How a diverse yet divided school blended ‘segregated’ classes
The District has been pulling this racist nonsense for at least 30 years. This story is especially absurd because, in the case of Leschi, the school featured in the Times’ piece, the problem is solving itself. The area of Lechi, once predominantly Black, is being gentrified. Soon the only Black kids will be uupper class and the Districts’s “problem” will have been solved.
Here is my experience as a parent of two kids who went through the SPS in a gifted program.
First a group of parents did its best to create a school or program that worked.
Then the parents (never the District) try to attract different ethic groups. Usually the parents get get no help or adverse help. We got no help and were reprimanded by the District for trying.
Then the District puts the successful program in a defective school to balance that schools numbers. These schools are usually the result of black flight .. where not just non blacks but especially blacks who have the means have wrangled the means to get their kids out.
The kids who can not get out are often the kids with the biggest problems .. learning problems and discipline issues compounded by poverty or caused by institutional racism. These kids have, in effect, been sentenced to these schools because because we have no bussing and their parents can not afford a private school.
The result is, of course, a “zebra school.”
Feeling guilty and embarrassed by class pictures, the District attacks the successful program rather than working to attract more kids who are underprivileged kids who are capable of that program.
Then the reality emerges. The kids in the parental chosen program are often functioning at one or two grades higher than their peers .. because these programs work! Imagining that success is contagious, the all knowing District puts the groups together for such vague subjects as reading, social studies, and writing. In out school this meant having our second and third graders, all working at a grade 6 to seven level) mixed with fifth and six graders who could not read.
The underprivileged kids learn the obvious lesson, their skin color or accent or religion makes them less able then white or asian kids.
RACISM BECOMES TRUTH!
THE UNION OPPOSES CHARTER SCHOOLS BECA– USE ..WELL. BECA– USE
MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES (INDEPENDENT OF SKIN COLOR) DO ALL THEY CAN DO TO FLEE