I would support releasing non-violent low-level street drug users from prison, and channeling any resulting savings into K-12 education.

BTW, since on-line education has no marginal costs , why are students charged anything for taking on-line classes?

Actually, I’m very much an “on the one hand, on the other hand” person and I think I understood the reasoning behind the additional fee. I just didn’t agree that it merited going against a very basic principle.

I’m glad that the board decided not to take that step.

As an aside, I have studied and reflected on the concept of fees for services for a long time. I was formerly on the Board of Commissioners and prior to that on a budget review committee for the City of Ann Arbor that met for over a year to consider revenue and budget cut options. There is a lot to be said about fees for basic services, but this isn’t the place.

But in any case, I was not (and will not, necessarily, in this column) try to be “balanced” or “see both sides”–because it’s a column, and meant to be analytic.

In this case, however, I think I did get to hear both sides. I heard the board speak extensively, at several meetings, about the idea of a fee for students who take a seventh hour. I didn’t hear–for instance–a single board member speak about equity concerns between the number of “free” credits a Skyline student could take versus the number of “free” credits a Huron or Pioneer student could take. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t even play one on tv, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion that I’ll share in public.

I am glad that the school board has come to its senses. I hope that “sending something to the planning committee” in this case is a way of saving face and burying the idea. And I hope that next we will be looking at the fees for online classes and CRs, and the conditions under which those could rightly be imposed–or should also be cancelled.

And at the same time, [6] Topher is correct that we need to keep advocating at the state level for adequate school funding, so that we don’t get into these kinds of issues.

I still don’t really understand why (or under what conditions) students have to pay a $250 fee for online classes or community resource classes that they get credit for–or why that would be different from the 7th hour fees. Is it only if students take an eighth hour? Is it only if they do it during the summer? Those classes also show up on the students’ transcripts. Does anybody understand this?

It’s hard for me to escape the idea that this is exactly what right wingers hate about public schools, one of the only places today where people of all races and all income levels mix freely.

What I see here is part of a trend toward increasing inequality in our society. The public schools have long been the great equalizer and mixer of diverse demographics in communities. One valuable lesson that students (or, as we used to call them, pupils) learned was that people who were different from them were also human beings who could even be befriended and respected.

The rush to charter schools has undercut this valuable social effect of public education. Now a fee-based system for enrichment activities in the public schools could do the same. Students who are able to afford these special classes will naturally form social networks apart from those who are unable to participate.

I started thinking about this after hearing a public radio discussion of the effect of high-priced private college student housing. There also, we are seeing a self-segregation based on family income. The commenter mentioned the likely life-long effect of sustained social networks including only similarly fortunate students.

The overall trend in our society toward increasing inequality based on income is insidious. It is likely to divide our society in ways beyond access to material goods. (We all noted the great empathy that Mitt Romney expressed toward the “47%”.) I’d like to think that the taxes I pay to support a public school system are being used in a way that will help to maintain equity, not erode it.