I recently wrote a post about a recent school board election in the county where we live and I teach. Our district of close to 150,000 students is likely going to experience a massive change in the 30 year diversity policy in the next few years.
Not to belabor a point, but this week the final contested seat was conceded instead of opting for a recount. Too bad the the run-off will go on as the deadline passed to save the county $30,000 in ballot printing and organization. Nice to be reminded again of the big changes to come and government bureaucracy at work.
On the way through Charlotte last week I stopped to see a old high school friend and her girls. Her oldest started kindergarten this year. She brought up the recent election in our county and then went on to say, this is the LAST model you would want to follow. It's a total mess and a major story here in Charlotte that you are following suit with dismantling a successful diversity plan for what? Sunday our local paper featured a great editorial from a PTA president of one of the schools in the middle of the Charlotte schools battle.
What I took away from both my conversation and the article was changing policy will not fix the underlying issues and tame the irate parents. From the article, "in the 8 years since the school system moved away from mandatory busing, there have been multiple fights in which neighborhood have continued to fight reassignment to schools that are less crowded, and no father away, but have higher poverty rates." If anything dismantling this program will only create more racial tension and strife among the families and school officials.
Statically the Charlotte district is experiencing white flight similar to other metropolitan cities that abandoned diversity policies in favor of neighborhood schools. Throughout the 1980s/90s concentrations of high poverty, under enrolled schools and overcrowded, suburban schools replaced well-functioning schools that used a variety of tactics to ensure that all schools provided a sound, basic education to all students. What to come in my county sounds EXACTLY like this same school system in the years prior to combining the city and county schools merger in the early 1980s.
This will not the first time I have experience with white flight in a job. As part of my major in public policy, I did a semester long internship with the City of Birmingham, Housing and Urban Development Office. While there there was ongoing experimentation with the Federal Section 8 housing voucher program move from large scale public housing tenements being rezoned for mixed use community development.
I was working on a major research project in which I used the community reaction and response to public housing being moved out of downtown into the suburbs as part of my research. Birmingham remains a very racially charged city, you can imagine reaction in many town hall meetings of the impact on schools in particular to moving large numbers of students from the large, almost 100% minority district to the almost 100% white suburban schools. Interestedly enough each major suburb in Birmingham runs its on independent school system. Separate and Unequal, you bet.
Once again, I am watching what is happening with sadness and disgust that the system I have believed in and been a cheerleader for to friends and neighbors, and ultimately want my children to participate in may look NOTHING like what it does today. As our family makes decisions in the next few years about moving to a new area of town, if I will return to work after the baby, kindergarten options for Ben I feel like the stakes are higher than ever.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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2 comments:
I am very naive when it comes to county and state budgets, but I've never understood why money is not distributed to schools equally. Maybe it is, but why don't all of our taxes go into one pot that then goes to every school in an equal percentage? Does that not work because of enrollment? A low-enrolled school wouldn't get enough money to sustain itself? Where I grew up--Jacksonville--the desegregation of schools issue carried on for years and years and years. It might still be going on, for all I know. I guess all Southern cities, for the most part, have struggled. But are school systems in other parts of the country really racially integrated? Aren't most school systems assigned by neighborhoods? Which makes a lot of school racially segregated? Anyway, I'm just babbling now. It's beyond frustrating, so I can only imagine how it affects you. Hang in there!
I honestly don't think that anyone is arguing against diversity, but kids not getting home until 5:00 after school, or being stuck on a bus 45 minutes each way a day is just utterly ridiculous. Even with all the busing in place, the reduced lunch populations across the schools was still inconsistent anyway. I grew up in the Wake County school system when they started the all the busing. It sucked. I got reassigned so many times that it eventually took a state Senator to get the board to leave our neighborhood alone. How are kids supposed to give a crap about their school, or make relationships when they know that the following year they probably won't be at that school anyway? How are families, especially poorer ones, supposed to take part in school activities when they need to drive to Cary, when they live in Raleigh? Or pick up their kids early on "early release Wednesdays" when both parents are working blue collar jobs? I'm all for diversity (look at where we live and where Liam goes to school) but the way Wake county has been going about it since the late 80's needs to change. Parents got fed up, and this was the result. You're understandibly looking at it from the point of view of a teacher, but honestly - would you not be complaining too if Ben was being bused to Raleigh to go to school when you live and work in Holly Springs?
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