Kavi’s home again after her bio research club’s presentation at MIT — it was a one-day trip, and they got in late last night. We’re proud of her hard work, of course, and Kavi said it went well. She’s currently thinking pre-med, so this was a great opportunity to see what it’s like to do real science research and present it at a conference. Kind of astonishing that a high school junior got to do this, actually.
I want to take a moment to point out that it’s extraordinary for a public school to be able to provide this kind of opportunity for students, and I have to think it mostly comes down to the school being well-funded from property taxes. I don’t know the specifics of how the students’ trip was funded (no hotel, but several flights) — there’s a good chance that it came from grant funding rather than general school funds.
But even if so (and their poster thanks various organizational funders for supporting the club, buying the tech needed to do the science, etc.), it’s much easier for a well-funded school to do this kind of thing, to have teachers who aren’t slammed with teaching 30+ kids / class, and who thereby maybe have a little more leisure, enough that they can spend extra time out of their lives to run a club like this and take some students for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Someone had to put this together, to apply for the corporate and grant funding to make this feasible. That takes time and knowledge and possibly connections too. Maybe it was the teacher alone (and all credit to him!), maybe they had staff help, but one way or another, support from the school was part of the equation.
So Kavi’s success here is built on a larger inequity — as long as we fund public schools through property taxes, schools like OPRF will have more resources for their students than many other public schools in the U.S. (I wonder if our neighboring Proviso township high school has a bio research club that sends students to present at MIT? I’m guessing not — and if you go to downstate Illinois, I suspect it’s even less likely.)
We moved to Oak Park for its good schools. This is what that means, and we knew, making the move, that we were choosing to prioritize our own kids and leaving others behind.
It would take a seismic shift in America to uncouple property taxes from school funding nationwide.
But if we really want an equal playing field, if we want every student to have the opportunity to succeed to the best of their abilities, uncoupling school funding from property taxes would be a necessary step.
It’s not going to happen during my tenure on the school board, but I hope that we can keep having the conversation, dragging the Overton window leftwards on education, at least. I hope that there are serious people working hard on making this happen (and if you know of any such efforts, groups to join who are working on the problem, please drop them in the comments).
The work of a lifetime, I suspect, but a life well spent.
