I’ve been writing about education policy for coming up on a decade, and it never ceases to amaze me.
In so many ways, I will be the first to admit I’m over-saturated on certain (still very important!) storylines. Charter v. district. Teachers v. admin. Parents v. admin. Test scores. Hear me clearly. These topics are important, and I’m not walking away from them. But ten years is a long time on a beat that doesn’t change much, because the biggest scandals and controversies in public education are decades and decades old. In some ways I have felt myself drifting into historians’ lane.
And then there are days, like today, when I’m reminded that as long as schools have our kids—shaping them, teaching them, steering them—there will always be incredibly important stories there, and those stories merit stamina. Religion, immigration, ability, race, gender, sexuality, privilege, and poverty all show up at school. Understanding a little about policy/funding and a lot about people can help us see the story behind the story.
Context, so often, makes the story.
In some ways, it was the oldest scandal in the book, segregation, that got me committed to education reporting. The ripple effects of Plessy vs. Ferguson convinced me education was a justice beat. And then there was the Texas Legislature, which convinced me education was a political beat. And then one day, working on a pretty mundane story about social and emotional learning, I realized there was a religion corner of this beat as well.
Today two pieces ran: In The 74 Million I wrote about San Antonio ISD’s new superintendent Jaime Aquino. He is a lifelong educator, immigrant from the Dominican Republic, English-learner, and gay man. In a state where each of those pieces of his identity will inevitably intersect with some agenda from the Texas GOP, he’s also greeted by a long line of parents whose children are entitled to special education services but have been constantly underserved.
Then, for the first time ever, Baylor University granted a charter to and LGBTQ student group, and the nuances and tensions in that charter speak to conversations happening well beyond the campus. Greater shifts within Christianity—both polarizing and centripetal—are manifest in the new group, Prism, and echoed through the campus conversations in which the decision was made. I got to write about all these intersecting tensions for Texas Monthly.
Education reporting can be exhausting to me, when I feel that I am squeezing stories out of slow, if even existent, change. But in context, it is a steady lens through which to understand so many facets of society, how we construct our villages, what we place upon our kiddos. Having done the basic work of understanding how school systems function, I often use them as a magnifying glass for the many ways our world functions. And that never gets old.
We put our kids in a public school committed to socioeconomic diversity, where they are among the 6 percent of kids who look like them. It’s going very well. They are learning how to speak Spanish while their classmates learn English. My kindergartener is adding, subtracting, and reading up a storm. My pre-kindergartener wants to be an “astronauta” and asks for, “mas jugo, por favor” (pronounced, “po-faloe” because no one is going to correct something that adorable).
So what are we learning, my white husband and I?
We are learning how to support the work of integration. We got on board with desegregation when we enrolled. Integrating is much…much harder.
I say integrating is harder than desegregation. It is. But mostly because it is very difficult for me not to look like an ass in doing it. Integration is more difficult to do well. Not that it is harder to endure or to survive. Reflecting on my first semester as an integrating parent, I would be remiss if I didn’t dedicate at least one blog post to how awesome it has been for my own mental health and the mental health of my kids.
Not in a “purposeful life” sort of way. Not in a “the peace of doing the right thing.” Not in a “virtue is its own reward.” No. I mean that saying yes to functional systems and no to the rat race is incredibly freeing and fun and I think it may be saving our lives.
Because of the narratives around failing schools, and frankly the narratives around desegregation, a lot of the focus stays on the resources that middle class parents bring with them into under-resourced schools. The focus is on what these parents will be giving up, and not so much on what they will gain. But if we look a little deeper, while we might be giving up some elite coaching, some cool field trips and clubs and whatnot, we are also escaping something.
I sort of wanted integration to be more risky, because economically advantaged people need to be willing to feel a little discomfort, and to give up some of our advantages. We have to stop idolizing the idea that our kids will have an edge over their competition, we have to stop the opportunity hoarding whereby we get stuff for our kids and then see everyone else as a threat. We have to stop making everything about childhood a competition.
We have to stop, because when we do that, we inevitably rely on unjust systems of segregation, nepotism, and power tokens to do it. When we use those systems they get stronger.
We cluster in the most “competitive” schools, so that’s where the college recruiters focus, overlooking other schools.
We use our connections to get our kids into programs and club sports they did not earn, or we pay for copious tutoring and lessons to make sure that they can earn their way in, edging out kids who might have gotten in on skill alone if it were really a competition between kids. So now, to get into some programs a certain amount of expensive pre-gaming is assumed. Eventually some families are priced out.
We use our influence to create internships, clubs, and learning experiences centered on the interests and ambitions of our kids, giving them the natural advantage of interest and ambition.
We continue to build the world to their advantage, which is a zero sum game. Not everyone can win. But the race doesn’t start in the classroom. It doesn’t even start at birth. It started generations ago, which is why one group (white folks) are over-represented among the economically advantaged. While not every white person is rich, in America we have had more consistent and longstanding access to means of creating wealth–property ownership, inheritance law and tax code written with our norms in mind, fair lending, insurance.
Our inheritance as second-and-forthcoming-generation privileged folks is the obligation to maintain and expand our lead.
This rugged individualism is just as destructive…and it’s self-destructive too. It’s become pathological. It starts so early, and costs so much. Not only in money, but in mental health. Which is why opting out of it is, in my opinion, an advantage worth having.
I truly believe that the pressure we put on our kids to achieve is as toxic as the social media apps we like to blame for everything. The drug use, the self-harm, the eating disorders…those thrive in highly competitive school environments. (Not like “do your best” competitive. There’s a difference between success and dominance.) The kids begin to self-destruct right along with us.
The social pressure between parents is, yes, the stuff of parody, but get one whiff of it and you will find it is not funny at all. We can snicker at Big Little Lies, The Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce, I’m Sorry, Modern Family, I Don’t Know How She Does It, Where’d You Go Bernadette?, Bad Moms, Bad Moms’ Christmas, or any television show set in a private high school…but all of that is a derived from a real, gut-churning thing.
We all say we aren’t going to be the parent who does our kids’ school projects or stays up all night making bake sale goodies. That we wouldn’t indulge their request for absurdly expensive athletic gear. We all say we would nev-er pay a man to fix their SATs.
Look at what else we’ve been willing to do. Is any of that less radical than clumping our children into affluent enclaves that have been proven to disadvantage other schools across town? Is doing your kid’s homework somehow more egregious than demanding they be put in a certain teacher’s class? Is paying thousands of dollars in SAT prep any less fair than signing a petition against a rezone that would bring in more low income households to your child’s school?
Opting into integration, for me, is the first step in opting out of all of that. I say no to competitive parenting, starting by forfeiting the advantage of segregation.
When I say “no” to that, I say “yes” to other things. We still have a lot of joy.
I sent my daughter to school with a historical figure pumpkin that she made herself. I helped her a little with the pinning part so that she didn’t hurt herself, but she did do the rest herself. And it looked like a five-year-old made it. It was Ruby Bridges (and I was beyond proud of her selection), but you could not tell by looking at the pumpkin. She’s playing YMCA soccer at her school, and dabbling in random other things where she’s interested, as little people do. My three-year-old does nothing outside the house besides school, as being with me is his preferred extracurricular.
I’m a super indulgent parent, and I typically let my kids try whatever they want to try as long as it’s ethical and safe. Jumping off stuff, making concoctions in the kitchen, dance lessons. I think their curiosity is wonderful, and I have a hard time saying “no.” Our economic situation enables a lot of this, which is why I have to say “no” at times as a discipline. I set boundaries when I know I should, but I’d always rather say, “Yeah! Let’s see what happens!” (Those who know me, know that this is not just in regards to my kids…this is just me in life…send condolences to Lewis.)
