Enough With BYOR: Bring Your Own Resources
By Lynda Otero
It’s April of my junior year. My classmate tells me they're taking AP Microeconomics senior year to boost their chances of getting into an Ivy league university. Weird, given our school doesn’t offer that class. They inform me that their parents paid for the AP textbooks, tutor, and exam. Apparently this is not the first time they’ve done it, they’ve managed to take AP World History, Psychology, and Latin this way. All classes that are not offered at our school. They figure if they’re going to major in Economics they need a head start. I, on the other hand, was forced to skip AP Government and Politics because my school only covered two AP exam fee waivers and I was already taking two other AP classes.
In August, the California State and University of California application portals open up. I have been constantly changing my essays and having everyone I know read them again and again. I go through all the checklists on the portals at least once a week to make sure everything is accurate. I have my friends read it to make sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me. They don’t really understand why I don’t go over this with a college counselor. All of their parents paid for one to meet with them privately at least once a month since junior year. I don't know how to tell them that I wouldn’t know where to find one and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to pay for it. But I tell myself it's fine, my AVID teacher has probably read hundreds of college essays by now and is more than ready to read twenty more every school year. I’ll have her go over it with me.
As we approach the winter sports season, my AVID classmate tells me how scared they are of being benched their last year of high school soccer. Our wealthier classmates have managed to meet with private coaches and go to summer boot camps to prepare to have college recruits at their final high school games. School sports were no longer a place to build community, but another space where our independent navigation of our schooling and economic disparities highlighted us as unprepared.
Everything my classmates were able to pay for outside of school should have been offered to all as a resource. Instead, quality classes, counselors, coaches, and camps are privatized. These things are not out of reach for public schools, but a product of their divestment. With proper and sustainable funding for public schools, there is no need for privatization of education or its resources. Public schools are a space to present students with the options they have and the tools to attain their goals. I am forever grateful to the communities I found in school and outside of school that helped me realize these things and attain my goal of studying at UC Berkeley without charging me for it.