From One Public School to Another

By Arin Haas

You will have to work ten times harder were the words ingrained in me everytime I stepped into a classroom. It was very clear at a young age that education needed to be my first priority and that my success in the classroom was my stepping stone in life. What was not clear was the disparity in education I would face that inevitably set me back when moving to my new well-funded High School and leaving my middle to low income Junior High. On my first day at my new High School I was told that we would be starting from where middle school left off. What I quickly learned was that the local middle school was more advanced than mine. I found myself having to catch up with the class and trying to understand the new material simultaneously. This required math support classes, extra credit work, and tutoring before and after school. 

It was clear to me that kids at well-funded schools were being offered more opportunities and a better education to prepare them for college, while kids at underfunded schools weren’t being offered the same resources and would not be prepared for higher education. I noticed significant disparities between the access that friends had at low-income high schools and what I had access to at my well-funded school. Where I went lended students laptops, had two different theaters, two basketball gyms, and multiple fields for the assortment of sports they excelled in. We had easy access to our counselors and an abundance of opportunities to boost our college resumes, not to mention mandatory classes that helped us apply to college. As my own education has continued, I have met more people with the same story. It became abundantly clear that funding is the deciding factor for whether or not kids receive an equal and equitable education. Funding youth education means funding our future, which is an investment that benefits everyone.