But every time I talk to parents who share my demographics, I’m bombarded with the idea of more competitive leagues, mastering a musical instrument, or thinking about getting into the pipeline that leads to the best colleges. Not in the interest of indulging our children’s quirkiest interests, but in the interest of helping them stand out and get ahead.
The obsession with selective colleges begins the moment our children are born, if not before. Even though research shows that selective colleges don’t really carry an extra advantage for kids who already come from the professional networks and social circles made accessible by selective colleges.
There’s good guidance out there that desegregation shouldn’t be a stealth power move. If going into a desegregated school is a way of garnering yet another advantage for your kid—whether dual language, project-based learning, or just the many actual benefits that come from diverse settings—you probably won’t really integrate. And you’ll miss out on all the sanity it has to offer.
We put our kids in a public school committed to socioeconomic diversity, where they are among the 6 percent of kids who look like them. It’s going very well. They are learning how to speak Spanish while their classmates learn English. My kindergartener is adding, subtracting, and reading up a storm. My pre-kindergartener wants to be an “astronauta” and asks for, “mas jugo, por favor” (pronounced, “po-faloe” because no one is going to correct something that adorable).
So what are we learning, my white husband and I?
We are learning how to support the work of integration. We got on board with desegregation when we enrolled. Integrating is much…much harder.
The Integration Diaries Part 2: A Lottery without Power Tokens
Today is November 5.
Today SAISD opens up its school choice enrollment lottery. Schools will host information nights. Fairs will be had. Opinions will be shared.
Right now 28 percent of SAISD families are attending choice schools, choice programs inside of schools outside their neighborhood, or have transferred to an SAISD school outside their neighborhood. That number will probably grow as more schools open their enrollment to the district and beyond.
That “and beyond” is troubling for some, and I want to acknowledge it right up front. The lottery system is complicated, but the bottom line is that the district needs more students. Period. In addition to the net gain, it needs more economic desegregation. Most of the families coming from outside SAISD are economically stable, meaning they do not qualify for the federal free and reduced lunch program. In order to create the socio-economic diversity that the district is going for in its choice system—breaking up the concentrated poverty that makes for very challenging school environments—the district is going to need to pull in some of those out-of-district kids.
However, I would like to suggest that at the schools where this is not the case—where the balance can be achieved internally within SAISD— that it should be so. Twain Dual-Language Academy, Steele Montessori, and the Advanced Learning Academy could probably hit the 50-50 balance entirely in-district, if not this year, then soon. I think a strong case could be made for eliminating the out-of-district set-aside for these schools in the next few years, allowing for siblings of current out-of-district students and teachers’ students.
While I’m all for breaking down barriers between the districts, I do think that it will ultimately be SAISD families who sustain the work for generations, and wherever they can take full ownership of a school, they should. While they already have priority status in the lottery, it may be worth doing more, like ending the out-of-district set-aside once district demand reaches capacity. Just a thought.
Of course, there could be the concern that if out-of-district families cannot get into the highest demand schools (Twain, Steele, and ALA), then they will just stay put in Northside or North East ISDs. That is actually quite likely.
Remember, SAISD wants the out-of-district set-asides in the choice schools to be net gain in district enrollment. SAISD families who don’t get into the choice schools should, in theory, be able to choose their neighborhood school and be just as well-served.
A snag: those living SAISD neighborhoods but enrolling in private and charter schools may not be willing to enroll their kids in their neighborhood school—especially if its been rated a D or an F or if they tried it once and had a terrible experience. Whether those families are middle class and thinking “ALA-or-nothing” or whether they are low-income families going to KIPP or IDEA until their neighborhood school improves…that’s a real thing SAISD has to contend with in the era of school choice: are your most desirable choice schools the only district schools some families will consider.
If there’s an all-or-nothing sentiment among those considering SAISD, the district has to walk the fine line between pragmatism and idealism. Pragmatism says, “if it’s all-or-nothing, give them all” and idealism says, “if it’s all-or-nothing, give them nothing.”
Had we not gotten into Twain, I hope we would have put our children into Hawthorne Academy, our zoned school. It’s a D school. I don’t like its current charter. It’s actually farther from our house than Twain is. But it has great teachers and good community. I’m 99 percent sure we would have done it, but that D would have been a significant hurdle.
But because we did get into Twain, I have to check myself even more. We got this great “A” school…at 50 percent FRL, six percent white, and 30 percent ELL it is not the most or least radical version of itself. There are still a lot of ways I could adopt an all-or-nothing attitude within the school. I could dangle the threat of withdrawal every time I don’t get my way. I could give opulently and then expect special treatment in return. I could jump the line by cashing in on “who I know” whenever I want to get something done.
Like any middle class parent, I could try to play my power tokens.
A common sentiment among those who have things—middle class and upper-middle class adults—is that everything must be earned, everything must be transactional, nothing should be free.
We can discuss the idea of welfare and generational wealth over lunch sometime, but for now I’ll just say that middle class adults can be really hypocritical about entitlement. We feel it all the time.
Once we have money, we feel entitled influence, to deference, to a sort of power in our spheres that goes beyond mere transactions.
For instance: A person of means buys a nice car.
Transaction: Car for money. Car should operate as advertised.
Basic level entitlement: Customer service should be above and beyond, because I’m paying a lot…for the car.
Extra level entitlement: I’m going to park on the line and take up two spaces because I don’t want anyone denting my expensive car. The entire world owes me more space because I paid a lot for my car.
Influence in one sphere also leads to entitlement in another. Government officials expect to be able to get into sold out events, invited as VIPs. Influencers expect to get free stuff.
The world is full of stories from customer service representatives about how ordinary people (we are all ordinary people) felt that they should get extraordinary treatment or exemption from the rules of polite society because of a monetary transaction. They weren’t paying for a product, they were paying for status.
My friend Kelly O’Connor recently opened Ruby City, the legacy art institution of Linda Pace. It’s a beautiful space, promising to be a destination for locals and visitors alike. However, O’Connor has made it clear that Ruby City is for the community—the artists of San Antonio, and the general public who enjoys their art.
“We really don’t have VIP events,” in the traditional sense, O’Connor told me, after Ruby City’s free “BubbleFest” attracted over 1,000 people to the park adjacent to the building. Anyone can sign up to receive the Ruby City News Letter, and that’s how events are announced, along with media coverage, and public communication avenues. Local artists will be invited to special events, because that’s who Linda Pace wanted to honor.
This hasn’t landed well with all of Ruby City’s donors, O’Connor admitted. Many people pay to become members of museums and foundations for the perks, the parties, and the previews. When an institution is dependent on donors, those benefits are part of the transaction. But sometimes members expect more, especially those giving at higher levels. Keeping members happy can become a full time job. Or several full time jobs.
But Ruby City is funded by an endowment from the Linda Pace Foundation, O’Connor explained, they don’t have to shape their mission around the desires of donors. That’s as Pace would have wanted it, O’Connor said, and given the world that Pace came from, it’s is pretty big departure from the norm.
People can donate if they believe in the mission that already exists, and those are the kind of donors that will be happy at Ruby City—those for whom the transaction is complete as long as Ruby City flourishes.
Public schools, like cultural institutions, are subject to expectations. Parents can come in expecting some quid pro quo for the donations and volunteer hours. They expect their child to have access to clubs and classes that they might not earn on merit alone. (We will discuss “merit” in another post.)
Sometimes it’s not even money being leveraged. It’s social capital. It’s prestige of public office, family name, or legacy. Sometimes we expect special treatment just because of who we are.
Even when we don’t start out with that intention, parents who have money, time, and connections to share can be tempted to “cash in” when conflicts arise. When there’s a curriculum we don’t like, when our kid can’t wear their light-up shoes, when disciplinary actions come into play.
