Protesting LAUSD Education Budget Cuts

In 15 minutes I'll be marching in a picket line outside my son's school. I'm joining 40,000 teachers city-wide to protest the massive $353 million in State of California education budget cuts. $100 million is going to be slashed from LAUSD's budget alone.

We're doing a "late-in" which means that from 7:30-8:30 parents and teachers are going to picket together. The teachers will enter the school at 8:35 and then parents are going to continue the protest till 9 AM. My kids are probably going to go into the school where the administrators and other campus staff can supervise them, much like they do at recess and lunch when teachers get a little break. But I'm tempted to have them both right out there on the sidewalk, protesting with me. After all, it's their educational opportunity that's being stolen away just because some people in our state capital, Sacramento, want to be funny with the money.

Speaking of Sacramento, Superintendent David Brewer says he respects the concerns but we should let folks in Sacramento handle things for us.

Oh, OK. Because just sitting by and letting our government paternalistically handle things has ever worked for Americans? With that sort of thinking, we should still be under British rule! Not to mention that Brewer's a black man so he should know better than to say something so ridiculous. He probably thinks people would free the slaves out of the kindness of their hearts instead of being forced to do so by a little thing called the Civil War.

And maybe Brewer's forgotten how much protesting and marching it took to integrate schools in the first place. I wonder how long it would've taken to get those schools integrated if folks had just waited for someone to "handle" it. Chances are, we'd still be waiting.

What Brewer and all the other folks saying that we shouldn't do this march fail to realize is that getting a good education is the civil rights issue of this generation. We can't stand by and hope that state officials just decide to do the right thing. Budget cuts of this kind in an education system that's already strapped are going to be devastating.

The only way I'm "for" this craziness is if Governor Schwarzenegger puts his kids down in one of the public schools in Watts. Then he can go ahead and cut the budget all he wants. Till that happens, I'm going to be right out there, marching with a huge sign.

Fearless

I had a little crying moment at the park this afternoon.

A couple of weeks ago my sons got their first ever bikes. So far we've only been letting them ride in the gated parking lot in back of our building. But today I let them ride their bikes over to our local park.

They rode around and around on a flat, paved loop, but finally decided they wanted to ride up the sloped dirt trail. Neither are super skilled at getting up slopes yet so it took some pushing to get them to the crest. But once they got there, they were more than ready to cruise to the bottom.

The seven year-old, "O", is a much more cautious rider, so he rode his brakes the whole way down the slope. But his four year-old daredevil brother, "T", screamed, "Rock on, baby!" at the top of his lungs and pumped his fist in the air the whole way down the slope. He rode so fast down the incline that I couldn't catch him even though I ran as fast as I could. (Sigh. My slow running is another issue entirely.) I was so worried because I totally thought he was going to crash.

In contrast, he was absolutely fearless.

It was really something to see my little wild baby refuse to look back even once. It really got me in the gut to see how he's growing up thinking he's absolutely invincible. He's whip smart, he's creative and he's not afraid to take risks.

So what made me cry? Well, it all got me thinking about how I've known so many other black males over the years who have also been smart, creative, outgoing, risk-takers... and they've had to deal with so much. I think about all the black males I've known who had blowout parties on their 25th birthdays because they honestly didn't think they'd live to see that age.

My mom can't even trace her patrilineal DNA because all the males in her family are dead. Her father died well before I was born. My brother is dead. My uncle is dead as well. My great uncles are dead. Sometimes I look at my sons and think about all of those relatives they won't know, men who had to work around not just the systemic lack of opportunity or institutionalized oppression, but also the psychological and emotional weight of racism. And it undeniably affected their health and/or their mental stability.

What's the weight? Marian Wright Edelman sums it up:

"Only 3 out of 100 Black males entering kindergarten will graduate from college. Every 5 seconds during the school day, a Black public school student is suspended. Every 46 seconds during the school day, a Black high school student drops out. Every minute, a Black child is arrested and a Black baby is born to an unmarried mother. Every 3 minutes, a Black child is born into poverty. Every hour, a Black baby dies. Every 4 hours, a Black child or youth under 20 dies from an accident, and every 5 hours, a Black youth is a homicide victim. Every day, a Black young person under 25 dies from HIV infection and a Black child or youth under 20 commits suicide."

