A compelling case AGAINST neighborhood schools
Neighborhood schools sound pretty innocuous to many people. I have been asked by many well-meaning parents what is so bad about kids not having to get up so early to catch a bus halfway across the county in order to arrive at some magic number made up by statisticians. Where's the harm in having your kids go to school closer to home, they ask. Doesn't that make more sense?
Perhaps we should ask Kelly Williams-Bolar, an African American mother of two who felt that her children would be served better if they did not go to their neighborhood school in the housing project where they lived in Akron, Ohio. Instead, the mother enrolled her children in a nearby school district that was predominantly white using her father's address.
Wanting her children to have the best education possible landed Ms. Williams-Bolar in jail. She was also ordered to repay the education she "stole" for her kids because her district's inner city schools were woefully underfunded compared to the well-to-do white suburban district next door.
One has to also wonder why there is a $30,000 funding differential between the school that Williams-Bolar sent her children to and the one that was in her district. Logic seems to imply that if funding were roughly proportionate between the two districts, it would simply be a wash, where one school's spending could be compensated by another school's savings. But this is not the case in a world where far too many people of color are locked in to the horrible schools in their districts, as our elected officials continue to ignore the problem. Many of these schools don't have books or quality teachers, while the kids in the suburbs are given everything they need to be successful. The idea that citizens are now being put in jail for attempting to access educational equality is nothing short of being Jim Crow-like in nature.
http://www.bvonmoney.com/2011/01/25/mother-jailed-for-sending-kids-to-th...
So the next time someone tells me that our concerns about neighborhoods schools becoming separate and unequal are unfounded, I will tell them the story of Kelly Williams-Bolar. Then I will ask them how they explain to their children what it means to live in a place where poor parents have no choice but to "steal" an education for their children if they want the best for them.
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Proving once again
that the evaluation of neighborhood schools is a subjective one, and people in well-to-do areas have no business speaking for parents from other, less privileged areas.
Brilliantly stated!
Every parent would rather their child go to school in their own neighborhood - IF all schools were equal. They're not. Schools in many urban areas, and indeed, in many rural areas, are woefully underfunded. The model of funding education based upon local property taxes is a 20th century model. We are now into the second decade of the 21st. It's time for a new model.
That's what they want.
They want poor (mostly black and Latin@) kids to get shitty educations so they won't compete with their kids for jobs. They want a permanent underclass composed of non-whites to do the menial labor their families are too good for.
And that's what "neighborhood schools" will do -
Neighborhood schools will perpetuate the de facto segregation that we all know exists. Until we speak up and demand appropriate funding for all schools, this will be the case. Excellent teachers should be teaching in the poorest school districts. The poorest schools districts with the lowest "scores" and lowest graduation rates should be receiving MORE funding to give them equal footing with those districts that have better funding and higher graduation rates.
If a student in District "A" is worth spending 30,000 per year, then a student in District "B" is worth spending $30,000 per year. If the district doesn't have that through local tax money - I believe it is up to the state to make up that difference. And here's the kicker, folks. If District "B" hasn't had that money for a long time, I believe the state ought to be making up 1 1/2 times the difference.
busing
I was a member of the first class to go all 12 years with court ordered busing in Mecklenburg County. I was bused from my lily white, east Charlotte neighborhood to a school in west Charlotte that, only three years before been an all black school. I attribute this experience with helping to open my eyes to what many of my classmates had to go through before they even got to school. My school was in one of the poorest areas of Charlotte, an area I never knew existed.
Since we were so new to true intergration, many of the teachers at Lincoln Heights were holdovers from pre-intergration. This was the first time I ever saw Black Men in a position of authority. Previously I had only seen them as janitors, garbagemen, and yardmen. I now saw them as teachers and principals, men of education and of authority.
We made a concious decision to send our children to a truly intergrated school, there are 27 different languages spoken in the homes of my children's classmates. This will prepare my children for life. they have to learn to work with people who are different than them.
We need schools that look like society.
You're right, TrueMeckDem
We need schools that look like society - and we need all of those schools to be funded abundantly and well so that all of the children who attend them can get the best education possible.