In the news today: San Francisco Unified School District is facing $113 million in budget cuts for the upcoming school year. This is especially distressing, considering that the State and the Federal Government announced that larger sums of money would be available to school districts in need via programs like Race to the Top. To make matters worse, these budget cuts will most greatly affect the urban students who are already at a socioeconomic disadvantage.
San Francisco’s children deserve better than increased class sizes, underpaid teachers, and cuts in materials budgets. In order to make up for the impending shortfalls in students’ school experiences, we'd like to propose a comprehensive tutoring program to be implemented and woven into the fabric of San Francisco’s hardest hit schools. Personalized tutoring – a “Class of One” – would go a long way towards effectively supporting classroom instruction in a climate such as this. Providing tutoring for San Francisco’s most deserving and needy students is not as expensive as most think; the Tutorpedia Foundation can provide high quality tutoring to SFUSD students for about $1,000/year. Moreover, the implementation of a tutoring program enables the district to appeal to other sources of funding (ASES grants with the state, corporate foundations, private donations) in order to provide this service if they contract with local nonprofits.
It’s clear that public money will not close the achievement gap and level the academic playing field for San Francisco’s students. It’s time for public school districts to get creative about how to best educate students, and partner with local nonprofit organizations in order to give kids the personalized academic attention they desperately need.
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1 comment:
Well put! The problem is, the state government deals with education on a linear scale, and that's by throwing more or less money at it. The issue has clearly become something beyond a financial one.
On the other hand, countless studies clearly show that growing class sizes and cuts to schools will directly negatively impact students. When will the government get it through their heads that education is not spending but investment in our society?
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