The End of the Neighborhood School

Donald Trump’s proposed education budget aims to cut spending by 13.5 percent, or $9.2 billion, from the current $68.2 billion budget. It’s the biggest single-year cut a president has tried to make since Reagan attempted to gut the department in 1983. Targeted for the biggest hit: public schools. Specifically, after-school programs, teacher training, foreign languages, and the like would be slashed or eliminated.

Yet the budget gives public schools a way to make some cash: If local districts agree to allow open enrollment, in which parents, regardless of where they live, can send their children to any area public school, the districts will be awarded grants from a $1 billion initiative clunkily dubbed Furthering Options for Children to Unlock Success (FOCUS). When a child moves from one school to another, the local, state, and federal funds attached to them would follow.