Signing on the dotted line

Well, we did it. Last night we filled out the form asking that LB be placed in the APP (academically highly gifted) program next fall. We didn’t make the decision lightly or without some-no, a LOT of trepidation. And we emailed the principal, the vice-principal and the director of the advanced learning department about our concerns before actually handing in the form.

 We toured the school Tuesday while it was in session, and no doubt about it, these kids are kept engaged and challenged in ways that kids in traditional classrooms are not. Just a quick look at the posters, displays and kids’ work on the walls alone confirmed that. LB whispered to me as we stood in one 5th-grade room, “This is the most interesting classroom I have ever seen. I want to go here.”

In every classroom, all of the kids looked interested in the work and happy to be there. No one was acting up, clowning around, or appeared to be in trouble. One room had some kind of plant experiment going on at each pod of desks, and LB looked like she’d won the lottery-science experiments are one of her favorite things EVER.

And yet, we were disquieted as we went from room to room, most of them filled with white kids from affluent families. In one, a black girl looked at Lee and LB with such relief on her face I couldn’t help but notice. I learned later she’d recently moved here from a southern city with a huge black population and felt very isolated. We knew that LB, if she went to this school that she too might go entire days without seeing another black or biracial child except in passing at lunch or recess.

But, the school itself is head and shoulders above any school we’ve looked at, this or any other year. And we weren’t all that surprised when the principal talked about a family who’d moved their child out of this school for the most prestigious private school in the city had come back after only a few months. It’s that good.

But, you know there has to be a “but”-there is a sameness to the students that is simply inescapable. It’s also in the faculty. And this has led to a “disconnect” as a parent of color told us in a discussion after the tour. “They don’t get it,” he said. “They KNOW they don’t get it, and are working on it,” but still, it’s there.

The principal herself gave a perfect example of “not getting it” in her welcome to the prospective parents.  “Look around,” she said, “You kids will be in classes with other kids who look JUST LIKE THEM.” Lee and I and a black family sitting near us looked at each other, stunned. WHERE exactly where the kids who looked “just like” LB and their child??? And why, exactly, is it a point of pride to tell a group of wealthy white parents that all of the children are just like theirs?

That was one of the points Lee made in the email to the powers that be. If the stated goal is to bring in more children of color, the kids AREN’T all going to look “just like” each other. That’s something he and I want to work towards and plan to be a part of. We want to be able to say to next year’s prospective black parents, “Yes, send your child here. We see things changing and your child will be all right.”

An outside report on the school last fall told of a black child being told to leave because “this is a white school.”  It SHOULDN’T be. It’s simply not possible that only 8 black children in the city are bright enough to be there. Things have to change.

If we can’t say they are changing, we will have made a mistake in sending LB into the fray, excellent education be damned.

Interestingly, I had a chance yesterday to talk with two black women who teach in the public schools here. One is our family friend mentioned in previous posts, the other was LB’s Kindergarten teacher. Both told LB that she would need to be strong being one of only a handful of black children at the school. Both assumed automatically that she would face some measure of prejudice. Both told her to refuse to accept that and to stand up for herself when it happened. And both told her that she is being given a gift-entrance to a path that isn’t open to many children of color. Do yourself proud, they did. Make the most of what you have been given. You can do anything from here on, they both said. You can achieve great things.

That’s a lot to hand an eight-year-old. And yet, for a child whose heroes are Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges, it’s something she understands. She WON’T be “just” a student at this school, she will be one of perhaps 10 or 12 black children. She will be the object of some curiosity, perhaps hostility, and certainly be under a microscope, since her father and I have made the most noise about the inequities in the history of this place.

We intend to support her every step of the way, and she’ll have plenty of additional support from our teacher friend, to her adopted Nana, to her church leaders, to her hip hop instructor-all people who took opportunity and ran with it. I hope we did the right thing.

Choices and Changes

I’ve been absent for quite some time as Lee and I struggle to make decisions about LB’s future in education and Miss Blondie decides where to go to college (which included a near last-minute trip to the Southwest).

Blondie found what she was looking for and why with the trip-now it’s a matter of waiting for the magic acceptance envelope in the weeks to come. The girl who insisted she wanted a small college in a small town experience has decided that after all is said and done she wants to be somewhere where there’s diversity (imagine that), a sizable town or city to work and play in (who’d have thought?) and a student body that seems to enjoy spending time together.  Back in the fall it was all about small groups, small classes and small towns. As she’s lived in a city of more than moderate size, I suspect those small towns weren’t what Blondie ever really wanted, but she needed to see it for herself.