And as much as I get up every day and 100% tell myself that my sons are not going to be a part of any of that because I'm making sure it doesn't happen, the reality is that so many other parents of black children have said the exact same thing.

Sometimes that reality gets to me. Sometimes I find myself getting stressed out thinking about how I can't slack at all when I come to my boys. I know I probably add to the pressure by operating with this fear.

With all of the violence going on in this city, these days I think about how I don't want my sons to grow up as teenagers in Los Angeles. I don't want them to be anywhere someone will drive by and shoot them because they're black. I don't want them stopped by the police and harassed. But where in the United States can we go where that sort of reality doesn't have the possibility of taking place?

My son hasn't caught on yet that he's supposed to walk softly and talk softly so he doesn't scare anybody. He doesn't know yet that when he does succeed someone will tell him it's only because he's black. And if he opens his mouth to acknowledge what he's going through, he'll get told he's playing the race card. Now though, if someone does something wrong to him, he expects immediate justice and he's come to believe that justice and fairness are fundamental to his world.

So when I see my son owning a slope like that, knowing he is worthy, capable, wonderful and smart, knowing he is invincible and just as much a rock star as any other child on that playground, I cherish that. I know it's going to hurt to see that start to get chipped away.

Race Isn't An Excuse

One of my fellow bloggers, Hammer, left the following comment for me yesterday in response to my post on racism and voting:

Race isn't an excuse. I went to a poor school with broken toilets, teachers who read the paper, 20 year old text books and no lab equipment. But we had no gangs or drugs and pretty much everyone graduated got a job or went to public college.

Declaring racism as an excuse for violent and criminal behavior when is counter productive.

My whole family was poor and or mexican and we got out of the projects despite most white people hating our guts.

I think just as many blacks are voting racism as whites.

So much came to mind in response to this so I figured I'd just post my thoughts right here. (I was going to write about how Madonna's holding dance auditions four blocks from my house but maybe I'll fill you in on that tomorrow. I know, you're sooo disappointed.)

Anyway, I think Hammer's definitely overcome a whole lot and I wish more people had the ability to do so, but it doesn't always work that way. More often, people end up being stuck in a cycle of generational poverty. And instead of focusing on whether the poor have realistic opportunities to get out of the situations they're in, our society is trained to instead blame those who need our help. I am all for individual accountability but when it involves children, I just want there to be a real solution that allows them to be able to have real choices about their lives.

People excuse racism in this country and behave like it's just people saying mean things to other people. I can deal with name calling. I've been called a zebra, an Oreo, and a crispy, critter, burnt up ni**er.

So, I suppose I could pat myself on the back and say, "Whatever, and now I've got a graduate degree!" I suppose I could also pat myself on the back for not being an addict saying, "I'm addicted to crack because people called me bad names." But it's not about me.

There are plenty of other people I've known over the course of my life who didn't make it. It's not just about one person pulling themselves up. How can I celebrate when others still suffer?

No, race should not be an excuse. But, just because it shouldn't be an excuse doesn't mean that racism isn't alive and well. We like to think it's just name calling, but unfortunately racism involves power. Mortgage lenders can decide whether or not to grant a loan. Landlords can decide whether or not they want black folks renting apartments in their building. My landlord never met me before he rented this apartment to me. All he saw was my nice Irish last name on the application I faxed to him. I know it worked in my favor.

Power means journalists can spin stories a certain way and influence the masses. And before we know it, you and I don't know the truth.

City officials have the power to decide whether or not they're going to let gangs take over a neighborhood. We can "conquer" Iraq but we can't root gangs out of Los Angeles?

Um, yeah. Okay.

Hammer mentions that he didn't have gangs back when he was in school. Well, if only we could be so lucky these days. As you all know very well, here in LA, gangs are no joke. They start recruiting when the kids are in 2nd/3rd grade. The kids with no fathers think the gang members are cool guys that are just trying to protect the neighborhood, even if everyone is terrified of them. Those guys have the cars, the cash, and all the cool tattoos that everyone from ball players to rockers have these days. It's all very appealing to a young mind.

