At Garfield High School, the Education You Get Depends on Your Color
This is a great essay and very worth reading. Sadly, however, it fails to reflect that facts today. Garfield is rapidly becoming a white neighborhood school. Soon its catchment will have only 10% African Americans and the District will need to import Black kids to fill out Garfield’s basketball team … unless maybe white and yellow men CAN jump?
The present status also reflects Seattle’s hypocrisy. Rather than out and out defining Garfield as a central academic high school … and then needing to work really hard on recruiting kids from different groups, Seattle has avoided this by defining Garfield as a neighborhood school.
So, here is my suggestion as small step forward. As a failed and obscure President, Garfield is a poor namesake. Let’s rename the school for its most famous grad … Quincy Jones, and redefine it as Seattle’s Academic High School for all kids.