No busing for magnet schools will only widen the achievement gap

I grew up in a town where school choice was easy— you were assigned a school based on your address. When my husband and I welcomed our own child, we began looking for a new home as well. When we bought our little house near a park, we looked forward to raising our daughter in a family friendly neighborhood and remarked on the elementary school a few blocks away “We can walk there!” we said. How little we knew about how JCPS works.

When we discovered that our neighborhood school is a traditional program and we must apply through a lottery, we filled out the form with our first, second and third choice of school and crossed our fingers. We received a rejection letter regarding the school in our neighborhood, so we waited for the next two letters to come.

We were accepted at a magnet school across town, but transportation was not available. We could attend their special program if we drove her to and from the school ourselves, or we could take advantage of the bus available to our resides school – the default option. JCPS touts its magnet and traditional schools as unique, with specialized learning environments. It was hard to turn that down for a more “standard” option.

Public schools fill several societal needs, whether it should be that way or not. When facing school choices, families need to consider when they need to be at work, where the school is, whether they need CEP, if they need transportation and more.

Parents want JCPS options but resources matter

A parent or caregiver will do anything they can to give their child a head start in life, but they can only do so with the resources available to them.

We have a vehicle, so we can drive to the magnet school. We have flexible job schedules, so we were able to adjust when the school’s start time changed to 9:40 a.m. These privileges are not the reality for many JCPS families.

Public schools fill several societal needs, whether it should be that way or not. When facing school choices, families need to consider when they need to be at work, where the school is, whether they need CEP, if they need transportation and more. The child’s educational needs often come last on this list.

Removing transportation options from magnet and traditional schools creates a barrier to these specialized programs, which only serves to continue widening the equity and achievement gap in JCPS. If JCPS is going to create a culture of competition for families to get their children into special schools, they need to ensure that every family can at least enter the race.

When magnet programs aren’t equitably available to all students, it’s time to ask the question: how can students get a specialized learning experience at any school that is accessible to them, regardless of their family’s ability to transport them?