Even for me, in high school I talked to gang members all the time. I thought they were just cool, misunderstood guys. The reality is that they were the guys who didn't know how to read past a 3rd/4th grade level. They were the guys who only knew basic math. And they were the guys who'd never been given leadership opportunities because teachers were so busy labeling them as bad and sending them to the office for random crap.

A few years ago, before rents in my neighborhood went pscyho, two Latino guys with all the requisite tattoos and wife beater shirts started sitting on my front porch. And then this kid that lived next door would be out there with them. Now, where's his mom? She's at work because she's gotta pay her rent and she has no one to watch her son after school. She figures her boy's in 4th grade, he can come home and stay in the house after school. Where's dad? Who knows, but you know, that's only a bad thing if you're poor. Rich people are single parents too and no one's shaking their head at them, even if they should.

One day I came home and these guys are on the porch with this kid, Anthony. I went to get the mail and they told me to get them a glass of water. You'd best believe my ass went to the kitchen and got them a glass of water. I was just as nice and sweet to them as could be. If I called the cops, guess what? They're going to know I called and did I really want to deal with that? Um, nope. Especially since I'd seen some of the other stuff they did to people in our neighborhood.

Anthony ended up getting kicked out of two elementary schools. Two schools, that are about .1% white and almost 100% low income. No one can tell me that the level of ineptitude and lack of academic focus that went on in his schools would be tolerated in a middle-class white neighborhood. And of course, teachers have the power to decide whether they want to believe that the kids they're teaching can really achieve or not.

In my own life, I had guidance counselors tell me I didn't need to take the SAT and I should just consider going to community college. Counselors told me I should take auto shop because I might be a great mechanic. They weren't telling any of the white kids in my Advanced Placement physics class that they should be mechanics too. Nope. Just me. And that's racism.

Now, whether I believe I should be a mechanic or not is another thing, but when you have people who've been systemically told for generations, you're inferior, well, not everyone has the ability to hear what the guidance counselor is saying and know that something in the milk ain't clean.

I've seen teachers sit around and say, "Let's face it, these kids just aren't that smart and at the most, they're going to be flipping burgers or cutting lawns." Why do these teachers say these things? Quite frankly deep down inside, they believe the kids aren't smart because they're not white.

Disagree with me if you will but I have my sister calling me last week telling me how my nephew's math teacher split up the class into a low group and a high group and all the kids in the high group are white and Asian. Guess what color all the kids in the low group are? They're the black kids. There's not one white child in the low group. And my nephew is frickin' gifted, okay? He's one of the smartest kids I've ever seen and I'm not just saying that because he's related to my brilliance!

My sister asked the teacher about this situation and the teacher got mad and did the, "How dare you call me a racist?" thing. Well, what the heck else is it when my nephew is getting an A but gets put in the low group? Just a friendly mistake? I don't think so.

My sister has the social and cultural skills to address the situation. But what happens if people are poor and uneducated and that the child comes home and says they got put in the low group for math? Well, that parent might do what my sister did and talk to the teacher and principal. But if that parent has limited English ability, they may feel incompetent. If that parent hated school and didn't do so well he/she may feel uncomfortable talking to a teacher and may think that the lack of math ability is inherited. That parent may have addiction issues or be abusive and so may not even care. Regardless of the reason, if the child is allowed to remain in the low math group, guess what? He falls behind. I don't care what teachers tell you, as someone who's been a teacher, the low group never catches up to the high group. Never.

So that kid Anthony that used to be in my building? His family ended up moving to a different building a few blocks away and I haven't seen him although I see his tag, "FACTS" all over the neighborhood. I ran into his mom the other day. Anthony's been kicked out of middle school, has been arrested several times, and is in a juvenile detention home -- where he, of course, is probably learning how to be a better criminal. His mom's just trying to hold it together for her younger daughter. She's given up hope on Anthony because, as she said, the gang owns him now.

