MAN, the way people complain about the terrible Robin Hood ways of SFUSD and its naughty naughty southeast side schools, you would think that teaching on the southeast side would be more appealing to veteran educators.  I mean, apparently it's all candy and awesome, what with the ample cash (ripped out of westside hands), extra supplies, twelve adults per ten students and whatnot we got going on.

WHATEVER.  It's not only factually inaccurate - the low-seniority schools on the southeast side directly subsidize their higher-seniority peers elsewhere in the District, because teacher salaries and benefits are averaged - it is also offensive.

Southeast side schools have students with more significant needs.  That's just the reality: poor communities are badly serviced generally.  Minor health problems don't get taken care of and they are exacerbated by environmental toxins...the kind one finds in low-income neighborhoods.  My particular school abuts the largest housing project in town; it is a substandard, rundown place with limited public space, serious gang problems and no services outside of local CBOs.  Kids who live there need more than a kid who lives in a single-family home in Noe Valley.  They get less.

That's right: THEY GET LESS.  We are not Robin Hooding anyone; we are Hans Brinkering against a rising tide.

It's convenient, of course, that the poor and their schools provide such an attractive target: nothing like a little infighting to keep everyone from banding together for better school funding (locally: fewer SmartBoards at Cabrillo, more functioning computers at school sites, and state and federally too of course). I presume this is the same audience that believes ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act caused the recession.  It's the same kind of nonsense, at least.