Photography from a morning Color Run fundrasier at Westchester Academy for International Studies. Westchester worked with a third party group to try to raise money to continue supporting and providing its educational opportunities it provides to students living within the educational district that houses it. Funds have continued to decrease year after year despite the school's increase in enrollments and public interest, as well as continually holding some of the highest scores within the city for a public campus.

 

Westchester is a public choice campus that offers students and families in their district a different educational environment that focuses on advanced and higher level course work in all areas of their education. To align with these higher standards, Westchester has pursued IB curriculums. Students at WAIS are in the IB MYP in grades 6 through 10, and may choose to participate in the IB DP or CP their junior and senior years.

Westchester, and the district its contained within, continually struggle with inadequate finances year after year due to the public funding method utilized by the state of Texas. Texas funds very little of education, majority of funding comes from property tax within the educational district. To reduce funds provided by the state to districts in need, a law commonly reffered to as the "Robin Hood" plan has wealthier districts surrender part of their resident's property taxes to other poorer districts- without any collaboration or cooperation between the two allowed. 

What determines a 'wealthy' district and a 'poor' district is not tax revenue nor the economic situations of the population; rather it is only determined by the total taxable value of the property within the districts bounds. Due to this, you may have situations where a district may have over half of its population economically disavantaged and classify as at risk students, with over a third with limited english proficiency... and still classify as a 'wealthy' district. The district that houses Westchester, Spring Branch ISD is in this situation. 

'Robin Hood' Declared Unconstitutional
Of the 26 million in tax revenue across this educational district in 2014, only around 5 million of it remains within the district to educate the children of this area. While somes areas may have well-to-do families that can pump additional funds into their schools to still provide for their children despite this policy; many areas can not, where majority of families live below the poverty line and struggle to make ends meet by working multiple jobs.

This method of funding was declared unconstitutional by the Texas Supreme Court, but there is still no change in funding. It was declared unconstitutional in February of 2013, and reaffirmed in August of 2014. This system of educational funding in Texas was also declared unconstitutional in 2004 by a state district judge, and by the Texas Supreme Court in 2005. Ten years later, we've come to the same decision, and yet there is still no change.

Majority shot on telephoto, with multiple layers of plastic to protect from fine particles. 
Additional photography by student Preston Godinich after a brief instruction with GoPro.
Specifically, images 5, 10, and the cover photo are by Godinich.