Should she have moved heaven and earth to make sure her child didn't end up in that gang? Yes. Should Anthony have had some sort of intrinsic motivation that made him, "Just Say No," to those gang members? Some sense of right and wrong that made him say no to that pressure. Absolutely. But sadly enough, fourth graders don't always have the resources to make that decision on their own.

The only other thing I have to say is as far black folks voting racism...well, I know a lot of black people who used to love Hillary Clinton and are now are choosing to not vote for her precisely because of the racial games her campaign has played. She brought that on herself. But people voting for Barack only because he's black? Sure, some people probably are, and even though whites have done it for forever, two wrongs don't make a right. I actually think most black people voting for him are voting for him on issues and because they're inspired by him, just like all the other Obamaniacs of all colors out there.

So Hammer, thank you for sparking all these thoughts. I think about these kinds of things all the time. These issues hit me in a certain place because I look in the eyes of my sons every single day and know what this world has in store for them. I always say that people think my boys are so cute and adorable now, but in about ten years, they're going to be scared of them. I'm going to have to worry about cops pulling them over because they look suspect. I'm going to have to worry about a new generation of teachers telling them they're nothing. And I plan to fight it all tooth and nail.

I wish I didn't have to.

Rolling the Dice With Los Angeles Magnet Schools

The deadline is looming!

Friday, January 11, 2008 at 5:00 P.M. is a moment of agony for thousands of LA parents.

It's the deadline for the infamous "Choices" brochure. If you're an LA parent with a child in public school, you are probably very familiar with this brochure and all the anxiety it causes.

However, for those of you who either live in other parts of the world or amble along in childless bliss, here's a nice, positive summing up of the pyschotic magnet world, courtesy of this LA Times article:

"The magnet system established specialty schools that have become, in many cases, the district's brightest centers of academic excellence. It was intended to give families the motivation to voluntarily desegregate a district that was deeply polarized along racial lines. It hasn't fully met that promise -- many schools in the district remain racially isolated. But numerous magnet schools have become models of integration."

Basically, if your child gets into a magnet, they have a better chance of getting a great education. And guess what? Race is the main criteria for admission in these schools and they try to create a 40% white / 60% non-white or a 30% white / 70% non-white balance.

This race-based admissions policy got challenged in court but, surprisingly since this is California, the land of Proposition 209, the challengers lost.

As a side note, I love how in the Choices brochure "white" is defined as, "A non-Hispanic person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East, e.g., England, Egypt, Russia or Iran."

So if you're from Iraq or Iran, congratulations, you're white! I could write a whole separate post on LAUSD's racial classifications but I'll save it for another day. I'm just wondering though, has anyone told George Bush that according to LAUSD, 2/3 of the Axis of Evil is white?

Anyway, I've always been an advocate of supporting my neighborhood school and I'm happy with my both my son's teachers. However, I would like more racial diversity, more science, social studies and art and a principal focused on making the school one of the best in the state. So I figured, why not give the magnet thing a whirl and see what happens?

You can only apply to one magnet per year so I submitted applications for both of my sons to a fab K-5 school with lots of diversity and through the roof test scores. However, last year there were 35 openings and 1,652 applications for this school.

Yeah, you read those numbers right.

So that means they have a 2.1% chance of getting in. Boy, with those kinds of odds, maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket too.

And the Vegas-style admissions odds aren't limited to just the school I applied to. Nope, take a look at the numbers for Valley Alternative where 2.2% of applicants are going to get in. Read their "Success Secret".

Now to me, it seems like there are a whole lot of parents out there who'd love to have their high school-aged child educated so well that when they go to high school, they're far enough ahead that they're taking college level classes. But if your kid doesn't get into Valley Magnet, you can kinda forget about that.

You might also have to forget about getting an education good enough to be able to comprehend a high school textbook. In the magnet brochure, they list out what are called "Program Improvement" schools. Program Improvement (PI) schools are schools that are scraping the bottom of the academic barrel. They have the absolute lowest test scores. And in this city, there are 163 elementaries (uh huh) that are PI schools.

