Commentary: “Building a wall with barbed wire along the Albany border is not the answer”
Albany resident Peter Lincroft wrote a commentary on the residence checking story:
“As I am sure most Albany parents have, I have been following the news regarding the issues of overcrowding, inter-district transfers, and residency requirements. Its not a simple issue, but I just finished reading Miriam Walden’s blog article on the subject and it really struck a chord with me.
My family is one of those that went to the very significant trouble and expense to move into Albany just for the schools. We are exactly the kind of people who ought to have the highest level of resentment for those “outsiders” who are crowding into “our” schools.
Of course, before deciding to move, we considered the option of staying at our home in Berkeley (about a 15 minute walk from Marin school) and transferring to Albany.
There were obviously a lot of reasons why we chose to move, including our anticipation of the overcrowding problem and the possibility that as a transfer we might be forced out at any time.
But, the bottom line is that you have to do what you have to do. We have rules in place about transfers, residency requirements, etc. Those rules should be enforced. I don’t think anyone would suggest that they should not be enforced.
But, all of the families that attend our schools are part of our community. And I, for one, do not want our community to be filled with suspicion and resentment. I do not want our community to be divided between the “righteous” and the “cheaters”.
One of the things that makes the Albany district so special, is how much all of the families that are here care about having the best schools possible. And I want every one of those families to feel welcome and included.
Yes, we have a problem with overcrowding. And we have big budget cuts looming. But the answer is not to start sniping at each other and trying to cut out members of our community. In this time of adversity, we need to come together as a community and work together to find solutions to the problems we face that will make our schools better than ever.
I agree wholeheartedly with Miriam Walden on this issue. Building a wall with barbed wire along the Albany border is not the answer. “
With all due respect, “resentment for those ‘outsiders’ who are crowding into ‘our’ schools” is something of a red herring; I’ve met a parent who’s more qualified to be angry: the mom whose older child was admitted as a transfer to Cornell, but who was told that her son couldn’t start in Albany as a kindergartener, because there was no room. And if that’s because someone’s “jumped the line” to get a kindergartener enrolled, despite the precedence system established by the School Board, they’re directly (and negatively effected)… neither you nor I have that concern, so long as there’s some capacity in AUSD to take transfer students.
I personally found Miriam Walden’s original post strewn with the corpses of skewered straw men. Cracking down on families misrepresenting their residence, whether or not it’s a good idea, is independent of the question of how many students overall we try to enroll, and what choices we make on admissions after Albany residents. So to raise scary images of budgets being slashed because we’ve cut enrollment isn’t helpful in the least: demand for admission to AUSD alway exceeds capacity, so we’ve no worries about there being as many students as we’d like, but yes, our budget is directly related to how many we actually decide to enroll.
I’d actually like to hear more discussion from the School Board about future forecasts for in-Albany enrollment, which I have to believe will climb, what with the expansion at UC Village. (And of the issues raised by UC Village, e.g., that UC doesn’t pay the same taxes as we residents…how does parcel tax-based funding of educational infrastructure skew as a result?) How about proposing creating a charter school on UC Village property, chartered jointly by UC and Albany, to use as a testbed for pedagogical researchers and students from Cal? That would create additional capacity (and could be structured to give Albany residents priority), and allow for creative (and collaborative) experimentation.
Ross,
You are absolutely right that having a younger sib unable to transfer is a terrible situation for that family. And if that happened because someone was lying about their address, that just makes that “cheating” even worse than it was in the first place. But no one has suggested that its “OK” to cheat, and that there is no harm in it. We all agree that the rules that are in place about residency should be enforced. The question is about how to go about enforcing those rules, and what the costs and benefits are of “cracking down” with regard to proof of residency.
But the fact of the matter is that even if we “cracked down” as hard as possible, and eliminated 100% of the false residents, there might still not be room for that younger sib to transfer. Albany residents take precedence over transfers, and due to various factors, including the UC village expansion, there are more Albany residents with young children than there were in the past, and that means there is less room to accept transfers.
That problem can only be solved by changing the rules to treat transfers as a “family” rather than individual students, which I think is the right thing to do. I also think former residents should be guaranteed the ability to transfer, especially if they live in one of our neighboring cities. Both of these would surely be controversial proposals, but I think its the “right thing” to do, from an ethical point of view. It would certainly make enrollment more difficult to manage, and we seem to have a problem with that already, so its probably not the best idea to put forward at the moment.
