5
OPINION

Thursday, May 16, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

T

he effort to eliminate public 
school segregation in Ameri-
ca has stalled.
Our school systems are just as seg-
regated today as they were decades 
ago. A combination of factors includ-
ing “white flight,” gerrymandered 
school districts, the rise of charter 
and private schools and the decima-
tion of civil rights legislation such 
as the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also 
known as the Fair Housing Act, have 
contributed to this. A recent report 
estimated that predominantly non-
white school districts receive $23 bil-
lion less than white districts despite 
serving the same number of students. 
How can this be? 
It’s simple. The United States, 
unlike most of the world, has left the 
education of its citizens up to individ-
ual states. The “right” to a free, pub-
lic education is implied though never 
addressed directly in the Constitu-
tion. Federal dollars compose on aver-
age less than 10 percent of a school 
districts budget, while the rest comes 
from state and local funding. Usually 
a school district is first funded from 
local property taxes. The state usually 
has a minimum funding level, so if the 
district is unable to meet that with the 
money generated from taxes, the state 
would step in to bridge the gap to the 
minimum level. Sounds fair right?
Unfortunately, states aren’t always 
able to contribute what is needed 
and leave lower-income districts 
scrambling to provide basic needs. 
In the wake of the Great Recession, 
state and local governments slashed 
funding for K-12 education. This, of 
course, hit the poorer districts the 
hardest. Wealthier districts, on the 
other hand, take in so much more 
money from their local taxes that 
they are able to deal with most fund-
ing shortages.
The quality of education you grow 
up with is tied to where you live. By 
doing this, we are cementing the 
pathway of upward mobility in this 
nation with the social engineering 
of those in power. While poorer dis-
tricts in general receive less funding 
than wealthier ones, the contrast is 
especially stark when looking at the 
racial disparity. In general, non-white 
districts receive an average of $2,226 
less per student than white districts. 
High-poverty, white districts still 
receive $782 more per student than 
low-poverty, non-white districts and 
a staggering near $1,500 more than 
high-poverty non-white districts. “A 
single fact is clear — financially, it is 
far better in the United States to have 
the luck and lot to attend a school 
district that is predominantly white 

than one that enrolls a concentration 
of children of color.” 
Even when a school district is less 
segregated, issues arise. It is well 
documented that “aggressive judicial 
desegregation efforts — and exposure 
to minorities in general — often lead 
to ‘white flight’ from urban school 
districts.” It seems a clear limitation 
to integration is white people’s aver-
sion to diversity in their school dis-
tricts.
While we have yet to solve the 
aforementioned issue, we have an 
obligation to all citizens of the United 
States to reform the way we fund our 
public schools. Regardless of race, 
income or geography, all students 
should have the same amount of 
investment from the government in 
their futures. 
On average, a predominantly white 
district enrolls just over 1,500 stu-
dents compared to over 10,000 in 
non-white districts. A potential solu-
tion to this issue can be seen in the 
South, where “school district lines 
are often drawn along county lines, 
making districts larger across the 
board. Researchers found that fund-
ing looks more equal in states like 
Georgia and Alabama.”
According to EdBuild researchers, 
larger school districts would help bal-
ance out funding disparities, instead 
of arbitrary boundaries that favor 
keeping white and non-white students 
separated. Rebecca Sibilia, founder and 
CEO of EdBuild, said, “This confirms 
a theory that we’ve had, which is that 
the larger the tax base — the larger the 
actual geography of the school districts 
— the more you can actually balance 
out the difference between a wealthy 
white suburb and a less wealthy rural 
or urban area.”
Additionally, pooling together the 
local tax revenue and redistributing it 
equally would end the unfair system in 
place today. Of course, this would raise 
issues: The wealthier districts would 
likely see their funding drop. This 
would lead to inevitable backlash from 
the parents and teachers at wealthy 
schools. It seems the only plausible 
way this policy could be implemented 
would be with a large increase in state 
funding so that wealthier school dis-
tricts wouldn’t lose money. Everyone 
should demand increases in public 
school funding at the state level. Doing 
so will ensure that we invest the same 
amount in all kids, rich and poor.

Time to end public school inequality

AVI RAJENDRA-NICOLUCCI | OP-ED

Avi Rajendra-Nicolucci is a 

freshman in the College of Engineering.