Even if a school isn't a PI school, that doesn't mean it's excellent. Nope, a whole lot of them are just barely avoiding being PI schools. There are way too many schools in this city that are just so-so. They aren't cringe-worthy, but they're not awesome either.

Chances are my kids are gonna get rejected from the magnet we applied to. I'm looking into some other options but I'm fully prepared to have to keep supplementing their education here at home.

But doesn't it somehow seem illegal, immoral even, to give a better education to kids who, through the luck of the draw, get into one of these magnets?

I say yes.

Now since LAUSD is turning me into a gambler, let me go buy my Mega Millions lottery ticket.

School And Society

Yesterday my youngest son officially became involved with one of the most powerful entities in this city, the Los Angeles Unified School District.

It was his first day of Pre-K and he was not too thrilled to be going. He refused to wear the lanyard-style name tag. In fact, he threw it on the ground. I could see tears beginning to well up in his eyes as the teachers told the kids to line up at the Pre-K entrance to the school.

His teacher came over and told him he was going to be okay. She kindly smiled at him and took his hand. His lip trembled a little but he held onto her.

I only let the tears roll down my face when he was safely out of sight. I cried because it's hard to see your baby experiencing such a milestone. And I cried because I worry about what this school system has in store for my little boy, a black male, especially since he has an "artistic" temperament.

Schools don't do too well with black boys with artistic temperaments.

But, I have confidence in his Pre-K teacher. My eldest son had her and she's great. We understand each other and I grilled her two years ago before my eldest entered her room. I know she was initially surprised when I asked her how she would deal with my son being called names or being teased because of his skin color or hair. But she recovered quickly and was open to hearing why I asked. When an incident did happen, she dealt effectively with it. And she was not afraid of my son's blackness and what that means for him in our society. She loved him instead of tolerating him and looking down her nose at him with a sense of superiority.

This is not how all teachers behave. I can tell you without a doubt that bad teachers come in every color. Racist teachers do too. But I've had a whole lot of experience with young white teachers coming in to teach poor children of color.

The things I'd experienced in my personal life and also seen in my own teaching experience gave me a prime opportunity to think about who I was working with. Who were these people coming to teach poor children of color? The majority were young white women who were admirably idealistic. They were eager to teach in low-income communities and change the lives of their students. They believed it was immoral for poor children to not get a decent education.

That belief is, in itself, a noble and wonderful thing. However, many of them were unprepared for the myriad ways race would play a factor in their teaching experiences. There was definitely a palpable desire to believe that race wouldn't be a big issue, even if many of them were afraid that black and Latino students wouldn't accept them because they were white. And they figured the veteran teachers who weren't white wouldn't accept them either.

Most of them had never had a very close friend who was black. I'm talking about a girlfriend they talked with every day. Someone who did the anorexia intervention on them during their sophomore year of college. Someone whose shoulder they cried on when they went through a bad breakup. Someone they were roommates with.

Many had never been to a black person's home. They'd never sung the Black National Anthem or been to an Ebony Fashion Fair Fashion show. Never been to a black beauty shop or smelled the chemicals of hair relaxers.

Of course, they'd read in sociology classes about the black male being an endangered species. Perhaps they'd even gone through an experimental phase where they'd slept with a few black guys at college. If they liked rap music, they believed it gave them the street cred they needed to relate to their students. They didn't stop to think about whether the black boys in their classrooms were being socialized to be 50 Cent. After all, he's a rich guy, and who wants to be Barry Manilow?

Many of these teachers didn't want to think about how little trust black folks have in schools that have failed their families for generations. None had ever thought the historical interactions between black and white women in this country needed to be taken into consideration when dealing with their student's mothers. They'd missed the history lesson on the jealous revenge white wives would take on black female slaves because their white husbands were spending time down at the slave cabins, raping those slaves.

Then they'd complain because when they'd tell mothers that their child had misbehaved, the mother would mistrustfully ask the teacher, "And what did you do to my child?"

They didn't know what was going on when the little black girls in their classrooms wistfully stroked the waist-length hair of the Latina girls. Instead they'd agree with the black girls who'd say to the Latina girls, "Your hair is so pretty."