We don’t mean to, but we think to ourselves… “After all I’ve done. All I’ve given.”
When we have that thought, we have to admit that the flourishing of the system didn’t really complete the transaction for us. That wasn’t all we were investing in…there was something else. We were skimming off the top to pad an influence-slush-fund just in case we needed it. Our loyalty account, our frequent flyer miles, our reward points. Or, as Trevor Noah referred to them on the podcast linked above: power tokens.
One would hope that in the flourishing school (the one we invested in) every kid is getting what they need (yes, including ours). No parent would ever have need of a power token.
But, alas, needed or not, these tokens are used frequently. In a system where not every kid is getting what they need, parents can play tokens to get resources for their kid, at the expense of others. In a system where every kid is getting what they need, parents are tempted to use the power token to get extra, to get more than others. Either way, if a system shows that it is willing to take influence-slush fund monies or power tokens, parents will use them.
[I want to make a quick distinction between power tokens and investments. Families with more money, more connections, more time, more grandparents can invest in their schools in ways that increase the flourishing of all kids. That’s one of the many many benefits of socioeconomic integration. I’ll speak more to that in yet another post.]
Fair systems cannot accept power tokens. Democracy and public education cannot be doled out as part of a customer rewards rubric.
Being truly integrationist is not just “using privilege for good” or choosing not to spend power tokens. It means actually supporting systems that do not take them. I want my kids school to reject my power tokens.
“But that’s just how the world works.”
Yeah, I know. We’re out to change the way the world works. Because if no one takes them, power tokens become worthless, and privilege diminishes a little.
So here is your yearly reminder that the SAISD enrollment system cannot be gamed. There’s no back door. All applications go through the office of enrollment, and they aren’t allowed to care who you know or how much you have.
Principals do not have control of their waitlists. They cannot get you in. That may have been the case at one point, but, said Mohammed Choudhury, who runs the enrollment office, “It meant there were inconsistencies.”
Inconsistencies in enrollment usually make room for power tokens.
Under SAISD’s recent reforms, principals get a lot of say in how their school runs. More campuses get to structure their curriculum and their operations around the needs of their students and the desires of the community. But they can’t pick their students.
Which means that your power tokens are no good here.
On August 12, we put our kids in a public school committed to socioeconomic diversity, where they are among the 6 percent of kids who look like them. It’s going very well. They are learning how to speak Spanish while half of their classmates learn English. My kindergartener is adding, subtracting, and reading up a storm. My pre-kindergartener wants to be an “astronauta” and asks for, “jugo, por favor” (pronounced, “po-faloe” because no one is going to correct something that adorable).
So what are we learning, my white husband and I?
We are learning how to support the work of integration. We got on board with desegregation when we enrolled. Integrating is much…much harder.
I’ve been challenged by my friends to write about this year much like I wrote about our process in choosing a school.
That’s tougher of course, because my instinct is to protect my kiddos. I don’t want them paying for my soapboxes. However, I trust the teachers and administrators at their school enough to believe that they would not be doing this work if they didn’t already know a lot of what I’m going to say. And they are top-notch educators who already love and care for my kids very well, whether or not they like me as a person.
So, here it goes.
The Integration Diaries, part I
My kids already stand out racially at their school. Not only are we white, but we are white. Blonde hair, blue eyes, the whole bit. We are going snow skiing over winter break…in Utah. That is the whitest vacation on the planet. If you went into the classroom and made a few blunt, statistically-based assumptions about income, parents’ professions, zip code, etc, you’d probably guess wrong for some of the kids, but not ours.
Knowing that, I was hypersensitive to how they would see themselves in their new school. How they would fit in until they found the right way to stand out (preferably with kindness and creativity).
This anxiety manifested in some slightly silly ways that are probably best seen as metaphors or object lessons.
When it was time to buy school supplies, I did my best to get the most universal version of everything. On Meet the Teacher night, I was pleased to see that our supplies did not stand out. Basic in the best way. Her blue, transparent pencil box looked just like about eight others in her class. The pink handles of her round-tip safety scissors were indistinguishable from the rest.
Which was problematic when we forgot to put her name on everything.
After the first day of school, my daughter let me know that she needed a new pencil box and scissors. She was also concerned about her hair—a mane of wild blonde curls worn loose and grown slowly.
Her teacher apologized and explained that, essentially, Moira’s supplies, because we forgotten to write on them, had been taken as donations and given to other children. She had replaced what she could from the school’s extra-supplies closet, but there were no more pencil boxes or scissors.
So not only had Moira stood out on her first day, but it was in that stomach churning way no kid likes to stand out…she didn’t have the supplies she needed. She was conspicuously unprepared. Both her father and I would have pretty much melted on the spot as kids.
Except that Moira’s stomach didn’t churn. She wasn’t mortified or anxious. She wasn’t the only one without a pencil box or scissors. Her teacher didn’t make a thing of it, the other kids didn’t make a thing of it. She just wanted to know: did someone steal her stuff?
She was more bothered that her hair did not look like anyone else’s in her class, and she, for the first time in her five and a half years, asked to change it. She wanted dark, straight hair that she could wear in a thick braid.
These two minuscule, very inconsequential issues set the tone for our year. They could have happened anywhere, but they didn’t. They happened in the context of integration, which infused them with new meaning: We can be part of a system that works, because we belong to each other.
We learn to sort the world at an early age. Researchers have shown that kids recognize sameness and difference from their earliest days of cognition. Parents are constantly stymied by the various ways they decide to sort themselves as they grow. When I was in fourth grade we had major in-group issues over who brought Gushers vs. plain Fruit Roll-Ups. The haves and have-nots of the lunchtime economy.
We also sorted racially, economically, and by academic ability. Some of this was facilitated by the school itself, which was desegregated, but not intentionally integrated. Tracking, recommendation-based G/T testing, all those ways that schools internally segregate. The more empowered parents (whiter, wealthier) would request which teachers they wanted for their kids, and so they all ended up together.
(Shout out to my parents who did not do that.)
Beyond those mechanical means of separating us, we also just gravitated to what we knew.
We didn’t encounter a lot of mixed-race settings outside of school, so we didn’t recreate them in school. My anachronistically idyllic neighborhood was white. My church was white. My doctors were white and all the patients I saw in the waiting room were white.
Despite Hispanic students making up about 40-50 percent of the school, I did not have my first sleep-over-level Hispanic friend until 7th grade, and she was constantly catching grief from her friends about being “too white.”
Placing our kids in deliberately, doggedly diverse settings doesn’t stop them from noticing difference—their own or anyone else’s. In fact, it brings it to the foreground much faster. Like on the first day of school.
So we had a talk about what matters.
What matters: kids having what they need.
Getting a new pencil box and scissors was not a big deal for us. In fact, it was a pleasure. We let Moira pick this one, and she went all in, as usual. Tie-dye pencil box and scissors with a soccer print. They stand out because they reflect her personality, her gusto.
She doesn’t know who got her original box, but we were able to talk about the difference between sharing and stealing, and how we should always make sure there’s enough in that extra-supplies closet so that no one has to go without. After all, how glad had she been that it was there when she needed it?
What matters: belonging.
On the matter of hair, I had to break the news that she would never have lustrous, dark, straight hair like her classmates. I could not braid it into thick braids. It barely holds a clip, and I have to use orthodontic rubber bands to make pigtails. But while she can admire their lovely hair, I pointed out, she also has lovely hair, and it is very special to me.
“You know, I’m glad you have curly hair,” I said, “Because I do too.”
She liked that. “We’re like each other,” she said with a smile.
(Cue Mom tears.)
She has not brought up the hair issue since. She often admires other girls’ bows, braids, and shiny brown hair, but she also comments on how much she likes her own hair when it swoops over her forehead, or when the curls make complete spirals.
