Helping Public Schools, Part 1 of 4

On Monday, I laid out three areas that I think are currently killing the KCMO school district, and I would suspect, many other school urban school districts across the country.  The three areas I think that hurt urban schools are:

1) Limited financial resources cause kids to leave school early to support their families

2) Lack of community support for FIXING the problem, vs moving to another area where the problem doesn't exist

3) Cultural views in that cause "school" not to be held in as high regard as it should be.

The first, and easiest problem to address is problem #1.  This doesn't take a cultural shift, or an opinion shift, it just takes a little forsight and planning.  Since the 1920s, along with the advent of the automobile, people started fleeing urban areas to their cozier and quieter suburbs.  In the 1940s, the lobbying groups that represented the big auto manufacturers in Detroit started getting trolly lines ripped out of cities so that there would be more room for automobiles.  And most cities caved quickly.

After 60+ years, we have seen what the lack of quality public transit can do to a city's urban core. Good jobs that once resided in cities have since moved out to the suburbs...and without efficient public transit to get people without cars to these jobs, these jobs aren't available to all people. Over time, a lack of good jobs being available meant lower disposable incomes in urban neighborhoods, which meant many of the businesses (jobs) that existed in the urban core, were forced to close.  This led to fewer good jobs in the urban core, which meant less money, which has all cycled into a deterioration of neighborhoods -- where there aren't good jobs for people, people can't get good jobs, and the neighborhoods themselves have no money. This has led to blighted and abandoned neighborhoods and businesses.

Good public transit can and will reduce this cycle in Kansas City. There are many areas in the city that are desperate for good help.  The Legends area in KCK is desparately seeking a way to get workers our there on public transit because they can't find good help.  I've heard of similar problems at Zona Rosa. Even ultra-rich Johnson County is struggling with finding enough help to fill blue collar service positions as most of their population is very well educated and "above" work such as cleaning office buildings and being busboys/wait-staff.

Good public transit to our suburbs would open up better paying jobs for more people in KCMO's urban core.  If mom (and sometimes dad) was able to support the family, then kids would be afforded the luxury to think longer-term about their lives and actually stay in school (with maybe a part time job after work for income) vs feeling the pressure to drop out of school early in order to take a full-time job to put food on the table for their younger siblings.

This won't fix all of the problems in the urban core....or in education. But it will keep some kids in school.  Which is a start.  And a fairly simple, short-term solution to create at least a band-aid fix.

But it's a start.  And it will also help solve problem number 2.  Which we'll talk about tomorrow.

Comments

[Michelled]

Public transit is simple in theory but not so much in practice...if it was they would have started re-installing the trolley tracks/light rail, etc years ago.

I do completely agree with you otherwise ;-)

[Brent]

It's all a matter of priorities...and as a populace, we don't make public transit -- which has a greater benefit for the poor, a priority. If we did, we would have spent any of the billions of dollars that this city has "invested" in widening I-35 in Johnson County into a light rail line that ran along that route that could be used by the poor (hooking it into Union Station where the tracks already run). Unfortunately, as a society, we'd rather widen the roads to take the burden off of us, in our own, private automobiles, than look out for the greater good. Things that are a priority are often fairly easy to accomplish...unfortunately, making things a priority that should be, is sometimes very hard.