And when those black girls came to school with hair extension braids, the teachers would ask,"Is that your hair? How did it get so long overnight?"

They'd complain that the black children were the worst behaved children in their classrooms and they didn't understand why those black children were still not achieving academically, despite having them, the awesome and motivated first year teacher.

Some were angry when I'd point out to them that they were treating their black and Latino students unequally. They didn't believe it was true. And then I'd share that when the Latino boy talked out of turn, they'd ignored him. But when the black boy talked out of turn, they'd yelled at him and given him a negative consequence.

"Are you calling me a racist?" They'd say. "Because I'm not a racist."

I'd tell them I was just objectively sharing what I was seeing. I was usually too chicken to say, "Yes, you're a racist." Instead, I'd ask what leadership opportunities they'd given the black student, what positive contact they'd had with the family, what encouraging praise and affirmation they'd given.

They'd just reiterate that they weren't racist. "Liberal" and "socially progressive" were the labels they'd given themselves. After all, who else would come teach in these schools? Who else would take the time for some poor children of color? Sure they were afraid of a black mother whose tough questions would be seen as normal if they were coming from the mouth of a white mother. But that fear wasn't racism, right?

The thing about our world is that teachers aren't alone in their denial. We desperately want to believe that everyone gets treated the same at work, when they're buying a car, when they're looking for housing, when shopping at Macy's, when walking down the street.

And if they don't, it's not racism. It's some sort of personal issues between two people.

Even more, we want to believe that we are not the perpetrators of racism. We all want to believe that racism is for people who from the South, are married to their cousin and are missing teeth. Racism is for people who wear white hoods on the weekend and voted for George Bush.

Yes, my son takes one more step into growing up in Los Angeles, a city where the chance of a 30 year old black male being murdered is 15.9 in 10,000.

And if he was white, it'd be 0.6 in 10,000.

Teachers are a part of that statistic, whether they want to admit it or not. We're all a part of that, whether we want to admit it or not.

Ready To Relax

YEE-HAW!

Don't worry, I haven't migrated to Texas.

Nope. I'm just celebrating the fact that crazy.busy.work.week number two is almost over...only a few more hours to go! Can I say it again?

YEE-HAW!

Undoubtedly, these past couple of weeks have been really hard, but I tell you, it's been worth it. The teachers I am privileged to work with are going to make such a huge difference in the educational futures of kids in this city. That means a whole lot to me. I care so much, too much perhaps, about making sure that we have educational equity, making sure that all kids have a teacher that's going to work hard and push them academically. It's important and it has to happen. All kids, regardless of the color of their skin or the zip code they live in, deserve to be taught like they're attending an elite private school.

Yes, it's tiring, working so much, caring so deeply.. I'm not going to lie...the dark circles have gotten out of hand this week. But you know, other than writing, I seriously can't think of another worthy cause that merits my busting out the heavy-duty MAC concealer! What did folks do before it was invented? (And men, a little concealer could really be a good friend to your dark circles.)

Anyway, I have to say it again: YEE-HAW!!! Tomorrow I'll be spending time with dear friends and heading to the bookstore to get something to read during my four days off. I miss books. It's so weird but I haven't read anything in three weeks.

Any literary suggestions for me?

Why I Do What I Do

On Friday, I wrote about the educational disparities between two schools in the greater Chicagoland area, Harper High and Neuqua Valley High. You can scroll down to read what I wrote if you want to get the background scoop because I'm too pressed for time to recap (got an event to get ready for!) This morning, I started to write a comment replying to fellow bloggers, one of my favorites, DJ Black Adam and Kim (you need a blog so I can link to you!), but it was turning into the longest comment on earth. So I'm going to post it here for everyone to read:

I agree that blindly following the dictates of the clergy or refusing to hold Massa Mayor Daley accountable for the promises he's made are factors in the mix. I'm glad the kids got a pool but Jesse jumping into it sounds a little like a photo-op. But, I wouldn't say that people being happy that kids got a pool is the root cause of the problem. That's why the part of the story where the girl was talking about whether she was getting the same academic education resonated with me the most.