She feels secure, and so she is generous with others and herself.
Integration is not ignoring our differences. It’s the opposite. By being different and staying together we can make sure everyone has a grip on what matters. Everyone has what they need. Everyone has a place to belong. Those same teachable moments are for the parents, the aspiring integrationists, as well.
What matters: economic justice.
We live in a world where some kids have no pencil boxes, some kids have cool pencil boxes, and some kids can run out and replace their pencil box whenever they need to. The growing gap between those who depend on the extra-supplies closet and those who stock it should not exist. But it does, and now that we know, what will we do?
Will we just re-stock the closet with our plenty, or will we fight for enough to go around in the first place?
What matters: representation.
I didn’t worry that Moira would never realize she is beautiful. She is damn near identical to the standard of beauty that our culture has been promoting and celebrating for centuries. She’ll figure out soon enough that her parents, grandparents, and random strangers aren’t lying to her.
But those people in the positions to define what is “beautiful,” “professional,” “classy,” and “appropriate” need to see beyond the Moiras of the world. She is one of a million ways to be beautiful. Our board rooms, marketing firms, artists, media producers, and decision makers should look like those million other ways, so that they recognize them when they see them.
Fitting in is a lot easier when you all exist in the same economic and racial America. You know the rules, you know the code. I often hear the pro-segregation argument, “people just like to be with their own.” Birds of a feather. I get that: No one likes to feel isolated or alone in the crowd. But we can build a community based on more than economic and racial likeness. We can preserve the importance of those lived experiences without perpetuating the inequities that come alone with them. We can build society on more than Gushers or Fruit Roll-ups, who has, and who does not. I want my kids to know how to build a community based on what matters, and that’s something that we are going to figure out together.
My journey toward understanding and believing in integrated schools is well-documented. I’ve reported, opined, and emoted publicly. But until now, my personal relationship to integration has been theoretical.
When we signed up our kids for Mark Twain Dual Language Academy, a socioeconomically integrated school in our home district, I was excited…and nervous.
One of the ways white, middle class people keep each other from pursuing equity in meaningful ways is to throw up our children as shields. “I’m not sacrificing my kids on the alter of…(name your social justice priority).”
And thus, our kids are the primary means of passing on and locking up our wealth, so any hoarding we want to do can be done in the name of their well being.
Even though I know that’s a false idol, the little voice— saying that I was sacrificing my kids—whispered occasionally at night. Told me lies that my kids faced increasing competition. That the world was too dangerous to take chances. That they’d never get into the school of their dreams unless…
Thankfully, I had Rucker C. Johnson to shake me out of my opportunity-hoarding eddy of competition, and remind me that other children exist. Other children who, if I believe what I say I believe, are partially mine.
[A note on class and race as they will be used in this blog post: legally, we’ve done everything we can to make them synonymous. They are not, but the overlap is exactly what you’d expect after years of concerted effort. The exceptions do exist, but most schools that are isolated by race tend to be isolated by class as well. So when I read about racial integration, in San Antonio, I take that to mean socioeconomic integration that will yield some degree of racial integration.]
Johnson’s book, Children of the Dream was on my summer reading list the moment I heard him speak on the lasting benefits of integration efforts in the 1960s-80s. Those efforts, he explained, were even more effective when accompanied by school finance reform to make sure that schools where resourced equitably, and didn’t just look like the houses in their neighborhoods. Even more interesting, he adds the benefit of Head Start to the mix to show that early childhood education for low income children also enhances the effects of racial integration and school finance reform. In other words, things that work, work even better together.
I wore out my highlighter in the first two chapters. At a certain point it stopped mattering, because if you are highlighting every sentence, you might as well just stop. It’s beautifully written, which is unusual for an academic/data book. He also calls out Joe Biden and some other arguments that arose afresh this summer. I hope that, during the democratic debates, Johnson yelled “buy my book!” at his television.
The research, which is meticulously controlled to find out where student gains actually come from, is compelling. Education is incredibly complex—with family, neighborhood, and the unlimited varieties of children’s personalities—all in play. So correlation and causation are notoriously easy to muddle.
Johnson goes to great lengths to do otherwise.
The fact that he does so told me a couple of things: 1) he knew this would come under intense scrutiny, and 2) he really wanted to know.
Let’s start with number two. If I really want to know what—short of massive societal overhaul— will really help children of color experience opportunity in the same way white children do, it’s going to take some deep analysis. Privilege is complicated, because it is essentially the study of everything (except possibly math, physics, and chemistry). It is psychology, sociology, law, economics, history, literature, rhetoric, architecture, city planning, and on and on. So if you just want to make a righteously angry point, you can just throw a dart and see where it lands, call that the source of all ills and probably be, in part, correct.
If you want to find useful information with actual application potential…you have to be meticulous.
Johnson and his data-loving associates also, however, must have known that all of this would come under intense scrutiny, in part because of philanthropic funding, liberal bias, etc. But mostly because people just like dismissing integration, Head Start, and school finance reform. They are solutions that cost us something, so we’d really like them not to work, and to keep our money and our segregated, comfy schools.
Johnson’s meticulous research doesn’t so much tell us what we didn’t know, as much as it keeps us from denying what we do know.
If we didn’t know the importance of money (both direct funds and the effects of wealth carried in by the children themselves) in schools, we wouldn’t pay so much for “meh” houses or drive clear across town for a charter school that subscribes to the “tuition free private school” model. We wouldn’t enlist teams of professionals to get our mediocre students to elite private schools and colleges.
If I were designing a perfect world, these things wouldn’t matter. A school with 90 percent of kids on free and reduced lunch would feel and score the same as a school with 10 percent. I do believe it is possible to, as SAISD’s Mohammed Choudhury says, “do high poverty schools well.”
It’s really tempting to just focus on this part. And to make faux arguments about people preferring to be in places with other people like them. I call this a faux argument because no one disagrees with that. Of course no one likes to be in a social situation of any kind where they feel culturally and physically isolated.
But 1) people are generally willing to be the “only one” if that means being safe, secure, and properly educated. White wealthy people just don’t get that because we’ve NEVER encountered that dilemma. And 2) if integration is done properly, nobody is “the only one.” I truly think that when it comes to low income students or students of color, wealthy white people imagine schools where 10, even 25, percent of the students are not like themselves. Try 40, 50, 60, and 70 percent of a student body being non-white or non-middle class. No one in those ratios needs to feel like “the only one.” That is also an incredibly ambitious ratio for many schools regarding both class and race.
But even if the perfect, economically equitable world existed (it so does not), even if we lived in a post-racial world (WE DON’T. WE SO DON’T) we still need kids who are comfortable with people who are not like them in as many ways as possible. We need them to see each other full of strength and weakness, full of dignity and humility. We aren’t just preparing workers, we are preparing citizens. If the past three years has taught us nothing, it is that fear of the economic/racial/religious/sexual other and ignorance of their lived experience leads to all sorts of terrible decisions, pain, and suffering. If we get post-all that, we’ll still need to stay limber, because there are more ways to sort ourselves. We’ll find them.
But since that’s all totally theoretical, we can just stick with: we don’t even have a modicum of equity, so we need to get serious about this.
Johnson documents how white people maintain their preferred demographic ratios. He lays out examples that show how easy it is to evade policy, and how easy it is to keep your social capital once the system is in your favor.
Best example: If the federal government demands integration, your district can secede.
Less well documented: In Texas, any wealthy school district mad about Robin Hood —a law that require property wealthy districts to send a portion of their local revenue to the state, ostensibly to be sent back our to property poor districts— will find the ear of a sympathetic lawmaker to help them get that money back through some other mechanism, grant program, or allotment.
