Torr Leonard, a father of a kindergarten student at the Gault Street Elementary School, was frustrated because so many of his neighbors were sending their children long distances to attend magnet schools or charter schools. He has made it his mission to tell them about their neighborhood public school.
When Torr Leonard moved into his Lake Balboa neighborhood five years ago, he discovered nearly every parent on his street sent their children to schools other than the neighborhood school a block away.
Leonard said he found that just one other nearby family sent their children to Gault Street Elementary, where his son Luc, started kindergarten last month. So, he has made it his mission to advocate for the school and encourage parents to re-think their decision to send their children to magnet or charter schools blocks — or even miles —away from their San Fernando Valley neighborhood.
“Why not try to market this school to the neighborhood to get people to actually send their kid there,” Leonard said in an interview.
Too bad that public schools do not have budgets for marketing, like the charter industry, which sucks public dollars away from public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is just what we had to do in San Francisco in my time (I was an SFUSD K-12 parent 1996-2012). It was actually really effective. It hasn’t solved the problems of our school system, but it really did change the culture that made middle-class parents feel like they were bad parents if they didn’t search all over town for a “better” school.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This “grass is greener” longing is a marketing ploy of the privatizers. If they bash public schools and teachers long enough, many people will look for a better “choice.” What is ignored is that the school often does the choosing. It is operated by amateur, non-educators and does not have certified teachers or resources available in many public schools. Students and their families do not have the same rights as those in public schools. Of course, none of this is shared with families at the big, glossy marketing event.
LikeLike
Yes but isn’t that about intra-district school choice, not privatization? My youngest brother settled in SF, & he tells me when his eldest is ready for K next year, the district will “tell him” where to send him. He will fill out an application that includes their list of fave schools, whether child has IEP/ handicap, whether any siblings already in an SFUSD school, & location. The choice is made for them via complex algorithm that I read could place their 5-y.o. somewhere far away & not on their list. Even if their first choice is the closest public school!
LikeLike
Wow, how sad!
LikeLike
Retired teacher, I’ve been reading more on this. Apparently SFUSD has been working for 40 yrs at finding a more equitable balance in schooling to offset the typical effects of segregated housing [lo- vs hi-tax base districts]. They had some success when the main issue was black vs white, but increase in hispanic & Asian pop threw that off, & more recently results were so skewed they ended up w/ Chinese having to present higher grades than other ethnic groups to get into best-rated hischs. Lawsuits resulted in throwing out the race-based system & adopting the current complex lottery. Newsppr coverage suggests lo-income nbhds are happy to have options, & suggest hi-inc nbhds get w/the pgm & recognize benefits to all.
Positives: (a) there are district mini-buses to help w/transportation, (b) I get the feeling from district site that they welcome commentary & will keep tinkering to address issues. That’s a good thing – people there seem to have a voice, maybe resulting in positive attitude of SF poster above.
LikeLike
Public education shouldn’t be a competition or lottery. It should be a public service.
LikeLike
A sadly precise description of how much things have changed in our large inner-city district since the advent of NCLB: making parents feel like they are bad parents if they don’t search all over town for a “better” school.
LikeLike
And now we, in Los Angeles, have to face an upcoming teachers’ strike which appears inevitable. Superintendent Beutner is hell bent on busting the union and will most likely welcome the strike in order to build support for his “bad and greedy” teacher agenda. The hope is that parents like Mr. Leonard will come forward publicly and show their support for public education. Beutner may find that he’s not as popular as he thinks. If this struggle with teachers backfires, he may not want to stick around for the aftermath.
LikeLike
Gault is part of LAUSD’s creative network arts program. Every student in the school gets Theatre, Dance, Music, and Visual Arts from K-5. It’s a wonderful program that ensures that every student in the school gets an intensive arts education. Kudos to Torr in his mission to support his neighborhood school!
LikeLike
You say Q Too bad that public schools do not have budgets for marketing, END Q
Public school systems do not have the money to pay their teachers a decent salary (in many cases). Public school systems do not have the money to pay for supplies like paper and scotch tape, so teachers use their meager salaries to purchase these items.
Now you advocate that public school systems should have money to go out and market themselves?
My wife works in real estate. Good (public) schools do not need marketing. When a publicly-operated school is providing a superior education, the word gets around. Just ask any real estate professional, they know which schools are performing, and which are not.