With LB, we’re getting closer to making an important decision about the future of her education. We learned in the beginning of February that she’d qualified for the second round of advanced placement testing, to be given the very next day. We’re still not clear on whether the results of the first tests given in early November were delayed or we were somehow misplaced, but with the school choice clock ticking (deadline day is Feb. 29) many families were still waiting for a letter about the next steps to take.

While it took 3 months to the day to learn of the first results, we got our second test results the very next morning. How this gaping difference came about, we’ll probably never know, but it turned out to be only days before official school tours at schools designated for advanced learners. And as it turns out, LB qualified as a very advanced learner. The official district term is : “academically highly gifted”. She blew the tests out of the water.

This placed us in a position we frankly did not expect to be in. While we always knew LB was bright, we’d been warned more than once that only a handful of children make it to that top level-there are only about 500 kids at the only public top-tier elementary school. And we’d seen for ourselves the stats-less than 1% of those kids are black. The number last year was 16. This year it’s 8.

So we found ourselves personally invited to tour the school by the director of the district’s advanced programs. We immediately expressed our concerns-with such a tiny percentage of black kids, how could we be sure LB would be treated in a culturally relevant way? It wasn’t an idle worry-an outside report last fall castigated the school for open racism from students AND faculty.  

Come see for yourselves, we were told, so off we went, with LB in tow, to the open house. As hundreds of potential new school families trickled in, Lee and I sat somewhat aghast-it seemed that the new efforts to bring in children of color hadn’t turned up too many-LB was one of only three African American kids in the group. And one of them is adopted by whites.

Hard questions and long discussion followed. The school has hired a black assistant principal to help the school become more racially aware. She’s started a parent group and runs a student group for kids of color-all but one of the black youth joined. It’s a time, we’re told, when they can feel they belong. The district’s director we’d spoken to promised us a safe place for LB, as did the somewhat shell-shocked looking principal. She’s fairly new to the job herself and with a tiny minority population, hasn’t had parents asking what she’s doing to change and how she’s planning to do it so that that population feels as though they DO belong before.

Then Lee and I called some of the few parents of black children on the list we were provided. Both reported no insults ever to any of their children, and a genuine effort at the school to make it “less white” and more inclusive.  One parent, a black father who talked to Lee over a basketball game playing in the background, asked this of him:

“Why would you NOT give your child a private school education in a free public school, and if WE don’t take the risk and send OUR (black) kids there, who will?”

Ruby Bridges is on LB’s heroes. She knows that as a little girl this child walked past a gauntlet of screaming, angry whites daily, just to get the education she was due. MY perspective is that of a parent-surely they asked themselves, “If not us, who?” while living in terror that their precious daughter would be harmed.

While we don’t believe LB will be harmed, we do worry that she’ll encounter racial issues there, just as she has at the famously diverse school she currently attends (a public school without an advanced program where she’s been insulted by both black and white students-a peril of being biracial). And yet, if she’s willing (she loved the school on the tour), and she’s strong, can we, SHOULD we stand in her way?

We also have the option of sending LB to a second-tier school, of which there are several sprinkled throughout the city. One is only minutes from home and has an entire class of black and biracial children who tested as advanced, but either didn’t choose the highest level school or didn’t make the cut. They’re no slouches-they work hard too.  And they certainly look a lot more like LB.

In a decision that makes me scratch my head, the district chooses to set school choice month as the same onein which there’s a week of vacation, thus limiting the days anyone can tour a school, call or email staff, or sit in on classes. LB, being one of the late-notice qualifiers, hasn’t actually seen the “gifted” school while in session yet. We’ll be doing that first thing next week.

Then we’ll decide–close-by and diverse but second level, or not-so close, not diverse but top-notch education? Oddly, we aren’t worried about the academics. We were encouraged when the one student we met  declared gym his favorite subject, even though it was clear after a few sentences that his IQ is in the stratosphere.  We liked the group projects we saw on the walls and the website photos show lots of group work. Grades are not used-parents get lengthy reports written by teachers about exactly what students are doing, and where they need help.

But the social issues? That’s where we’re stuck. We won’t make a decision until after the visit next week, but already, we’re asking ourselves-“If not us, who?”