Regarding Miriam’s post, your right, her argument that if we caught 200 “cheaters” it would lead to a budget problem is a straw man. I expect those 200 could easily be replaced with transfers. But the argument that a “crack down” would help with the overcrowding issues is flawed for the same reason. Even if we caught a bunch of false residents and kicked them out, we would just use transfers to get back to full enrollment anyway, or else accept the loss of funding associated with the reduction in enrollment, so it doesn’t really help with overcrowding. The bottom line is we need to manage our enrollment better, and that probably means adding more classrooms if at all possible, and cutting back enrollment as much as possible. Vote Yes on Measure E… not only do we get a new pool, but we get some more classroom space for AHS too.
The point that Miriam made that struck a chord with me was about the fact that all of the families that are in our schools, regardless of how they got there, are part of our community. And that the increased “security” procedures are part of a broader cultural meme that is developing in our school community that there is a division between “true” Albany residents and the “others”, whether they be legitimate transfers, UC village residents, or “false” residents.
I also think her argument that its simply not the best use of school district resources is a valid one. We really don’t know if these new procedures will make any appreciable difference. If someone managed to fake residency their first year in the district, isn’t it likely that they can manage to do it again every year? Unless they are a former resident that moved to a neighboring city, it seems unlikely to me that you are going to catch anyone just by repeating the same procedure every year.
As far as the UC Village issue goes, I agree wholeheartedly that the University should be contributing more financially to the district. The way I view it, the UC Village is like a large apartment complex. Just like any other renter, the families are paying their “taxes” indirectly through their landlord. In the case of UC Village, they all have the same landlord… the University of California. Unfortunately, unlike every other landlord in Albany, the University has special constitutional powers that essentially make it exempt from taxation. So the question is, how do we convince UC that it is in their best interest to contribute financially to the district. I think your idea of getting the University involved via the Education Research angle is an excellent approach to that problem. Perhaps initially we could even form some kind of “school within a school” program at Oceanview, just to get the ball rolling.
–Peter Lincroft
The part about “Vote Yes on Measure E… not only do we get a new pool, but we get some more classroom space for AHS too.” was supposed to be enclosed in “Shameless Campaigning” tags, but I guess the software thought those were actual HTML tags and left them out. Anyway, I know that is a shameless plug, and I apologize for my shameless abuse of this forum.
Building a wall with barbed wire along the Albany border is not the anwer:
As a UC Berkeley student, who have a child at Ocean View, I agree with Ross. Apparently, the Albany District has some problems. For me, I think that any children could attend the Albany School. For each student contributes Federal and State monies for the Albany district. We should not focus at the “outsiders”. We should scrutinize the Albany Unified School Board. Why do they let this happens? What they do with the money? Why is the fourth and fifth grade at the Ocean View Elementary School have to eat outside while others children from the others elementary school eat indoor. They do have a large lunchroom. Is there a different school board mandate for Ocean View because UC Village people don’t pay taxes? Additionally, last year, the Albany School District spent $800,000.00 for a construction job on the roof, and this year, the roof is still leaking. I wonder what kind of people do the Board was hiring for Ocean View. Is it because that the UC students don’t pay taxes and we get inferior services? And, what with the retirement of four or five principals last year? Who is at fault for loosing all these talented people? It seems that the Albany Board is facing a dilemma, and this is just some of the problems. I second the motion of a charter school on UC Village property if the Board could not solve their problems.
I’d recommend attending a board meeting, or reading notes of them… Charlie Blanchard, as one of the members, does a fine job of summarizing the sessions. A number of the points you raise have straightforward explanations, e.g., Albany experienced something of a “perfect storm” of principal retirements… it just worked out that everyone’s careers wrapped up at same time. But AUSD pulled off a seemingly masterful recruitment effort (doubtless to some dismay in the districts our new principals came from), and the retiring HS principal committed to further support to the district through serving on the school board. As far as eating outside, as a Marin parent, I can tell you that my fourth grade daughter’s found eating her lunch outside too… the Marin Multi-Use Room is much smaller than Ocean View’s.
As far as something like a collaborative charter school, I’d never see that as something to be done *despite* the school bosrd… it would necessarily entail a solid agreement between the board, the City, and UC. But I think it might be a wonderful opportunity… establishing a focus for Cal educational research, and a testbed that could be highlighted.
But there’re a lot of variables in play in education, these days. While we’re focused on enrollment and capacity, the State of New York is apparently moving to abolish middle schools, in favor of K-8 schools, on the theory (as I understand it) that it causes the older students to be more invested as role models, rather than as hormonally-challenged monsters quarantined while adolescence rages, until it’s safe to move on to high school.
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