Opinion | When a School Desegregates, Who Gets Left Behind?

A number of years in the past, practically a century after the Dearings have been expelled from their house there, Piedmont opened its unique college district as much as youngsters who don’t reside inside metropolis limits. Now the district is in search of 200 Oakland college students to enroll in its faculties. When explaining this resolution to The San Francisco Chronicle, the Piedmont college district’s superintendent, Randall Booker, cited the need for extra variety in each the coed physique and the school.

Piedmont’s resolution is maybe motivated not solely by good will or a want for desegregation. The truth is that whereas Piedmont has gotten wealthier — a pal who grew up there and whose dad and mom nonetheless reside there described the transition as “a city of attorneys that became a city of tech C.E.O.s” — it additionally has gotten considerably older. Within the 1990 census, 14.6 p.c of Piedmont’s residents have been over the age of 65. In 2020, that quantity had jumped to 21.5 p.c.

A technology that usually would have put their youngsters by way of college after which retired and finally moved out of one among Piedmont’s 5,000-square-foot mansions has determined to remain put. And there actually aren’t high-rise flats being constructed throughout Piedmont, so younger households who might wish to transfer there for the colleges are likely to get shut out of an absurdly aggressive actual property market.

Because of this, the general enrollment in Piedmont’s faculties dropped to 2,464 final 12 months from 2,692 in 2017. Earlier than this college 12 months, college funding in California was largely decided by a college’s attendance. However beginning this 12 months, that very same funding will depend on a mixture of enrollment and attendance figures. Because of this, a quickly declining inhabitants might result in fiscal devastation, even in a spot like Piedmont. The 200 new Piedmont college students, then, remedy two issues: lack of variety and underenrollment.

Piedmont’s state of affairs was created largely by California’s Proposition 13, the 1978 regulation that primarily freezes property tax values on the date of buy. The house owners of a home in Piedmont bought in, say, 1980 for $700,000 can pay only some thousand {dollars} a 12 months in taxes, regardless that their home might now be value over $4 million. This not solely has positioned a tough cap on the quantity of tax {dollars} that may be raised for providers like public training, but it surely’s additionally resulted in neighborhoods that by no means flip over, particularly in wealthy-homeowner areas.

So far, there was virtually no resistance to the plan to open up the district from Piedmont dad and mom, a lot of whom see the necessity to enhance enrollment and diversify the coed physique. This actually is atypical for a metropolis like Piedmont. Not too long ago, the rich city of Darien, Conn., floated an concept just like Piedmont’s, proposing that it enable 16 college students from close by Norwalk, a extra various, working-class metropolis, to enroll within the native kindergarten. (The proposal was finally voted down.) By comparability, the Piedmont plan is way more bold. The 200 college students who reside outdoors of the town would represent roughly 8 p.c of the Piedmont pupil physique.

On the floor, it looks as if wealthy white and Asian dad and mom doing what’s been requested of them by variety and college desegregation advocates whereas additionally making an attempt, of their means, to abide by the usual progressive politics of the Bay Space. Plus, no person actually disputes the constructive results that built-in faculties have on each white and minority-group college students. There’s additionally the ethical crucial for cities which have been constructed on histories of racist violence and discrimination. They will reckon with their pasts by passing substantive insurance policies that may assist share a few of their amassed wealth, particularly in the case of public faculties.