Let me tell everybody where I am coming from...

I have worked with almost 100 schools across Los Angeles and Compton over the past 8 years and I definitely have seen that race is a factor. If I take the top five lowest performing schools in Los Angeles, I can probably count the number of white students in those five schools on both hands. And that's about 10,000 kids total. We have year-round schools out here because of school overcrowding. You'd be hard pressed to find a year-round school in a predominantly white area. Now, if I'm a kid on "B-Track", from K-12, I'm going to get 2 years less schooling than a kid on a traditional school schedule. Would middle-class or wealthier white parents stand for that? No, probably not. Why? Not because they care more about their kids. No, they wouldn't stand for it because they've been socialized to believe that they deserve so much more. As my mom used to say, "___thinks her ass is gold plated!"

It's not that poor black and Latino parents don't complain about all kinds of stuff, including the year-round schools, or that they don't care or don't want to challenge the status quo. First of all, some don't even KNOW that they CAN complain about it. If they go to the school site and complain to the principal, chances are they are going to get treated in a disrespectful manner. I've sat in LOTS of front offices and seen it happen. We'd all be a lot better off if we just owned up to the fact that we treat rich folks better. And you throw some rich white folks in the mix, man oh man, folks are falling all over each other with their effusive shucking and jiving.

Some parents are just grateful that their kid gets to go to school at all. The pressures of being a minimum wage worker and trying to afford housing, clothes, food and put gas in the car are tough. If I work and get paid $10 an hour, that means I'm taking home, before taxes, about $1600 a month. Say my hard-working husband makes the same.... That's $3200 before taxes. If I have two kids and we have a two bedroom apartment, I can automatically axe out AT LEAST $1K for rent. I'm really trying to figure out how someone survives on that and still manages to be at school for the 4:00 parent conference. But wait, if they don't show, we want to say they don't care.

Parents are stressed out just trying to put the food on the table and I've seen that this means that they can have a bit of a blind trust in the school site. We've bought the lie that everyone is getting the same great education despite where they go to school. That's just not true. Parents are telling their kids to work hard in school, to act right, to stay out of trouble. And then what happens...they get teachers that sell weed on the side. They get teachers that can sit up in the classroom, give the kids a worksheet and read the newspaper. They get teachers that tell them, "If you don't want to be here, don't come."

If I see a set of 35 science textbooks at a school, I know that 180 students have to share those books. The books can never go home. That would never happen in a wealthier area and yes, parents would raise hell if the principal told them, "That's what our budget allows!" But to a poor black parent complaining about this, that parent gets treated like the problem for complaining. That parent gets told, "That's the way it is." And it's suggested that the parent should be grateful that their child even has that. See that there are no real expectations that those kids are going to excel academically. Slavery and segregation weren't just about physical oppression. It was about mental oppression as well. It was about getting black folks to the point where we don't expect ourselves to excel too much and we don't challenge the authority systems in this country too much, because guys only need to stop snitchin' and girls need only be a booty-shaking slut...all images put forward with the stamp of approval of the white owned record companies.

Anyway, to me, that's why the kids in Matteson, IL aren't outperforming the kids in Tinley Park. White mothers in Tinley can walk into ANY hair salon and expect to have someone be able to do their hair. White fathers don't have to worry about whether someone is going to call them "articulate" when they are at work. Neither have experience being asked by their boss to accompany them to meetings because a "black face" is needed to represent. (Has happened to me at my current place of employment more than once in the past two years and every time it's, "I hope you understand why I'm asking you to come!") If I went home crazy every day because of that kind of crap, who could blame me? What is the psychological residue of oppression? Not saying it's an excuse, but to act like it doesn't exist is inherently dangerous.

Seriously though, rich parents in Tinley Park don't have to worry that the teachers are going to suggest that their kids are supposed to go to trade school. Can you imagine some kids going to New Trier High School in Winnetka being told to consider taking auto shop classes? I was told that though, "Because being an auto mechanic is a good career for someone like you." You know what my first group of students was called by one of the custodians at my school? They were called the Penal Colony. Yeah, 3rd graders being called the Penal Colony. That has nothing to do with the parents or the community. And if you're told you're nothing, guess what, the self-fulfilling prophecy comes true.