This is possible within “integrated” systems as well, by the way. You can have balanced campus numbers and segregated classrooms. You can have teachers who do not actually believe in the potential of every student, and act accordingly. You can have PTAs that insist on meeting 2-3pm on weekdays.
Every policy, every practice has to fall into line for this to work.
I believe, and Johnson affirms this in writing, that while assertive policy is needed, so is the work of hearts and minds. Because hearts and minds are what move the people who move the policy. As we see in attempt after attempt at integration, even the most effective policies don’t last without the support of those who will need their hearts and minds to be changed.
“Desegregation is a law, but its realization is achieved through a spirit of belief in the potential of all children,” he writes.
One thing, as Johnson points out, that does seem to win hearts and minds: experience. People with lived experience of integrated schooling are some of its most powerful champions. Johnson mentions a movement to recapture integration in Charlotte, through the work of an multiracial task force.
I’m hoping that my kids become those champions.
This week, we took our first action steps as we dropped off our two white, middle class children at a school specifically designed to be socioeconomically integrated, in a district, neighborhood, and city where that implies they will be the racial minority. By…a lot.
They are among only a few white children in their classes—prek and kinder—and their teachers and school leaders are Latinx. They’ll be learning Spanish from native speakers all around them.
Now, I need to add that I’m lucky in other ways too. My integrated choice is an A-rated, well-resourced, creatively led campus where each of my kids have a teacher who fits them perfectly. I don’t know what else I could want. But beyond those fundamental wins, I love that non-white people will be their leaders and peers. That they will see the advantages and disadvantages of their own home, because they see the similar and dissimilar advantages and struggles of their classmates.
One of San Antonio’s newest charter schools will hit the ground running this fall with a professional development opportunity in partnership with the DoSeum. The Gathering Place, which was approved by the State Board of Education on June 14, will lead a cohort of teachers from across the city in a project-based learning collaborative designed to help teachers make the most of the popular pedagogical style.
Project-based learning encourages students to pick a problem or issue in the world and delve deeply into its history, research, and mechanics in pursuit of a possible solution or greater understanding. Along the way students engage all of the core academic subjects in ways that are immediately relevant to their project. The hands-on learning method is designed to connect classroom learning with real world problems, solutions, and experiences is core to the mission of both the DoSeum and the new school.
“We do really believe that this is how school should be,” said The Gathering Place co-founder Ryan York, “There’s no more separation between school and the real world.”
York and co-founder Joanna Klekowicz designed their school to promote equity through arts and project based learning, in part to move away from predominantly Eurocentric curricula with little connection to the real lives of minority children. By opening up students’ real world as a lab for exploration and expression, The Gathering Place hopes to celebrate what the students bring to their learning environment, not just what it gives back to them.
Of course, like many curricula and pedagogies, a lot can go wrong with project-based learning. It isn’t as simple as letting students pick a project and seeing what happens next. Teachers have to stay on top of standards (the TEKS), to ensure that kids are getting all of the content they should be getting. If it doesn’t come up naturally in the project, skilled teachers need to be able to work it in.
To that end, the partnership with the DoSeum is designed to give teachers both theory and practice using project-based learning.
The 20-person cohort will meet monthly from September to May to work on their own projects, and reflect on how they are using it in their classrooms. Participants will be paid a $600 stipend for time and materials, something York and Klekowicz know to be a key component to supporting project-based learnings. To do it well can be a heavy lift for teachers.
“So many times you pay for it out of your own pocket,” York said.
The Gathering Place received a $5,000 grant from Educate 210 to offer the stipends, and some of the money will come from their operating budget.
While they host the collaborative, York and Klekowicz will also be going through the fast and furious year of setting up their school. New charters have one year after their approval to find a facility, hire staff, and commence operations. But rather than serving as a distraction, The Gathering Place founders see this kind of community professional development as essential to their work.
York and Klekowicz believe in the original vision of charter schools as incubators for curricula and pedagogies that ISDs might be able to use at scale if developed properly.
“That was a beautiful intention in 1995, and yet the sort of narrative has shifted into this sort of good guy/bad guy narrative,” York said.
Both charter networks and ISDs bear the responsibility for that narrative. Some charter networks have begun to develop a competitive mindset, refusing to share their “secret sauce” and measuring success in terms of new campuses. Meanwhile, ISDs losing students to those charters characterize all non-ISD schools as existential threats. Even when charters and ISDs get along *better*, such as in “third-way” scenarios like San Antonio ISD, the goal is less about scaling good ideas developed in individual schools and more about increasing the autonomy of each campus. There is at least one local exception: KIPP and SAISD did collaborate on college advising, something KIPP does exceptionally well.
On the whole though, charter schools simply are not the laboratories they were promised to be, and actors on both sides see them as an attempt to supplant traditional ISDs. The Gathering Place hopes to change that, “not just being available for collaboration, but taking an active role in extending an olive brach,” York said.
Educators from both ISDs and charters interested in being part of that effort can apply to the collaborative through June 21 on the PBL Collaborative website. Applicants from the south and east side of the city are encouraged to apply.
Doug Dawson does not sound, look, or act like the kind of guy who might wake up to find himself at the center of conspiracy theories and public outrage. But that’s what happened on March 26, after it was announced that the Teach for America alum and former Texas Education Agency bureaucrat would be heading the School Innovation Collaborative.
The soft-spoken Dawson thought he was coming to town to act as belay for principals Brian Sparks and Sonya Mora as they broke free (with the district’s blessing) from the administrative tether of San Antonio ISD, and began pressing upward with student outcomes at Gates Elementary, Cameron Elementary, Lamar Elementary, and Bowden Elementary. What he ended up doing was meeting with individual teachers and parent groups to try to soothe the SNAFU that was the rollout of the latest “1882 partnerships” (my assessment, not his).
The substance of the partnership with Dawson and the School Innovation Collaborative is pretty mundane, and, having read it myself in its entirety, helpful.
Gates and Bowden have applied for in-district charters, and Lamar already has one. The charters grant certain autonomies from district budgets, calendars, staffing oversight, and curriculum.
With great freedom, of course, comes great administrative overload. Sparks and Mora are both network principals—they oversee two campuses. They already have limited time, which has ruffled feathers of those who have enjoyed their substantial and undivided attention. Taking on the administrative elements of the charter could have chained the leaders to their desks, or worse, obligated them to constant meetings with SAISD central administration.
“Sometimes you need almost like a sherpa to help,” Dawson said, choosing a different mountain-based metaphor for the relationship. His main role is to keep track of progress, and take all those meetings at central office. He’s supposed to do whatever needs to be done to maximize the time Sparks and Mora spend on their campuses.
However, speculation erupted that Dawson was to act less as sherpa, and more as expedition leader, taking the schools out of the district and toward privatization.
Dawson would be an odd choice for such a maneuver. He’s never really operated in the private sector, after a brief stint in accounting right out of college. He was a middle school math teacher in Dallas, where he realized he had a lot to learn if he wanted to be successful with all students.
“That experience gave me a lot of humility around how hard it is to be an educator,” Dawson said. He went on to Rice University’s education entrepreneurship program (REEP), where he honed his instinct that when it comes to what happens in the classroom, teachers should be “at the top of the decision making process” he explained. Every move up the chain should be about accountability and support…not control.
From there Dawson worked for YES Prep in Houston, and went on to the TEA where he helped 20 schools establish partnerships similar to the one he’s now part of with SAISD.
Dawson said he liked the community-driven partnerships best. That’s what drew him to Sparks and Mora. Their methods were not based on specific, alternative models like single-gender education or International Baccalaureate. They were derived from the assets and needs of staff, students, and community. For some schools a program like International Baccalaureate or Dual Language is the way to go, he said, “You as a district and a campus need to figure out if that tool is best for your campus.”
