Reply to In DC: "White Parents Horrified by George Floyd Video Still Go to Great Lengths..."

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Reply to "In DC: "White Parents Horrified by George Floyd Video Still Go to Great Lengths...""

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is actually the key point, near the end:

“Not coincidentally, white Democrats are significantly less supportive than Black Democrats when it comes to major school integration policies, such as busing, or policies that give students access to public schools other than those their families can afford to purchase through the housing market.
D.C. isn’t unique. In almost every American community, white, middle-class progressives are unreliable allies when it comes to building affordable or public housing that might make their neighborhood schools more accessible to a wider range of diverse families.”

It’s not simply that white families choose to live in mostly white neighborhoods with mostly white schools. It’s that we actively resist any efforts to change those patterns, by opposing increased access to these schools to non-white and less affluent families.

Consider the loud, angry resistance to the Ward 3 homeless shelter by people in Cleveland Park who insisted it was going overburden Eaton ES. Think about the current negative reaction in CCDC to the idea of increasing affordable housing and density in the Connecticut Ave. corridor. Think about the complaints about out-of-boundary students whenever there’s a conversation about overcrowding at Ward 3 schools. Consider how angry parents of Walls applicants are this year because changes in the admissions process resulted in some kids they believed to be the “most deserving” not getting in.

White families don’t just avoid attending non-white schools; we hoard resources and opportunity at the mostly white schools that we do attend. [/quote]

And I don't even agree with the conclusion that the solution is charter schools. As a parent with a child at a Ward 5 Title 1 school, I would argue the actual solution is to start funneling money into the city's underserved schools. Via taxes. On wealthy people.

The whitest schools in the city are also the richest, in large part due to having wealthier parent bases which leads to well-funded PTOs. Every school in the city should have a well-funded PTO. We should use taxes on the city's most expensive residential properties to literally fund PTOs. I'm not talking per student funding. I'm talking PTO coffers that can be used the same way they are used at the city's wealthy white schools -- paying for additional para-professionals, librarians, and other staff, funding arts and science programs, buying technology for students and classrooms, etc. And let the schools spend the money how they want, and how their existing PTO wants to. None of this strings-attached Title 1 funding that comes with a short leash and the expectation that you can reverse test scores with targeted funding on programs that the Central Office has decided will solve decades fo neglect and systemic poverty and racism.

Yes yes, I know, DC's per student spending is among the highest in the nation. I'm aware. That has to do with the fact that DC has high numbers of at-risk and special needs kids, and that funding for those children is always very high. It skews the averages a lot. I'm not talking about targeted funding for specific students (though yes, we should continue that). I'm talking about actually *funding schools*. And giving them real freedom to provide what their kids need. Why can't we let DCPS schools experiment and reach the same way we let charters? Why do you need to luck into a charter via the lottery to get that kind of thing? I want it in my IB school where we struggle with truancy issues and behavioral problems, were we struggle to retain good teachers and administrators, in my neighborhood with real poverty, drug use, and safety.

Give us the money, let us figure out how to spend it. Rich white people aren't the only people who know a thing or two about educating children.[/quote]

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