Children received raffle tickets for good behavior. We talked about it, we round-tabled on it, and we just couldn't figure how we could come up with the funds to do it and still not have a lot of it come from the home environment. Renewing the promise District officials recently began reaffirming their commitment to financial equity. The picture being painted harks back to the promise, made four years ago, that the poorest students would stand first in line for resources. Last month, Smith reassigned a staff-development employee to monitor equity.
Equity also is back on the minds of board members.
To the superintendent, many past decisions on funding locally and nationally have failed to improve learning. The real test for me, for equity, is that in the end there begins to be equity of results for children in terms of their achievement, in terms of their graduation from high school. She remains unconvinced that more resources alone help poor schools improve. Money, she said, is not an end unto itself. You could have a whole new school, a brand-new school.