Yesterday, I wrote (link | link) regarding the plan by Columbus Public Schools to close down a school attended by my son. I was (and am) particularly disturbed by the lack of information headed to the community regarding these closings, the lack of opportunity for feedback regarding decisions, and by the fear-based motivations leading to school closings. In response, I’ve done a bit of work to bring the decision to the attention of parents, to dig into when and where public meetings (that haven’t publicly announced) will occur, and to spread word about those meetings to parents as well. This has been procedural activism — to let people know about decisions that will affect them and to let them know how they can make their feelings about the issue heard. In other words, it’s pro-democracy activism, and I’m all for that.
But now there’s a turning point for me. Once the procedural problems are addressed, do I advocate substantively for the preservation of my son’s school? I value his school, I think it’s a good one, and I feel that keeping the school open would be in his best interest. But it’s not that simple. Because of white flight from public schools city-wide, there is an oversupply of school buildings and an undersupply of tax money to support those buildings. The school district shows no inclination to raise taxes to account for this deficit, and so some kid’s school is going to close. Some kid is going to have their education be disrupted and to be shuffled to a different place. Some kid is going to be hurt. As a parent, it is my job to see that my son is not hurt. But acting solely in the interest of my child ensures that some child will be hurt. Should I engage in activism that results in some other kid getting hurt so my kid can avoid getting hurt? Is that ethical?
The 1980s and 1990s saw a wave of NIMBY activism as people in middle and upper-income communities used their resources to say Not In My Back Yard to incinerators, to toxic waste dumps, to unsightly wind farms, to smelly factories. The incinerators, the toxic waste dumps and factories were still built — just not in the resource-rich middle- and upper-income communities. Electricity was still generated, if not by the unsightly wind farms then by some coal-fired plant somewhere, somewhere, somewhere else. NIMBY Not In My Back Yard activism translated into ITBY (In Their Back Yard) activism, and that has a mean streak to it.
The issue of public school closings isn’t NIMBY activism — it’s YIMBY (Yes, In My Back Yard) activism, promoting a positive resource for one area, like a school. Its hidden converse is a school that is Not In Your Back Yard. I don’t feel good about that.
There’s a counter-discourse to this which is kind of Darwinian: think instead of the activism as challenging schools and parents to come up with a defense for their schools to keep their schools from closing. It’s a battle for resources, and the most fit combination of school and parent support will prevail, culling the weakest combination of school and parent support from the herd. The students from the weaker school don’t get culled — they just get sent on to attend the stronger school.
Which way of thinking and talking about the activism of school closings is most appropriate here? I’d love to hear your thoughts about this not-at-all-hypothetical situation.
“But acting solely in the interest of my child ensures that some child will be hurt.”
NO.. WRONG… It is possible to educate two children well, you don’t have to sacrifice one for the other.
Advocating for something good IN your locality is not NIMBY.
It’s only MIMBY when you advocate not to bare the responsibilities of society, for example: Wanting garbage collection but no garbage dump in your part of town, or wanting to put people in jail, so long as the jail is not in your town but on the other side of the county. That’s NIMBY.
Advocating for good neighborhood sschools, in your town, in your back yard, for black kids is good social responsibility.
That your kids should be bussed so that they can save money in order to support new schools for mostly white schools in the suburbs is wrong.
If your city consists of two school taxing districts, one for the inner city schools, and other ones for outlying rich white suburbs then you need to change the taxing districts at the county or state level.
You ask “Should I engage in activism that results in some other kid getting hurt so my kid can avoid getting hurt? Is that ethical?” I don’t see how fighting to keep good schools hurts other kids. Good inner city schools that work are golden nuggets to be cherished.
The ethical issue is they want to keep the school tax flat in an age of rising costs. The ethics is that the county or state school tax needs to be increased so that you have an educated population growing up to pay taxes in the next decade.
If a city feels it’s ok to issue 30 year bonds so that it can retrofit its water,sewer, street system, then it should be prepared to invest in the long term in the education of it’s next generation of income earners: For some one has to pay off the bonds that city’s like to issue.
