An Education for All

Provided You Can Get There

It’s a grand and noble thing to talk about school choice, just as it is a grand and noble thing to talk about freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness—provided none of these things require a ride to get there.

Governor Joe Lombardo stood before the people of Nevada and, with great solemnity, declared that no child should stay shackled to a failing school simply because of their ZIP code. Lombardo’s grand plan hinges on what the learned folks call “open zoning,” which, boiled down, means that a child may attend a school other than the one assigned to them by bureaucratic decree.

It is a system that already exists in some form, much like the law against jaywalking—it is there, but who understands how it works?

The trouble, of course, lies not in choosing a school but in getting to it, as the plan does not necessarily include the minor detail of transportation. And so, children without the means to procure a carriage (or, in modern parlance, a ride from their beleaguered parents) are left precisely where they started—firmly rooted in the soil of their failing institution.

On the opposing side of this educational chess game stands Assemblywoman Selena Torres-Fossett, whose plan is to impose some manner of standardization on this business of open zoning. She proposes a more transparent process, ensuring that families know precisely why their child’s application was accepted or denied—though, in the absence of transportation solutions, such knowledge will be like knowing why one lost the lottery.

Lombardo’s bill, which remains shrouded in mystery, proposes that children from the most underperforming schools be granted passage to finer institutions, including private schools, through a program most assuredly titled to sound benevolent–the Nevada Integrity in Academic Funding Program. What remains unclear is whether such integrity extends to tuition, transportation, or any other trifling expenses that tend to arise when a child attempts to secure an education beyond his immediate vicinity.

The honorable senator Marilyn Dondero Loop, whose name alone suggests she has seen such policy debates circle back on themselves more than once, pointed out the inherent flaw in all this–in a town where there is one school, a student’s options are about as open as a saloon at high noon on the Sabbath.

Still, the debate rages on, with grand declarations and high ideals filling the air like fireworks on July Fourth —beautiful, dazzling, and of little consequence once the smoke clears. An education is a fine thing, a necessary thing, and a thing that depends on whether one can find a way to get to it.