This week, Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey pledged $1 billion for the purpose of addressing immediate coronavirus needs and then, longer term, supporting initiatives related to girls’ health and education and universal basic income (UBI). He’s tracking the donations on this public Google spreadsheet, which, at the time of this writing, 67 people are viewing, including yours truly.

How would the adoption of UBI impact US public schools? It’s possible that UBI could transform some schools from woefully under-funded, ineffective, and over-burdened to over-funded, lean, and high-impact institutions, by reducing their scope and expectations.

The Argument for UBI

The idea of universal basic income may seem remote for a country that has a tendency to blame the poor for their plight, but it’s actually discussed with some frequency by mainstream economists, and even some more conservative ones. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wrote a book proposing basic income via a modernization of the existing Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). 

Furthermore, the US government and the citizenry demonstrated a willingness to basically float all US citizens and permanent residents for two months while the economy pauses for social distancing and quarantine.

But direct payments to families constitutes around 10% of the overall $2 trillion relief package. What if we took the entire relief package and structurally embedded permanent, meaningful, nation-wide UBI, into the US political economy? which could cost around $2 trillion per year?

Public Schools are Like a One-Legged Man in a Can-Crushing Competition

Your humble US K-12 public school might be responsible for many of the following, in no particular order:

• teaching all students grade-level appropriate academic skills
• supporting social and emotional development and well-being
• providing daily nutrition
• ensuring students have daily access to safe and stimulating, school-supervised environments from basically 6am to 6pm
• maintaining facilities
• training and supporting adults 
• satisfying multiple authorizers and oversight entities
• collaborating with families to ensure robust student support
• closing the achievement and opportunity gaps
• cultivating community pride
• navigating and arbitrating on thorny issues of sexual harassment, immigration, and various other state and federal legal matters without the benefit of well-paid attorneys
• providing psychological counseling and other supports for students with learning differences and those impacted by trauma
• fielding and supporting competitive sports teams
• organizing and hosting social events for students 
• getting all students to and through a four-year college

Clearly, public schools are underfunded for fulfilling these real and perceived obligations. 

The consequences of this are dire. To pick just one example, know that teachers are leaving their jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2018, at the highest rate since 2001. In my own personal experience, public schools often do not feel like sustainable places for adults. And without the adults, there are no schools.

In a UBI regime, could the scope of schools’ responsibility be reduced? And if it were, would schools improve on executing those more focused priorities? And if they did, might members of the community at large have increased opportunities to feel connected and empowered, as opposed to feeling that all challenges should be off-loaded to schools which, along with prisons, are the dumping grounds of last resort for unsolvable problems?

Those drawn to serve as public educators tend to invest in public education the hopes that it can create a more just, a more integrated, and a more egalitarian society. 

Understandably, governed by these highest of aspirations, public educators don’t tend to argue for a reduction in scope. And that’s probably partly how we ended up here: an increase in scope coupled with an inadequate increase in funding. In the long run, it’s like trying to out-exercise a bad diet, and ending up tired and sick.

But how might scope be decreased?

Only People with Money Say “Money Doesn’t Solve Everything”

Imagine a school, situated in a city with UBI, designed to “deliver” the minimum effective dose of education. No sports, no expectations for serving as baby-sitter, minimal facilities, very few personnel other than teachers, no school lunches, limited school hours. All teachers are paid the same, and well. The school’s primary commitment is to relentlessly serve every student in one or two limited meaningful dimensions. It’s organizational commitment is to remain uncomplicated and not over-promise.

What would the school do? Ideally the community would decide. Hopefully, they would decide that bringing students together in groups of 25 or 50 would only happen when useful, when a larger group would actually be required to collectively address a given challenge. Students would engage in projects meaningful to them and their community, and have time outside of school to pursue passions more deeply, seeking the expertise of mentors in the community and the guidance of those with whom they can connect through the internet. Part of school would involve helping students determine how to spend their free time, how to build community, how to identify and approach community problems, how to develop their own passions and attend to their health, and how to stay safe and seek help in trying circumstances.

Would you send your kids to participate in what the school can do well, and preserve more of their time for themselves?