It's 2022, why are schools still separated?

     In response to the Great Depression, President FDR enacted the New Deal Program. One part of this program was to give out money for housing. However, when deciding who received this money and who did not they drew red lines around African American neighborhoods. If you lived inside those redlines it made it a million times harder for you to receive loans. In the video, The Disturbing History of the Suburbs they play a game similar to monopoly except one team is playing by the unfair rulebook the government has given to African Americans and the other team is able to purchase property and expand their wealth with ease. This has to be one of the most frustrating games I have ever witnessed. Of course, over time the federal government made it illegal to ban African Americans from specific neighborhoods. However, the story of Harvey, a WWII veteran, told in the podcast "Redlining" shows that African Americans were often forced out of their homes if they tried to move into predominately white neighborhoods and then would be persecuted afterward for instigating riots and plotting to lower market rates. 

    As we learned in the previous module, public schools are primarily funded by property taxes, so the schools that are in African American neighborhoods, or as the video Segregated by Design coined slums because of the toxic power plants that were placed there and their likeliness to be overcrowded, are less funded than the schools that are in the mainly white suburbs. A common misconception is that people of color have the ability to move, but choose not to. In reality, they were not given the same opportunities for wealth as most white people. The houses that were previously banned from being owned by African Americans have skyrocketed in value. This profit has given white people the funds to send their children to college and to buy bigger houses in even nicer suburbs. People of color were never given the opportunity to purchase houses in the first place, so they did not get this same privilege. 

What does money really have to do with it?

    In the United States, each state has its own system for funding its public schools. In this post, I want to discuss the Texas system for funding public schools. It is no secret that this system has some major flaws. In fact, it is so well-known that "despite their political rifts, Republicans, and Democrats, House and Senate lawmakers, and rural and urban Texans all agree the state needs to change the way it funds public schools," as Aliyya Swaby states in her article Texas' school finance system is unpopular and complex. Here's how it works. One issue with Texas' system for funding public schools is that it focuses too heavily on equality instead of equity. In reality, some students need more resources and funding in order to obtain equality.

    Another major problem with the way Texas' public schools are funded is that the system is rarely ever revised. The state of Texas has a base amount of funding that it gives to each student, and this number has remained stagnant for decades despite the steep increase in inflation in recent years. Anyone that lives in Texas knows that it is constantly changing. What used to be a small rural town is now a blossoming suburb. This plays a major role because teachers are paid according to the cost of living where they are teaching. However, the calculations for this system has not been changed in decades. Overall, the system that is currently in place only helps the privileged kids get access to more and more resources while the students who are impoverished get swept under the rug.