Heres what my friend, Susan, said at our last school board meeting: Good evening. Im Susan Hawes: East Nashville resident, and public school parent of a rising elementary schooler, a rising middle schooler, and, next year, a rising high schooler. Lucky me! I have three minutes to tell you whats taken me nearly a decade to learn and understand, and that is that choice is not always a choice, and that option is rarely an option. Ive also learned that the best thing we can do for our children, our neighborhoods, and our communities is to stop splintering our communities with more and more choices, and return to neighborhood schools. I used to have great confidence in our schools. When my son started elementary school eight years ago at the closest school to our home, a wonderfully diverse school that reflected our neighborhood, we committed fully in time, resources, and community involvement. We considered it not just his school, but our familys school. Our middle child started there three years later just as the neighborhood was really taking off. Now, as our third child is preparing to enter kindergarten, just missing the sibling preference by three days, our chances of getting her into the school where her baby shower was held, and where she spent her earliest days cooing underneath the library check out desk are hovering around 50%. Our familys school has become a school that is not welcoming to our whole family. And not just our family. Choice has taken my wonderfully diverse local school and turned into an all economically advantaged resource hoarder leaving the surrounding schools to flounder. It does not reflect the neighborhood, but the select few who have the ability to maneuver through the complicated choice system. And the middle school situation has become the ultimate neighborhood divider. On our street alone, of the kids who attended elementary school together, they now are split among East, Head, Goodpasture, Bailey, JT Moore, Davidson Academy, Meigs, Harpeth Hall, and Isaac Litton. And these choices werent made because of a desire for a choice, but because the lottery relegated these families to options with which they did not feel comfortable; a direct result of a system which tells us that great schools are not good enough. And the one, and exhausting, conversation we parents have these days is about the upcoming lottery, which we now call Selection Day, but we might as well call Roll The Dice Day. I have lost confidence in my investment, and I, like many parents in Metro, am not eager to invest my most precious assets into a risky market. Tell me that my children have a K-12 pathway where ¾ of the kids will not leave after a year or two for the promise of a different choice across town, and I will give you everything I have, and Ill assure you of success within that school. Tell me every year will be a crapshoot, and I will give you back what youve given me. We want confidence, not choices. We want community, not a pre-med school for 10-13 year-olds, or a charter school that changes location every two years. And my voice may resonate strongly with some, and it may come up hollow to others, but it is the voice of a dedicated public school parent, with two children in Title 1 schools, one for which I am the parent volunteer coordinator for 1300 students and their families. Next year, I have a third in a local, Title 1 school. All three thriving because of dedicated faculty and a push for parent involvement. Give us time. Let us take care of our neighborhood. Dont come in and close schools down or replace them with more choices which only lead us further down the rabbit hole. Help us get back to the community schools the majority of us grew up attending because we can all agree that after decades of choice, its simply not working. Thank you.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 18:52:13 +0000
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