancing plan at the secondary level would cost a quarter of a million dollars a year; at the elementary level it can actually save money every year.

You can defend a policy of trying to balance FRL rates. I think you can also defend a choice not to pursue that kind of balancing. But it’s very hard to defend doing it at the high school level, where the arguments are weaker, but not doing it at the elementary school level—where the disparities are much larger, the empirical evidence is stronger, and it can actually save money instead of costing money.

We had a school board vacancy election in 2016 that turned almost entirely on whether the board should pursue FRL balancing at the secondary level. The district—and especially the east side of Iowa City—voted for the candidate who wanted to balance FRL rates at the secondary level. In other words, many voters supported FRL balance when it meant moving kids from low-income families out of their secondary schools. Now those same neighborhoods have to decide whether to support FRL balance when it means bringing kids from low-income families into their elementary schools, which will otherwise have some of the lowest FRL rates in the district. So people are naturally watching and wondering: Is this really about pursuing the principle of socioeconomic balance, or is this just about sending these poor, disproportionately black kids elsewhere? Is that the principle driving this?

What you decide on the issue of elementary boundaries is going to answer that question for a lot of people, including kids who receive free-and-reduced-price lunch and their families.