The main issue that we were trying to understand and address was educational inequity in New York schools. We chose this topic because we knew that some of us will go to public and other high schools next year and we could be faced with these issues ourselves, also a lot of us knew people who went to schools that were facing these problems. As we talked to people who were in underfunded public schools or worked for organizations that advocated for them, we discovered that it affected a lot more people than we expected. It seemed like such a far away problem at first, like we knew someone or we knew someone who knew someone, but we soon discovered that it affects millions of kids across New York. There a hundreds of these schools that have been abandoned and ignored for years. We discovered that even some of the schools we were going to attend or someone in our family was attending had huge under funding problems. We heard about famous schools like Brooklyn Tech, that we would never in a million years think would have problems like under funding because of how well known they were, is only funded 87% of their allocated funding. We wanted to know if the younger children in these schools understood their situation at such a young age. So we volunteered to tutor on Saturday at the Go Project, an organization that provides tutoring for kids in underprivileged schools. When we first got there my group mate Anna and I were assigned to the third grade. When we all gathered as a class we went around in a circle and answered the question, “if you could make one rule, what would it be?” Most said pretty typical answers, no homework, free travel so on. But one little boy said “I would make everything expensive, cheap.” It would be such a passed by answer if we didn’t know the situation these kids were coming from. The loss they faced everyday at under performing schools. All this interaction in the field inspired us to fight with passion so that one day these people got the education they’re entitled to, and so that boy has a chance to thrive.
