July 30, 2016
Excerpt from a subsection headlined “The public interest” in a commentary headlined “Big issues calling: Schools may be about to close, but difficult challenges lie ahead needing focus, attention” first published in Educate!, June 5, 2003.
But perhaps the biggest question mark hanging over the schools is whether adults from all walks of life will enroll their children, then provide the money, sweat and other investment that is vital to any public institution’s
success.
January’s lottery results showed that parents are choosing to make white schools whiter and minority schools more minority. A review of the data this fall will probably also show that the district will, this fall, operate more high-poverty schools, more low-poverty schools, and fewer in the middle.
That this sorting-out of children is bad educational policy has been proven over and over again across the country.
Some would even call it evil. For underneath the rallying cry of choice can lurk a muffled appeal to fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the other. Fear of the unfamiliar.
Schools that are building character and respect can be, indeed must be, places of peace, not chaos; of shared values, not factions; of high expectations, not common denominators.
Charlotte’s challenge is to make every school a school that every parent would consider choosing.
Some school board members now acknowledge what many parents have been saying for two years: that THEY wouldn’t send their kids to some CMS schools. If school board members saying that is not a wake-up call to the board and the larger community, what will it take?