Excellent public schools need no marketing.
LikeLike
Now if only the charters would be forbidden to market their schools.
LikeLike
I realize that you are against freedom of choice in education. Are you also opposed to freedom of speech? Should all non-public schools, be forbidden from getting the information about their schools, to the public?
LikeLike
I am opposed to using public dollars for religious indoctrination
What does that have to do with freedom of speech?
You are the master of non sequitur.
LikeLike
You state Q Now if only the charters would be forbidden to market their schools. END Q
Do you support forbidding charter schools from “marketing” their educational product to the public?
Non-public schools have free speech rights.
If you support forbidding non-public schools from presenting their educational services to the public, then you are opposed to free speech.
LikeLike
Anyone can say anything.
Schools funded with public funds should be forbidden to spend a dollar of public money on advertising, marketing, or promotion.
That does not interfere with free speech.
LikeLike
Many public schools have websites, that serve to present their school’s accomplishments and services to the public. Does your proposal to forbid publicly-funded schools from using public money for advertising, marketing, and promotion , extend to websites as well?
LikeLike
A website is not marketing. Spending hundreds of thousands of public dollars on advertising is marketing.
LikeLike
Especially the ones that have sneaky ways to avoid ______________ students. Let the real estate professionals fill in the blank.
LikeLike
Please, you are just underscoring the problems created by “school choice,” i.e., using public $ to run a combo of public-service & private-biz-model schools. Private-biz-model schools are allowed to use the ‘corporate veil’ to hide how they spend school tax $, & are in biz to compete w/public model while making a profit, which means they must budget PR/adv, & are allowed ‘sales puffery’ [exaggerating the benefits of their ‘product’]. They are incentivized to steal higher-achieving enrollment from public-service model, leaving the latter w/a more-expensive-to-educate sch pop w/o the benefit of spreading expenses across a wide spectrum of student ability. & as you point out, undermined in their ability to provide basics, much less a PR budget.
Your ‘fine pubschs need no advertising’ is a red herring: districts w/fine publicschs are in hi-income areas where charters have negligible market
LikeLike
Excellent! Gault is a great school. Caring teachers, diverse student population, lots of community involving after school activities, feeds into a good, public middle school next door… Support Your Local School!
LikeLike
So, because charters market their schools, they must be bad schools? And therefore, charters must market themselves to make themselves “good”? And excellent public schools don’t need marketing? And why are they excellent, exactly? Charter schools market themselves because they are new and have to bring in new customers, and convince these new customers that their neighborhood school is bad and their charter school is good. Even if it just opened, it must be good. “High quality seats” is the marketing term. It’s a business, and that’s what businesses do to bring in customers. Sell, sell, sell. District schools have to help themselves and their kids by pushing back against the threat of closure and consolidation by raising their voices above the din of the “goodness” of test scores(wealth), personalized learning, and data collection. That’s not marketing, that’s just parents being involved in order to counteract the threat that comes from charter school marketing of “high quality seats” and the inevitable bashing of district schools that goes along with it.
Unlike a lot of new charter schools that have to market themselves, there are plenty of great district schools that have existed for decades and involved parents know nothing about them. They don’t know anything about the programs, or the staff. They’ve never even seen the school. Some of them spread all kinds of ridiculous rumors about the “quality” of the school. These great schools exist in not-as-wealthy neighborhoods, the kind real estate agents don’t like because of those test scores. So, these schools won’t necessarily get the influx of parent money and/or support that they need to help their school improve. It’s called redlining, and it’s evil. Thirty years ago, hardly any parents of “good” (wealthy) children would send their child to Oakland Technical. It is in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Oakland, along with Claremont Middle. Nope, not going to send my kid there. A lot of parents went private. And then, the crash of 2008. Job loss. Not as much money to spend on private schools. All of a sudden, parents decided to give their neighborhood public school a try. And guess what? Now, it’s “good”. Newsflash: it has the same great programs and enrichment that it had before, but when wealthy involved parents decided to go, it magically transformed into “good”. Go figure.
LikeLike
& what happens to “community” when parents send their kids far & away?
Community, neighborhood schools are best & are certainly worth fighting for.
Keep on talking up your local public school, Mr. Leonard, & know that many are with you.
LikeLike