5
OPINION

, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ZACK BLUMBERG | COLUMN

2

018 was, globally, the fourth 
hottest 
year 
on 
record, 
surpassed only by 2016, 
2015 and 2017 in that order. In the 
United States alone, there were 
14 weather and climate caused 
billion-dollar disasters last year, 
and the cumulative cost of all these 
natural disasters was over $1.6 
trillion (for reference, that’s more 
than a twentieth of the U.S. GDP, 
and over twice as much as the U.S. 
annually spends on the military). 
Unfortunately though, this is just the 
tip of the iceberg.
Climate change is unlike any prob-
lem human civilization has faced 
before; it is a truly global crisis which 
impacts an incredibly diverse range 
of issues, from economic productiv-
ity to urban development to migra-
tion flows. However, efforts to solve 
climate change have thus far been 
derailed by a lack of binding inter-
national legislation and an amoral 
focus on short-term profit over the 
health of the planet. While the clock 
is ticking, there is time for humanity 
to right these wrongs by embracing 
a strong, cooperative approach to 
fighting climate change, and looking 
for the economic benefits, not draw-
backs, that come with it.
To begin, it’s important to con-
textualize how broad the effects of 
climate change are. One of the big-
gest effects of climate change, which 
is often an afterthought in discus-
sions of the issue, is global migra-
tion flows. In the past five years, 
the European Union’s struggle to 
handle a large influx of immigrants 
and refugees has already revealed 
how economically contentious and 
politically charged the issue of mass 
migration is. The EU’s controversial 
management of the situation has 
unfortunately contributed to the 
rise of far-right movements within 
Europe.
However, an increasingly warm 
and erratic global climate would only 
serve to drastically increase migra-
tion flows, in particular from devel-
oping nations in the global south. In 
2015, a Notre Dame study found that 
many countries in Central and Sub-
Saharan Africa are the most vulner-
able to climate change and the least 
prepared for it. Many do not have 
the money or resources to effec-
tively protect themselves. A report 
published by the European Council 
of Foreign Policy found that “The 
combination of poverty, dependence 
on agriculture, environmental deg-
radation, and population growth (in 
Africa) are creating a vicious circle, 
which can be expected to translate 

into increasing forced migration.” 
Here in the United States, the same 
issue is already occurring: Climate 
change has decimated the Guate-
malan farming industry, leaving 
individuals with little choice but to 
migrate to America.
The mass migration caused by 
climate change is problematic and 
highlights a fundamental prob-
lem with humanity’s handling of 
the issue. Even among developed 
nations that have acknowledged the 
dangers of climate change, there is 
no actual long-term plan in place 
for solving them. The Foreign Policy 
report explains that “The EU Emer-
gency Trust Fund for Africa is typi-
cal in focusing on enhancing border 
control and fighting smuggling, rath-
er than tackling the long term causes 
of migration.” This exemplifies the 
systemic unpreparedness countries 
have in regard to climate change, 
even when it touches on issues like 
immigration, which have already 
proven to be highly controversial. 

With that said, it’s time for the 
global community to finally take 
some bold steps towards fighting 
climate change. Historically, there is 
(some) precedent for binding global 
cooperation in fighting climate 
change. The primary example of 
this is The Montreal Protocol of 1987, 
which was a global agreement to 
ban the use of chlorofluorocarbons 
(CFCs) and other substances which 
depleted the Earth’s ozone layer. 
The treaty, with its concrete, specific 
restrictions was ratified by 197 coun-
tries. Two years later, at the Noord-
wijk Meeting in the Netherlands, the 
world came agonizingly close to cre-
ating a global framework for fighting 
climate change, except, as a Swed-
ish minister eloquently explained 
to American environmental activist 
Daniel Becker, “Your government is 
fucking this thing up!”
Since then, the global response 
to climate change has been a 
bevy of half-hearted treaties with 
high-minded language which are 
unenforceable, weak and largely 

ineffectual. The Paris climate agree-
ment, hailed as a groundbreaking 
treaty, “requires all Parties to put 
forward their best efforts through 
nationally 
determined 
contribu-
tions.” This type of open-ended 
requirement essentially leaves coun-
tries to do as they please, as exem-
plified by how the U.S. leaving the 
treaty didn’t seem to change any-
thing, on any level, with regard to 
fighting climate change.
While creating a binding treaty 
on such a broad issue is incredibly 
complex, there are a few aspects that 
are essential for effectively tackling 
climate change. Beyond the obvious 
requirements for a climate change 
treaty (promoting clean energy, 
finding ways to limit overall car-
bon emissions, etc.) there should 
be several other components. First, 
there needs to be some sort of finan-
cial incentive for countries to join; 
too often, countries ignore treaties 
they’ve agreed to follow if the agree-
ment is solely diplomatic. This could 
be as simple as creating a free trade 
agreement between member states, 
creating incentives for countries 
to join and cooperate. To go along 
with that, specific environmental 
goals on a country-by-country basis 
should be instituted. While the Paris 
climate agreement attempts to keep 
global warming below 2 degrees Cel-
sius, it has no specific requirements 
for individual nations, essentially 
absolving countries of their respon-
sibility to actually act.
Secondly, a good treaty would 
extol the economic benefits of fight-
ing 
climate 
change. 
Especially 
within the U.S., the political right 
has successfully created the narra-
tive that fighting climate change is 
economically infeasible or unwise 
(even as economic disasters caused 
by climate change cost the country 
trillions). A 2016 report found that 
Germany, by further promoting the 
use of renewable energy and globally 
cooperating with other countries 
doing the same, could reduce its car-
bon emissions from 72 to 93 percent 
by 2050 without harming economic 
growth. By justifying the economic 
benefits of fighting climate change, 
a global agreement could win over 
private enterprise, leading to greater 
investment in renewable energy and, 
subsequently, more innovation in 
the field.

The case for a globally binding climate agreement

Zack Blumberg can be reached at 

zblumber@umich.edu.

A good treaty would 
extol the economic 
benefits of fighting 
climate change

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