For those who chose a more purist path, there are plenty of existing nonprofits able to facilitate the professional development, curriculum acquisition and training, and fundraising necessary to make the model work on their partner campus.
Such a partnership did not exist for Lamar or Gates.
Sparks testified to both the SAISD board and a library full of frustrated parents that he had looked high and low for other partners. None had fit the model and methods the community had chosen in their charter. Mora was in the same situation.
Some have suggested that the logical thing to do here would be to press on without a partner. However, Sparks gave two reasons he needed a partner: 1) the extra funds available to such partnerships under SB 1882 would bring more money from the state, which would allow him to do more within the charter, to execute it at a higher level. 2) If Sparks were to leave tomorrow, much of the work would go with him. The charters are like constitutions, but a lot depends on who sits in the principal’s office (think White House). Some campuses have seen their charters all but disregarded. Having a nonprofit committed to the charter is intended to guard against that. If the community of parents and teachers want to change their charter when it is up for renewal (or before), they could chose a more ideally suited partner. Or they could ask their partner to change with them. For Dawson, the specifics of the charter aren’t the main thing—the freedom and flexibility of leaders is his thing.
Dawson formed the nonprofit with Sparks and Mora in mind.
“I only wanted to find a situation in which I was able to create a structure where leaders were going to be given full autonomy and empowerment,” Dawson said. He is ready to work with the community, and has already started meeting with teachers and parents.
So, hearing and knowing all of that…why would anyone object to the partnership?
Because people didn’t hear about it or know about it until way too late in the game, that’s why. There’s a lot of finger pointing about whose job it is to get the word out on this stuff. Is it Superintendent Pedro Martinez? Is it the family engagement specialists? The communication department? The board? The office of innovation?
The response I’ve heard from parents: any and all of the above. If it’s not currently in someone’s job description, put it there.
In the void where outreach efforts should have been, conspiracy theories gave way to outright lies and scare tactics. Privatization is a scary word that was used to its full power: tuition, the end of free breakfast and lunch, private companies profiting off of public school children.
Parents were alarmed. The bungling cost campus leaders some of their parent allies, a handful of whom are about one maneuver short of staging a coup. Not only did principals take up the mantle of appeasing a miffed board on the night the management contracts were up for a vote, but they then spent the next week quelling rumors and misinformation among parents and teachers. Welcome to autonomy, I guess?
District administrators will get to continue on doing what they do, as long as they have the support of the board, which they likely will. The board understands the vision of the administration, and the methods of getting there. They have access to any administrator they want when they have questions. And they do ask questions. The board is on board.
But if the administration doesn’t get the community on board, it will continue fueling the campaigns of board challengers in upcoming elections. Christina Martinez and Patti Radle should be cruising to re-election on the merits of their voting records and work in the community. But the vote on the management agreements made them look like reluctant rubber stampers instead of the thoughtful, values-driven women they are.
When Christina Martinez said to Pedro Martinez and his team, “Please don’t put me in this position again,” she would have been well within her rights to say, “OR ELSE.”
The whole board should demand better community engagement from the administration. They look like they are giving away trust to an administration that can’t be bothered to explain why its plans are so trustworthy.
I say this as someone who does have reason to express confidence in the intentions and know-how of the administration. Someone who has more exposure to their plans than the average community member. It’s my job to understand what’s happening in the district and try to explain it, fairly and plainly. In that process I’ve gotten to know the players, gotten a lot of information on background, and wrapped my head around a story that the administration has yet to own.
So if you want to talk about the substance of the district’s reforms, I can give you my honest assessment of “is this a good thing?”
But that information and assessment would be way better coming from PTA presidents, beloved teachers, parent-family liaisons, and elected board members.
I’m also seeing something else happen. Something not in the plans. As a journalist, I’m not just watching the board book. I listen to the citizens to be heard, not once, but over time. I’m watching faces. I’m fielding panicked phone calls, and bumping into concerned citizens at the Y.
Watching Dawson, Sparks, and trustee Steve Lecholop address the Lamar PTA, they had to field a logical question: why did the partnership need to be rushed? Couldn’t the community have time to learn more?
They gave an answer that has gotten pretty stale in recent years: we were up against the State’s deadline. Not enough was official or in writing in the months leading up, when a public information campaign would have been ideal.
A reasonable request from confused parents trying to give their beloved principal the benefit of the doubt: Can’t it be walked back and delayed a year?
It fell to Lecholop to explain that the train had left the station, but that everything would be fine. Essentially he had to say, “Trust me.”
I heard the emotional cash-register in the background. Withdrawing from the same account that funded Austin, Stewart, Ogden, and Storm. If trust was a dollar, SAISD’s administration is spending freely while their opponents are doing their best to devalue it.
Looking at the faces in the room, I had to wonder if SAISD is going to keep getting more State money and resources for students, but go bankrupt on community trust in the process. Which made me wonder if they’ve figured out how key that asset is in the long-term success of their reforms.
And if they haven’t figured that out, I wonder if folks like Doug Dawson knew what they were getting into.
Spring is the time of year when we honor teachers. They have dedicated another year to loving, teacher, and challenging our kids, and while no novelty check or plexiglass trophy can adequately thank them for that, we hope that they feel the love.
I spend a lot of time writing about education policy now, but a couple of years ago I covered H-E-B Excellence in Education Awards, Trinity Prizes, a Miikan Award, and numerous district-level honors. Between employments I read grants for the SAISD Foundation innovation grants, which is an inside look at all the cool things teachers would do if they had the money.
I’ve met a lot of really fabulous teachers, and heard a lot of really fabulous ideas.
Of course, the most coveted award for any teacher should be the trust and gratitude of parents and kids, and most say that it is. Teachers who are moving children academically and emotionally toward independence are vital partners for families. I understand that better now that my own children have teachers who understand their strengths and weaknesses, and do the difficult work of knowing when to cushion and when to challenge.
However, acknowledging those who are doing the “extras” serves to illustrate what’s possible when teachers have the support they need—whether from parents, community partners, or from their district. A lot of professionals have unique interests that can ignite their classrooms.
I no longer write about other people’s awards, but I thought I’d take a moment to note three teachers who exemplify, to me, what’s possible when bright, ambitious teachers are free to pursue their professional passions inside and outside the classroom.
Bonnie Anderson of Coronado Hills Elementary in Judson ISD saw her first marimba chorus in 2010, when Walt Hampton brought his students from Washington to perform their Zimbabwean repertoire at the Texas Music Educators Association.
“I saw what his kids could do, and I was like I want my kids to do that,” Anderson told me.
But to get the marimbas she needed was far outside her discretionary class budget, and none of Judson ISD’s approved vendors carried the special instruments.
This could have been a story of buearacracy stifling creativity, but Anderson persisted. She fundraised several thousand dollars, she advocated, her students advocated, and the district got on board to the tune of $9,000.
They’ve been slowly adding marimbas to the group, Mojo-rimba, and in 2015 things really took off. The students perform all over the city. They’ll be at the Pearl Night Market on April 4 if you want to catch their enthusiastic renditions of pop-songs and classics. I actually started crying during their cover of Katy Perry’s “Firework.”
I cried because the kids were so into it. They moved like a team. Some danced behind the instruments, lost in the rhythm. Others focused like athletes or scientists deeply immersed in their work. They made mistakes and bounced back exactly like a professional who knows they are supposed to be there. That, all of that, is the point, Anderson said, “The goal is not perfect…they really learn how to handle mistakes.”
Getting involved in Mojo-rimba is as big of a commitment as any sport. Parents emerge as vital volunteers, and eventually set up a non-profit with the goal of getting the kids to Carnegie Hall. Students have fallen so deeply in love with the club that they campaigned to continue it into middle school, meeting once per week in the evening. Many of them, Anderson explained, had found the language that spoke to them.
