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?”
Raising Latte Bebe 