When my children were little, my family would often stop on long car rides at city parks. We would eat lunch, play, and then hop back in the car to continue our journey. It’s hard to imagine a world in which you could only go to a park if you lived at the “right address.” Parks and Rec, an American political satire featuring the everyday lives of the staff at a city Department of Parks and Recreation, plays with this idea in Season 3. In In episode 12, the main character, Leslie Knope, has viewers asking themselves, “who should get to enjoy a public amenity?”

The episode’s conflict centers around the more prosperous neighboring town of Eagleton erecting a fence down the middle of a park shared between the two communities.  Tom, a Parks and Rec employee, relays the news to his boss saying, “Last night Eagleton put up a fence around their side to keep us disgusting Pawnee hobos off their precious land. There's even a security guard. You got to show Eagleton I.D. to get in.”

Can you imagine being required to prove where you live to get into a public park? The episode takes the snobby, wealthy stereotype and makes it even more hilarious with required I.D.s, valet parking at town hall meetings, and air that smells of cupcakes. It is brilliant satire, isn’t it? 

But what makes satire funny is how closely the details align with the truth. In America, there really are public amenities that are better in the suburbs. Ironically, many suburban schools are so surrounded by soccer fields and playgrounds that the grounds actually do double duty as parks in the evenings and on weekends. Luckily, anyone that can drive to a nicer park can play there. Anyone that can drive to a nicer library in their state can read the books. It feels absurd that a community could require an I.D. for someone to use a public amenity. 

And yet this is exactly what happens in the public school system. Like Eagleton, our public schools first I.D. students, then the students are assigned to schools that satisfy the needs of school administrators. Children are fenced out of the schools that might best meet their own needs. Public schools are even known to hire private detectives to follow students home who might “contaminate” the local school because the children come from the “wrong” neighborhood. Americans often ignore the fact that schools in one neighborhood are drastically better than in another. And because addresses determine where a child can attend school, school districts become a factor in where people buy homes. Those who can afford homes in the places with the best schools flock there. Poorer families get left behind.

It’s a concept very similar to Leslie Knope’s aside she gives to the camera about Pawnee and Eagleton history, “Factoid alert... Eagleton was founded by former Pawneeans. Pawnee was established in May of 1817. And by July, finding the smell unpleasant and the soil untenable, all the wealthy people evacuated to Eagleton.”

Maybe people don’t really move away because of the smell of a neighborhood, but the truth is neighborhoods become financially segregated because of school assignments. Struggling schools soon create struggling neighborhoods.  We’re about removing those lines (or fences) that keep everyone from having an opportunity for a better education, whether you are from Pawnee or Eagleton.