Jim: i think the view you describe as Darwinian is the more appropriate, though I think you address only some of the virtues of seeing it that way. In addition, that sort of feedback is necessary to convince politicians that what parents want is good education, not just good talk. You need to be heard in your preferences, otherwise they will guess about what you want (and guess wrong — they’ll think you want more money for fresh paint and padded desk chairs and to throw out the old classics and replace them with worse books, and metal detectors at every door, plus televisions in the cafeterias and courtyard recess equipment that is clearly only intended to be used one way, with no creative game-design aspect, etc. etc. etc.). if you want teachers who care and a school that by example promotes liberty and peace and racial harmony, then you *must* object when someone wants to close such a school.
however, you are not entirely wrong about some of the potential fallout — so part of your job, saving your school, is to get yoru school’s excellence recognized and allowed to help more students. the way it can do that is two-fold: one, by getting more parents to recognize its greatness and send their children tehre. two, by getting other schools to follow its examples. both of these need public recognition of the school and what makes it great. does columbus have a pick-a-school program whereby parents and students can choose to attend a school that is not the closest? Louisville KY ahs or had such a program, and i think they’re common (though i forget what they are usually called). the idea was that a democratic/capitalis/darwinist feedback loop would cause the good schools to get better — and i heard pretty positive thigns about it. if you don’t have such a program, you might consider arguing for one such. (one of the problems was that, since they rewarded the better schoold with more money, the application of this scientology-like philosophy meant that schools that could have been great with a little moentary shot in the arm sometimes end up starving. but if you are starting a new program, you can try to keep that aspect out or minimized.) similarly, some areas have “magnet” programs where different schoolds will have different focuses and you can choose ot go to the one that focusses on your preferred area of interest — one school might focus on math and science while another focusses on history and a third on foreign language, for instance. a danger with those programs is that often the non-magnet programs at each school suffer. in a twist of irony, my sister went to a so-called magnet school that couldn’t afford literal magnets for their science classroom section on magnetism.
Try “Tiebolt community”, Jim. The idea/definition is that everyone has a different idea of what government should do and what they are willing to pay for in terms of government services. One community believes in bare bones services and wants to pay accordingly (New Hampshire ‘live free or die’ where all the Massechusites move to escape property taxes?) Another community wants delux everything, victorian lamp posts, no utility poles visible from the street, I don’t know what all, but they can pay for it all and they get it all. Now, everyone will fit somewhere on the continuum and the trick is to move to the community that has the stuff you can afford and want. When your situation changes, you move to a different place with the new tax and services profile you’re looking for. Now the Tiebolt community theory stuff makes some people uneasy, but not usually government finance-type people, and I’ve never heard any good objections to it articulated.
Yes, there are some fairness issues about education. What about the community that pays $10,000 per high school student per year as opposed to the community that pays $17,000 per high school student per year?(real numbers, budget is based on property tax of local government, state gov. is not involved in education here, but does in some states) Some local governments just don’t have the property tax base, and that is how education is financed here. But there is probably a point of diminishing returns too. What if you spend a million dollars per student?
The stuff about your child’s “open plan” school doesn’t sound right to me. How can students concentrate with another classroom right there and no walls? I know how distracting it can be just to have the door to my classroom open and have noise from the other classrooms or hallway.
The school “security issue” reminds me of the story of a hospital where they were trying to get telephones for the teenagers, who can’t live without being on the phone. But they couldn’t go in and talk to finance people about meeting people’s social needs as a part of healing–it’s not even cost-effective, so instead they said “what if I have to call a code in this room?” and they got their phones. Social needs=not legitimate, emergency safety plan=legitimate.
It sounds like the schools that are being kept are the ones with a plan (and a budget) to bring them up to snuff. If you want to keep your school it will probably have to be brought up to snuff, which means adding it to the stuff that’s going to be financed with the referendum. How much would it cost to put in walls and doors? How far away and how good is the school you would merge with as an alternative? Will that school then be closed in another year and the students moved and moved again? What about your neighborhood groups? I’m not talking about real estate agents, they benefit from white flight since they make money from a percentage of the sale price and more housing turnover makes them more money. I mean the people who like the diversity and the quality of life there, the homeowners who want a stable neighborhood and want their property values to remain stable.
Look into homeschooling.
The battle for resources continues, check out news clipping for 12/8/06: “Plan continues to shuffle schools on list”
http://www.columbus.k12.oh.us/applications/NewsClips.nsf/WebWeeklyDisplay?OpenView