http://academic.udayton.edu/ra.....ness16.htm

Go ahead, raise your leg against my incipient campaign.

What a minute! Is this position paid for? Are bribes allowed?

Just kidding!

I’ll run next time if you all a) pay for my campaign and b) give me free child care during all those meetings.

On a serious note, we do need someone with the backbone to press serious policy changes, also someone comfortable reaching out to marginalized communities. I think this most especially includes outer SE. That area is going to EXPLODE with issues within a few years. A good board would be ready to deal with it.

But sometime, whether in two years or four, we need some outspoken advocate for equity, someone willing to propose substantive POLICY changes, elected to the board.

In the meantime, all the rest of you should raise holy hell at board meetings.

I’ll come in support. Or to hold a sign.

On another topic (which we’ve visited before), I don’t want to host any more discussions about personal choices. I don’t want to be called out on mine, and I don’t want to call anybody out on theirs.

Just like global warming won’t be solved by people choosing to drive a Prius, and like Jim Crow segregation wasn’t ended without federal intervention, school equity in Portland isn’t going to be solved by personal choices. We need policy changes.

(I’ve had a number PPS policy makers wring their hands and tell me if we could only get enrollment up at minority schools, we could offer more classes. Which is about the lamest excuse for public policy I’ve ever heard.)

It doesn’t matter if people claim legit reasons to go to a school other than their neighborhood school, the indisputable, statistical truth is that school choice has led to increased segregation.

Yes, it’s not just about white flight. It’s also about increased white privilege, since the increasingly segregated schools they flee lose funding and educational offerings in their wake.

This is beyond debate. But so are the reasons people flee, when school A offers so much less than school B.

Since I’m tired of explaining the difference, say, between opposing a new charter school and criticizing a family for choosing a charter school, I’ve amended the comment policy of this site. Discussion of someone else’s choice is now explicitly off limits. The next person who does that…. Well, in the spirit of NHL playoffs, I’ll let Denis Lemieux explain:

All bad. You do that, you go to the box, you know. Two minutes by yourself, and you feel shame, you know.

And then you get free.

(Go Pens!)

And who gives a damn what Lars Larson thinks?

We need a voice on the board willing to represent the “school of hard knocks.” And one willing to speak truth to power.

That’s you, Rose.

The school choice and transfer issue is the most divisive issue in our community. To get past it or find a way to heal the hurt that’s been done, it’s going to take leaders who can see and appreciate the complexity of the issue. Since you and Steve have both experienced first-hand what these complexities are, you are ideally suited to lead this conversation. The fact that Steve serves on the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee on Enrollment and Transfer is testament to that.

As you know, I serve on that committee, too. I think I also bring an awareness of how complex the issue is, how to balance the need for what is best for our own kids vs. what is best for the greater good. I believe, perhaps naively, that the two are not mutually exclusive. I’m going to keep working on a vision of something that will lift us all up.

Peace.

And then you/they want to be part of “the community” but on your own terms. Dipping in.

Like we say at Jeff — go hard or go home.

Someone just left this kind comment for me over on Urban Mamas:

“Go troll elsewhere or just stay in the circle jerk over at your husband’s blog, Nancy.

Posted by: Do as she says not as she does since her kids aren’t in their n-hood school”

Sweet, eh? Man. Think the moderator will pull that one? You can give me grief all day long because my kids aren’t in “their” neighborhood school. We’re right in our neighborhood, and it’s not a charter. We would be at our neighborhood school, if it wasn’t a fancy little “boutique” magnet program, with the “neighborhood” side starved out and neglected.

You know what is at the heart of this for me? I don’t like that people have moved into the town I grew up in, into the neighborhoods where I was raised, and they’re saying, “Sorry, our kids are too good and we can’t play with you. We don’t want to know you.” Someone recently told me that she couldn’t “throw her kid under a bus” the way I have.

It is all disrespectful and it is the opposite of everything I believe in.

Peace. And I mean that. Peace.

Steve and Nancy did not leave their neighborhood school because of white flight. The reasons they left were complicated, but it was not “white flight.” My wife and I chose to leave our neighborhood school for complex reasons — not white flight.

Let’s not simply pit the Urban Mamas against the PPS Equity’ites. I don’t see what good this accomplishes. We can’t vilify people for wanting to make choices for their kids that reflect their values and beliefs, nor can we boil their decisions down to something like “white flight.”

We need to come together on the issue of racism in this town. It’s a problem, and we need to deal with it. Name-calling is not going to help. Serious, engaged dialogue where people feel safe to explore hidden, unconscious prejudice and are encouraged/empowered to take action in response to their insights is what we need.

For example, check out the Anytown institute, sponsored by the National Conference for Community and Justice.