In 2018 H-E-B Excellence in Education Awards recognized Anderson with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
One could see where it might be tempting for the district to try to spread Anderson—or her marimba collection—more thinly in the name of equality. And I’m usually a hound for such things. However, in this case, I think diluting the group, or Anderson’s focus, would be counterproductive. A chorus like this isn’t possible everywhere, but without teachers like Anderson, unafraid of bureaucracy and tons of extra work, it wouldn’t be possible anywhere.
Rebekah Ozuna of Knox Early Childhood Center in SAISD is another amazing teacher to be sniffed out by the H-E-B Excellence in Education awards. As an early childhood educator, she has my total awe and respect because her job is truly essential to the outcomes we say we want for our kids. What is extra amazing about her, though, is that she’s thinking big about the “how.”
Ozuna served on a commission with The Aspen Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, which produced a report called “A Nation at Hope.”
The report is full of incredibly useful information and recommendations for those who have more than a vague suspicion that part of what ails many of our children is not lack of technical proficiencies, but a lack of social wherewithal.
It’s always thrilling to talk to people who approach their career with both hands. With one hand they do the day to day work and with the other they get at the big systems that need to change. Ozuna is doing that. She’s all about quality in her classroom, and she’s all about systems that can deliver that quality to more kids.
This approach is rare in early childhood education and social emotional learning, both fields experts agree hold massive potential for our kids. Experts and educators agree on that and yet…our society treats both pre-k and SEL like cold-pressed juice, flossing, and physical therapy exercise. Things we know are incredibly beneficial but have limited enthusiasm to continue, or even to execute with fidelity.
So to see someone really champion social-emotional learning for the littlest kids at a campus and national level, well that is notable. And her fellow teachers took notice. They were the ones who encouraged her to apply to the commission. Ozuna is a second generation member of the San Antonio Alliance, and said she felt incredibly supported by them in what will undoubtedly prove to be a solid career move.
Katie Hodge of MacArthur High School in North East ISD is the last teacher who recently sort of blew my mind. Hodge is fairly early in her career. She’s been a high school English teacher for five years. She’s one of those young, inspiring millennials who went into teaching to make the world better. She also believes that to make the world better, you need to get out in it. Knowing that many of her students wouldn’t ever be able to do that on their own, Hodge decided to sponsored a high school trip to Italy. It was 23 high school students, three other adults, and her.
Now, teachers have been doing this for decades, taking school groups to Europe. I’d always assumed that it had to be instigated and subsidized by their school district. That no one in their right mind would undertake the fundraising, paper chasing, and then teenager supervising of such a trip without the nudge and support of their boss…and their boss’s boss…and their boss’s boss’s boss.
But that’s what she did, and that’s what so many teachers do when they want to give their kids something more than what’s on the menu in their district. They find a way to do it themselves. We hear about teachers buying supplies that aren’t within the budget, or can’t be obtained quickly enough from approved vendors. It ranges from crayons to marimbas to international travel.
Hodge said she saw huge benefits for her kids, many of whom raised all the funds on their own, doing odd jobs, saving money from jobs they already had. Some parents pitched in, but some could not. Committing to the goal and seeing it through was great for the kids, Hodge said.
She also asked them to reflect on their feelings as they traveled. Why were they so annoyed at certain things in Italy? How did it feel to not understand the people around them? When was it difficult to be flexible? As kids who live in the age of super personalization and digital interaction, that last bit was key, Hodge said. They rode a bus all over Italy, and only a few had international data plans on their cell phones, so she encouraged them to focus on being present.
For most of the kids, the experience led to a shift in their worldview, Hodge said.
I think that’s really the “extra” all teachers are going for when they deliver above and beyond. They want to change the way kids see the world, and how they see themselves in it. They want to move them from the center of their own universe, but to give them the language and tools to explore the universe from a place of security and confidence.
So, there’s a dark horse contender in our school search. It’s only a dark horse because it’s outside of our school district, and quite frankly, an SAISD family fleeing to Northside is about the oldest trope in the San Antonio conversation.
Though the school I’m about to write on is a Title I school, with a higher rate of economic disadvantage than the diverse by design schools to which we are currently applying. So it’s not classic white flight in that sense. But, after discussion with my very principled husband, I’m still 99 percent certain we’re going to invest our attendance where our tax dollars go (so the district can actually get those tax dollars).
However, indulge me for a moment while I share my love of Colonies North Elementary, the school that transcends districts, cities, and countries.
Anyone who has ever “picked my brain” about schools knows that I have loved Colonies North Elementary for a very long time. From the first time I read the press release for their yearly Parade of Nations. And immediately began reporting for this story.
Colonies North educates many, maybe most?, of the elementary-age refugee children resettled by the U.S. Government through Catholic Charities here in San Antonio. It varies year-to-year but the school usually has over 40 different countries represented, and over 30 different languages spoken across the student body of 700ish (give or take 50).
The newcomers, as they are called, are integrated into the “regular” classrooms as soon as they are able, beginning with one or two classes, until they are able to fully integrate.
For some, this is a quick process. They come with some English already, thanks to formal education or professional parents who are fleeing relatively recent outbreaks of violence or threats against the family. Some of the parents were U.S. contractors in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Others take more time to adjust to formal schooling. When students have grown up in refugee camps, such as the Rohingya students or those whose parents fled the Democratic Republic of Congo, they have a steeper learning curve. They spend longer in the newcomer classrooms, like the one where Sarah Aguirre taught for years. Aguirre is now at UTSA working in the Center for Inquiry of Transformative Literacies, another partner of the newcomer program.
She’s still, however, a Colonies North parent.
“I had no idea that one day I would work (at Colonies North),” Aguirre said, however, “We did purposely buy our home with the intention of going to that school.”
Like us, Aguirre’s family prioritizes diversity. Not only for the feel-goods, or even just the “raising good humans” aspect of it, though that is a huge part. She sees comfort with diversity as a huge advantage to her kids who will likely work in a globalized market.
While one of the goals of the newcomer program is to help the students learn to function in the U.S.—families are given six months to settle in, students are given two years of newcomer services in the schools—Colonies North is not about the business of erasing what came before.
DanCee Bowers supports the school’s celebration of students’ home cultures. If people took time to appreciate them, she believes, the anxiety around assimilation would ease.
“We’re only comfortable with people who come here if they’re going to do what we do,” Bowers said, and we’re missing out.
She would know. Colonies North had a profound impact on Bowers own worldview.
Bowers went to Colonies North as a child herself, when it was primarily white and suburban. As the daughter of a single mom in the 1970s she found camaraderie with the school’s one black student. They were unlike the others. That was what diversity meant to her, and she went on thinking of herself as “open-minded,” she said.
Bowers served in the military, stationed in the Middle East. Again, she never thought of herself as racist, but when she came back to the neighborhood where she grew up, she encountered a woman in a full burqa. Her reaction, she admits, was not what she wished it had been.
“I hadn’t realized how much the neighborhood had changed,” Bowers said.
Her military experience had given her particular kinds of exposure to some aspects of some Muslim cultures, but she wasn’t prepared to have those same cultures in her neighborhood.
“It’s hard to say it,” Bowers said, “I have a lot of shame about that.”
Bowers inherited her mom’s old house, and enrolled her kids in Colonies North. There again she was confronted with this new, intensified diversity. Some parents balked. The attendance zone for Colonies North has been heavily harvested by private and charter schools.
Bowers didn’t see a better choice for her kids, so she dove in. She got to know the newcomers and their families, started volunteering and serving the school however she could. Once she educated herself, she said, her fear of the Other dissolved. She wishes other parents, those who leave the school over their discomfort, would do the same.
