‘Disadvantaged’ Is Only an Ethnic Term : Education: The school system’s equal opportunity is not being offered equally, especially for a poor child who happens to be white.

I am the mother of a disadvantaged second-grader. I am young, single, working, financially strapped and I live in an urban neighborhood. But none of these facts are why my child is disadvantaged.

She is disadvantaged because she is white and because the school system sees “disadvantaged” only in ethnic terms.

My daughter and I live in a tiny house just off El Cajon Boulevard, in an older, modest San Diego neighborhood. When my daughter plays freeze-tag in the yard, it is with Latino, African-American, Vietnamese and Laotian children from the area. They all play identical games, live in similar homes and shop at the same stores that we do. These children seem no more, nor less, advantaged than my own child.

But my daughter must attend an inadequate neighborhood school where the classes are too large and one in four students in her kindergarten cannot speak English. Meanwhile, a bus, supported in part by my taxes, collects the children who live across the street to escort them to perhaps the finest elementary school in the district. Their mom was able to check the “Hispanic” box on their school-entrance forms. My daughter cannot attend because she is white. In fact my daughter and only one other child on our block attend the neighborhood school; all of the others bus out, by choice.

Is discrimination any more socially justified when it is a matter of policy, practiced by the government against such victims as my daughter?

Is not equal opportunity something to be offered equally, literally with no regard to race or ethnic background?

It would be easy to assume that what I want for my child is a school with more white students. That’s not true. I like the fact that my daughter goes to school with children of other races and cultures. And the fact that a substantial portion of the students in her school are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches does not bother me either. My daughter qualifies, also, although I choose to pack her a nourishing lunch instead. It’s part of what I see as my responsibility as a parent.

Unfortunately, many of my daughter’s classmates seem to have been deprived of basic parenting and nurturing, and their needs take up the financial and human resources of the people whom I’m trusting to educate my daughter. What used to be the responsibility of the family has become the work of the schools. And I don’t mean packing lunches.

I mean such things as learning to speak English.

When my grandparents were children, they were not taught in their own native French or German. They took pride in their growing fluency in English and worked hard for every success its mastery brought to them. Today, money is spent for specialty teachers in Spanish instruction, while there are not enough dollars to hire adequate regular staff to relieve the classroom crowding that is a statewide embarrassment. My daughter’s Latino playmates who bus to the magnet school were offered instruction in their “native” language even though their family has spoken English for two generations.

The problem is deeper than language instruction, however. When I volunteered in my daughter’s kindergarten class I saw children who could not tell you their age or last name, in any language. Still others had never held a pencil and could not tell a circle from a square. One child had to be sent home repeatedly because of lice. The harried teacher was forced to spend an inordinate amount of time checking personal hygiene and teaching remedial skills.

And this wasn’t easy. Many of the children seemed unaccustomed to supervision, and even a sharp reprimand appeared to go unnoticed.

It’s sad enough that these children are so deprived. But when they see the school performing what is a parent’s responsibility, are we not teaching them early that individual responsibility is optional? How can we then expect them to learn to build on their own resources?

When I was my daughter’s age, it was not in our teachers’ job description to provide for our basic personal hygiene or to ensure that we possessed rudimentary communication skills or even manners. My mother may have sent her children off to school in hand-me-down clothes, but we were fed, scrubbed, alert and prepared to learn.

My income falls well below the average for San Diego--we’re poor. My daughter comes from a “broken home”--a household headed by a single woman. To me, these conditions are not excuses for failure; they are challenges to be overcome. I don’t look to the American taxpayer for a bailout.

My daughter’s only real advantage is that she has a mother who reads to her, sings to her, listens to her, guides her. A mother who has taught her that she can do well if she tries her best. This has nothing to do with the color of her skin or the adequacy of my bank account. It isn’t something that can be legislated or bought with tax dollars.

Short-term, emergency programs will always be needed to cope with catastrophes, but is it really to our advantage to allow “disadvantaged” to become a way of life?