The San Jose Mercury News recently published a letter to the editor titled, "Private schools
drain public funds," in which the writer displayed surprising though chilling candor. This article is based on a response
to that letter that was submitted at the time to the editor of the SJMN but was not published. The writer of the original
letter is a retired college professor and a volunteer with a San Jose area high school district (in classrooms and administratively).
His letter claimed that private schools "adversely affect the educational opportunities of others" by "taking away about $5,000
in state money per student from their local school districts". This is very misleading. Private schools neither diminish the
amount of tax money collected, from citizens or businesses, nor the money available for public schools. His complaint, "taking
away," is based on the fact that schools receive money from the state based on average attendance. The complaint only has
validity, however, if every child residing in a public school district is somehow owned by the district or is obligated to
attend that district’s schools. This is not the case in the US, and the very idea that children are in some way "owned"
by or obligated to public schools would horrify most parents (and many other citizens as well). The letter writer further
proposed reevaluating the rents private schools pay when they lease unused public school campuses, with the intent being to
substantially increase rents paid, based on what the private schools supposedly cost public schools.
Parents of school-aged children should find this kind of reduction of their children to money - $5,000 apiece
per year - disturbing. Is this how taxpayer-funded public schools should view students? What happened to the idea that the
purpose of public schools is to educate young human beings? Parents who choose to pay twice - paying the taxes that fund public
schools and then paying private school tuition - to educate their children at private schools should likewise be alarmed at
the apparent desire on the part of public school leaders to burden their freedom to educate their children by arbitrarily
making their choice more expensive.
Campus-based private schools and private homeschoolers should also be alarmed at this kind of general resentment
of their existence being expressed by a school district insider in a publicly published letter. Does anyone believe this letter
writer is alone in this hostility and the accompanying desire to use government power punitively to shrink or eliminate private
schools? Sadly, parents of private-schooled children, private schools, and homeschooling parents will need to be continually
vigilant to protect and, if necessary, defend their freedom to educate their children as they choose. Both this antagonism
on the part of public school administrators and teachers and the increased vigilance on the part of private schools and parents
are a waste, diverting energy and money from what is supposed to be their real purpose, the education of children. Public
school educrats would better serve their students and the taxpayers who fund public schools if they would focus on the education
of the students who are enrolled in public schools and leave private schools and homeschoolers alone.
