In her WBEZ Curious City article "Why So Few White Kids Land in CPS* - And Why It Matters" , Natalie Moore seeks to find out why most white students fly off to private and parochial schools, while only a small percentage touch down among the brown majority educated by Chicago Public Schools.
I wish she had
looked harder for her answers.
In never
seriously examining the perspective of a family who rejected CPS based on class
sizes, programming, or because they just wanted more for their children, the
piece promotes the idea that school segregation is primarily a result of white
families not wanting their children going to school with "those"
kids, and thereby browning CPS. To me, "Why So Few White
Kids. . ." lends itself to shaming parents who refuse public schools.
And it's not only white parents who avoid CPS. There are plenty of
African-American parents who reject their neighborhood public school, for
reasons that are just as complicated as their white counterparts if not more
so.
African-American
parents like me.
We moved to Hyde
Park over nine years ago. As a mixed race couple -- my husband is white -- we loved its diversity
and village-y feel. We knew we'd be starting a family in the near
future, and bought our home so that the then leading public elementary in town,
Ray, would be our neighborhood school. We loved the idea that our children
would attend school with children from varying socio-economic groups, with
different color skin, who spoke different languages at home, whose parents were
gay or lesbian -- you name it. "Difference" would be the
norm, and they'd receive a quality education.
However, by the
time our older child was ready for kindergarten last year, the school had
changed. The principal who presided over the school's most recent grand
era retired, and the following administrations were plagued by dissent and
scandal. Furthermore, with the wave of
school closures, Grades 7 and 8 were added, destabilizing a school that
felt comfortably young. The shiny school on which we had pinned our hopes
was tarnished.
We had sent both
our children to intimate, nurturing preschools with inquiry-based, child-centered
curricula, and a low student-to-teacher ratio. But these schools were
costly, and wanting a tuition break, we decided to give public school a try.
Our son, Mr. R, didn't test into any selective enrollment schools, and as
far as the lottery-based schools went, we didn't stand a chance. Our
high lottery numbers were pointing their fingers and
laughing at us.
So Ray it was.
After all, we had many trusted neighbors and friends -- loving and
intelligent families -- who sent their children there. With their vote of
confidence, it had to be good.
We talked with
many parents to get the lowdown. We were
warned about large class sizes, sometimes stressful homework, and bullying incidents
-- daunting, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Still, each family reported that their children were learning --
thriving even. They had wonderful
teachers and had formed solid friendships, which,
really, was all you could want. And bonus, it was a community
school.
We exhaled and
moved forward.
But on the first
day of school Mr. R came home and told me about how a boy was pushing other
kids during movement, and he asked the boy to stop. The boy got in his face
and used words that included "niggas" and "asses," words we
do not use in our home. To boot, Mr. R reported the incident to the teacher who
was a special, not his classroom teacher, and was met with, "Go sit
down, you’re fine," or something similar.
I emailed the
classroom teacher the next day, who said, understandably, that she could not
get involved because she hadn’t been there. If she stepped in, it
would turn into a he said/he said situation. It didn't help that since it
was only the first day, Mr. R could identify neither the boy, nor the teacher.
Incidents like
this became fairly regular. To be fair, these things happened when he
was away from his classroom teacher. When he was one child among the 70 plus
supervised by three adult staff members at lunch and/or recess.
Unconscionable.
At home, Mr. R. was
an anxious, frenetic mess. He began using the bathroom every 10-15
minutes.
By the Friday of
the third week, enough was enough. I found a bruise on the side of Mr. R’s hip
one night as he was getting ready for bed. He had been thrown off a
rocking horse on the playground. But that wasn't all. "I have
a bump on my head," Mr. R confessed, rubbing above his ear.
Apparently an older child had told him to close his eyes and run. "Why
did you?" I asked. Mr. R didn't know why, but he did, and wound up
running into a pole. Once again he found himself crying and
reporting to the aide in charge. He had identified the culprit, but the
boy had denied it and had run off laughing.
We were done.
Earlier in the week, Hubs had called the local Catholic school, the one we had
originally written off due to cost and the fact that we aren't religious. However,
there was no way we could continue to send our son to a school where he
was being hurt, received no comfort and witnessed no establishment of accountability. No matter how
much I appreciated his teacher, who was both kind and competent, I couldn't
send my son to a place where once he was out of the classroom, the adults didn’t
seem to care about him. That was simply unacceptable – a deal
breaker.
The next Monday we
sent Mr. R to school, while we finalized registration at our local Catholic
School. Just to make sure we weren't making a rash decision, I decided to
check out recess at Ray for myself. Three adults stood stationed around the
perimeter of the unfenced playlot, while hordes of children played. And then, I noticed the behavior that drove
me to march on over to that Catholic school and sign my son right up: three boys
peeing in the open, plain as day. The adults
in charge didn’t notice a thing.
The next day,
Mr. R was a Catholic school student.
Even though I
did discuss the hard time Mr. R was having at school with our neighbors, I felt
awkward about telling them that we were pulling him. I knew
it would raise the question of "Why isn't it good enough for you?" With some of them,
but not all, I mentioned the elephant in the room. My immediate
neighbors were all white. Their children weren't subject to the same
social pressures mine was. Surely my son would have to develop the
ability to "hang," navigating the line between "proper" and
"street." But not like this, and not when he wasn’t even six
years old.
Even though he
was in a diverse environment, I feared what staying there could have done to my
son. Mr. R was absorbing some devastating ideas about race because,
heartbreakingly, it was African-American boys who were treating him so badly
and whom he observed making such poor choices. Mr. R was trying to have fun and fit in, but
was unsure what to do when things became too rough. Without proper adult mediation, how long before Mr. R began
fighting to defend himself, and was then lumped in with the troublemakers?
His brown skin made that label too easy to come by and too difficult
to shed. We couldn’t take that risk.
We've been happy
since we left CPS. Mr. R is in a diverse
environment where there is both care and rigor. We realize that we were
unlucky – Ray meets the needs of many families beautifully, but it was a terrible
fit for Mr. R. Are there other CPS schools that would meet his needs
now, or possibly in the future?
Probably
so.
Do we still believe in and support public education?
Absolutely.
Do we still believe in and support public education?
Absolutely.
We wanted to
love our neighborhood school. But like many parents from varying backgrounds,
why would we sacrifice our child at the altar of public school, when we have
the resources and the wherewithal to do otherwise? And should we
really be expected to?
Chicago's
racially polarized public school landscape is broken, and must be analyzed and
overhauled. Surely, some of this segregation is the result of racist
and elitist white flight. But instead of guilting parents for school segregation,
let's look at why parents reject CPS. Let's have a look at the deeply
complex issues involved, and realize that at the beating heart of school
choice is parents' fierce love for their children.
