America is embroiled in an immigration debate that goes far beyond President Obama’s executive order on undocumented immigrants.
It goes to the heart of who “we” are. And it’s roiling communities across the nation.
In early November, school officials in Orinda, California, hired a private detective to determine whether a seven-year-old Latina named Vivian – whose single mother works as a live-in nanny for a family in Orinda — “resides” in the district and should therefore be allowed to attend the elementary school she’s already been attending there.
On the basis of that investigation they determined that Vivian’s legal residence is her grandmother’s home in Bay Point, California. They’ve given the seven-year-old until December 5th to leave the Orinda elementary school.
Never mind that Vivian and her mother live during the workweek at the Orinda home where Vivian’s mother is a nanny, that Vivian has her own bedroom in that home with her clothing and toys and even her own bathroom, that she and her mother stock their own shelves in the refrigerator and kitchen cupboard of that Orinda home, or that Vivian attends church with her mother in Orinda and takes gym and youth theater classes at the Orinda community center.
The point is Vivian is Latina and poor, and Orinda is white, Anglo, and wealthy.
And Orinda vigilantly protects itself from encroachments from the large and growing poor Latino and Hispanic populations living beyond its borders.
Orinda’s schools are among the best in California – public schools that glean extra revenues from a local parcel tax (that required a two-thirds vote to pass) and parental contributions to the Educational Foundation of Orinda which “suggests” donations of $600 per child.
Orinda doesn’t want to pay for any kids who don’t belong there. Harold Frieman, Orinda’s district attorney, says the district has to be “preserving the resources of the district for all the students.”
Which is why it spends some of its scare dollars on private detectives to root out children like Vivian.
Such schools are “public” in name only. Tuition payments are buried inside high home prices, extra taxes, parental donations, and small armies of parental volunteers.
The bigger story is this. Education is no longer just a gateway into the American middle class. Getting a better education than almost everyone else is the gateway into the American elite.
That elite is now receiving almost all the economy’s gains. So the stakes continue to rise for upscale parents who want to give their kids that better education.
The competition starts before Kindergarten and is becoming more intense each year. After all, the Ivy League has only a limited number of places.
Parents who can afford it are frantically seeking to get their children into highly regarded private schools.
Or they’re moving into towns like Orinda, with excellent public schools.
Such schools are “public” in name only. Tuition payments are buried inside high home prices, extra taxes, parental donations, and small armies of parental volunteers.
These parents are intent on policing the boundaries, lest a child whose parents haven’t paid the “tuition” reap the same advantages as their own child. Hell hath no fury like an upscale parent who thinks another kid is getting an unfair advantage by sneaking in under the fence.
The other part of this larger story is that a growing number of kids on the other side of the fence are Hispanic, Latino, and African American. Most babies born in California are now minorities. The rest of the nation isn’t far behind.
According to the 2010 census, Orinda is 82.4 percent white and 11.4 percent Asian. Only 4.6 percent of its inhabitants are Hispanic or Latino, of any race. All of its elementary schools get 10 points on the GreatSchools 10-point rating system.
Bay Point, where Vivian’s grandmother lives, is 41.4 percent white, 54.9 percent Hispanic or Latino of any race, and 11.6 percent African America. Bay Point’s elementary schools are rated 2 to 4 on GreatShools’ 10-point scale.
Many of the people who live in places like Bay Point tend the gardens and care for the children of the people who live in places like Orinda.
But Orinda is intent on patrolling its border.
The nation’s attention is focused on the border separating the United States from Mexico, and on people who have crossed that border and taken up residence here illegally.
But the boundary separating white Anglo upscale school districts from the burgeoning non-white and non-Anglo populations in downscale communities is fast becoming a flashpoint inside America.
In both cases, the central question is who are “we.”
Lori Saldaña says
We have the same situations here in San Diego, especially in the northern areas of the city. I experienced some of this scrutiny while living in Bird Rock, along the Northern PB/southern La Jolla boundary zones.
While living near Bird Rock Elementary, which is one of the “feeder” schools into La Jolla High School I experienced (2nd hand) some of the same level of scrutiny to determine if students “really” lived in the area. Calls were made to homes early in the morning from school personnel, insisting on getting answers to questions that were none of their concern, to ascertain if parents lived where they claimed.
At least they didn’t hire private investigators (that we know of).
Everyone knew the payoff to getting into Bird Rock Elementary: admittance to La Jolla High, which fits in the Orinda model of privately funded schools vs. those relying exclusively on scarce public resources.
If you have not seen the La Jolla HS campus, drive by: it is an incredible contrast to schools just a few miles away.
Should parents be free to invest in their children’s school, to help them construct swimming pools, etc.? Of course- their generosity is admirable.
But it’s disconcerting when members of some of these same families, or residents of the same neighborhoods that benefit from these private contributions, then actively give money to defeat bond measures whose goals are to “lift all boats” and provide additional funds for all schools in the district.