Of course, a school needs a few things in addition to social strengths. Colonies North PTA president Kathy Mochel wasn’t necessarily looking for the United Nations of elementary schools.
“I really did push for private school because I wanted that warm cozy small environment,” Mochel said. Her husband convinced her to try the neighborhood school, and she found exactly that. Small classes, tight knit community, and tons of support. For her, the cultural education is a bonus. Also, no homework.
Bowers, Mochel, and Aguirre all said their students benefitted from the differentiated instruction they get at Colonies North. They have kids who are driven to excel and kids who are looking to coast. Each, they said, has been well served. Teachers are trained to meeting each kid where they are academically, so the newcomers can be just another kid in class.
The moms I spoke to all heard rumors of the English language learners “diluting” the instruction in classes, but none have seen it.
While reporting on a different story, I’ve been keeping an eye on Facebook groups for parents at a variety of San Antonio area schools. Inclusion of English language learners and students requiring special education accommodations really irks parents.
Which, in turn, irks me. And brings us to today’s soapbox. You’ve been warned.
Nothing makes middle class parents throw off our thin veneer of tolerance like the vague suspicion that our children are being inconvenienced at any point during their school day. It interferes with the competitive grooming and sheltering from any struggle that might accidentally result in emotional growth. As though our children are show ponies getting ready to prance around the ring in front of Ivy league admissions officers when we all know they are just going to come home and use our professional networks to get a job anyway. Give me a break. You can keep your anxiety and neuroses, and the sense of abandonment children sense when they feel like their acceptance is tied to their performance.
I’m going to try to find a better option.
And that’s why I’m bullish about Colonies North. Because you can’t create a special curriculum that’s better than the peer effect, and Colonies North has the most unique peer effect in the city. Nothing will serve my children better than resilience, and that’s what they’ll learn from sitting in class with refugees. And if you want to talk about values…those are my secular values. Radical hospitality, patience, empathy, cultural and personal humility, and grace. I’m sort of gobsmacked that other parents would pass up this opportunity, but enough are willing to do so that Colonies North has become the overflow campus for Northside. Classes there are allowed to stay small so that they can receive overflow students throughout the year.
Which may open up the door for the McNeels. Again, I’m *pretty sure* we’re staying with SAISD on principle, but if this were an option in our district, it would be my first choice.
Applications are in for our three choice schools. It was super easy. Everyone should do it.
While we applied, we were automatically registered for our neighborhood school, Hawthorne Academy. It’s a valid option. It’s the kind of school where our kids would be fine. We’d be fine. Everyone at Hawthorne is giving it their all, from what I hear. They just have a vision problem.
Unrealized potential is really frustrating. And where there’s frustration, there’s fighting. It’s one thing when the fight comes to you, it’s another thing to choose to go to the fight. With your kids in tow.
Allow me to explain.
When I first started writing about education in 2013, Hawthorne was a school that folks were watching. Located along the San Antonio River, adjacent to the hottest real estate in San Antonio (the Pearl), it was one of those schools poised to naturally grow its enrollment as a formerly semi-industrial neighborhood filled with people.
It was one of SAISD’s first in-district charters, focused on Core Knowledge, fine arts, and leadership. Librarian Bonnye Cavazos was the spark that brought in partnerships with neighborhoods, academics, museums, and more.
Ironically, in the same article wherein I profiled Hawthorne, I wrote about Lamar Elementary, which was similarly located in gentrifying Mahncke Park, with lots of museum partnerships, community involvement, etc.
I say “ironically” because the two seem to have switched places, six years later.
At the time, Lamar was fighting low enrollment. The middle class parents moving into the neighborhood eyed it somewhat suspiciously, though a healthy handful were investing time and energy into getting more resources, forging partnerships, etc.
Under the leadership of Brian Sparks, Lamar is quickly becoming one of the more beloved success stories of SAISD. Parent engagement is up with a strong effort to reach all socioeconomic groups, enrollment is up, partnerships are thriving, and the school’s identity is strong. It has ridden the wave of investment in the cultural institutions with whom it partners.
Not that Lamar is without its challenges, but I’m not going to get into those here.
Hawthorne, with the same leadership it had in 2013, seems to be stuck. Enrollment is declining. Parents are frustrated. The Core Knowledge curriculum seems to have faded away, while the rest of the charter is in jeopardy as it comes up for renewal this spring. The “leadership” component, it has been suggested, could come from “Leader in Me” curriculum, the same basic Stephen Covey product used all over other school districts and the Alamo Colleges. It’s exactly the kind of pre-packaged, mass market stuff that in-district charters are supposed to be avoiding.
Some parents at Hawthorne have put forth another idea. They would like to see Hawthorne embrace its place along the San Antonio River more fully, and to partner with civic institutions like San Antonio River Authority (SARA), The Tobin Center, The Culinary Institute of America, The Missions, the University of the Incarnate Word, and others to create a place-based curriculum. As a River School, students could feel connected to the city and see real life applications of what they learn in school. They could see science in action at SARA and the CIA, arts at the Tobin Center, history at the Missions. And they could connect to all of it via the same familiar route: the river.
That idea comes straight from parents whose children are and have been enrolled at Hawthorne for a while. They have been digitally walking around with a Word document asking people to read it.
Now, a few things I’ve learned about parent-led initiatives: Many are enrichment-focused, with little impact on academic subjects. Many are also niche interest projects that will live and die with the parents who champion them. Also, most, like the River School idea, are spearheaded by white, professional class parents. When that happens you have to look at who the idea actually benefits, and who actually wants to see it happen.
However, the River School idea may actually be different, because it’s built off of the existing charter, and has a wall-to-wall vision for the whole school. Not an after-school club, school within a school, or an elective. It would be a marshaling of resources for every child in the school, and bring many low-income kids into contact with powerful institutions, giving them a sense of ownership and belonging in their city.
From an equity standpoint, I like the River School idea.
SAISD has two in-house resources that could further develop this initial idea if parents and teachers wanted to do so.
First, they have access to the funding they would need to realize the more ambitious parts of the plan. Senate Bill 1882 would allow a partnership with any of those nonprofit entities (or an umbrella nonprofit formed by the City of San Antonio), to bring in extra per student funding. Unless something changes drastically in the Legislature this year, that will likely be around $1,400 per student more, which could fund supplemental activities and supplies and personnel needed to facilitate all the off-campus learning and on-campus professional development, hosting of partner organizations, etc.
Next, they can look to a similar model in Dallas ISD. While City Lab High School opened after Mohammed Choudhury left Dallas to become SAISD’s chief innovation officer, he was part of the design process. He knows what needs to happen to make sure students were academically on track while using the city as their classroom.
Of course, mention Choudhury’s name (or any member of Superintendent Pedro Martinez’s cabinet), and conspiracy theories start flying. Something about wanting to turn all SAISD schools into charter schools (because of Democracy Prep at Stewart), or funnel resources to the middle class (because of Diverse by Design schools)…I honestly can’t tell if the theories are misunderstandings, misinformation, or just a bad game of telephone.
But I’m not here to defend or skewer the guy. He knows how to design a school like this, it’s a design parents seem to want, and a design that’s having success somewhere comparable. CAST Tech does similar stuff, ALA does similar stuff. Hawthorne could take that “stuff” and make it something really distinctive and empowering for the kids, and I just hope that it wouldn’t be tripped up by people’s suspicions about how a bureaucrat feels about charter schools—which has nothing to do with the parents’ River School proposal. That would be a shame.
Hopefully, they won’t. The school has been given an extension on its charter revision, and hopefully they will use that time to summon their creative juices and come up with something that inspires the teachers, students, and parents. Hawthorne could very easily recapture its moxie. They’ve got all the ingredients, they just need the right recipe.