Wealthy white parents will demand certain things because they have an inherent sense of superiority. They are the ruling class in this country. I always say that there are just as many drunks and drug addicts in Compton as there are in Beverly Hills. But guess what, the trifling crystal meth addict parent that shops Rodeo Drive by day and tricks with her husband's friends by night is damn sure that her kid is getting a good decent education...because she has the money to pay for it. I'm sure Paris Hilton's parents were really nurturing and loving people who helped Paris do her homework every night...oh wait, she dropped out of high school. No matter, Paris Hilton gets a reduced sentence for DUI. Is that going to happen to the average black 25 year-old? Nope.

I get angry over teachers, principals and school district officials knowing they can get away with the low academic expectations crap. They know that our society easily reverts to believing that black folks would succeed if they really wanted to...I mean, look at Oprah, the shining example of black billionaire-hood. She's richer than most white folks so how dare anyone black say that racism exists in our educational system or anyplace else!

Here's my thing: Make every school like New Trier and then if people choose to not take advantage of the education, then that's their choice. And when every school is like that, hold every child and parent to the same expectations for academic success and involvement.

As it stands now, ultimately, our society is not going to be too outraged for too long if something bad is happening to poor children of color...and that's why I get up every day and do what I do.

The Nightmare of Harper High

I haven't slept much this week and it's starting to wear on me.

The good news is that I did sleep for about five hours last night, which is more than I can say for both Tuesday night and Wednesday. I may have slept in my clothes, but at least I didn't wake up till around 3:30 this morning. I did laundry, cleaned the house, did some work, and talked on the phone to family back in the Midwest. My sister's recommendation, "Take Tylenol PM."

I don't think even Tylenol PM can banish the images in this video from my mind. In fact, I think I had a dream where I kept drowning in this massive, Olympic size swimming pool. Seriously, take a moment to check out the video. It's the uninspiring stuff of nightmares.

The footage, passed on to me by one of my colleagues, (who, interestingly enough, got it from a teacher who showed it to her students) is from an Oprah Winfrey show that aired last year. In the clip, students from Harper High School in Chicago swap spots with kids from Neuqua Valley High in Naperville, IL, thirty-five miles away.

There are the shots of the Neuqua kids being stunned by the presence of metal detectors at the entrances of Harper. The Harper kids are floored by computer labs and the huge Olympic sized swimming pool at Neuqua. Harper's pool is the size of a small living room and never has any water. The comparisons spotlight all the differences in what the two groups of kids are getting as far as facilities, technology, etc.

The heartbreak really comes though when they compare the academic rigor of the two schools. One of the Harper girls sits in a math class and is shocked by how much more difficult the work is, even though it's technically the same class that she's getting at her own school. She starts to worry about whether she'll be able to survive in college. (I hate to say it, but honey, no one is really expecting you to go to college, or if you do, to get to a top tier school).

I felt so awful for the mom who was crying at the end of the clip because she had no idea how wonderful other schools like Neuqua were and she didn't understand why her daughter's school is allowed to be so inferior.

I have an answer for her: Because your daughter's poor and black. Believe me, if she wasn't, her school wouldn't look the way it does.

I know that not everyone knows that schools like Neuqua Valley exist. But folks know that schools like Harper exist. Parents in rich areas know about schools like Harper because they want to make sure that their child doesn't have to go to a Harper. The way the system runs right now, I should only care about the educational opportunities of my own child, make sure my kids can go to a "good school" and screw everyone else's kids.

In fact, if those lazy black folks (like the mom crying in the clip) really wanted to, they could get off their asses, go to college, get a decent job and move to Naperville too, so their kid could go to a good school too, right? Yes, America is a meritocracy, we all have an equal playing field and if you work hard, you'll get a good education, the best free education in the world.

Yeah, we are good at telling lies in this country to rationalize the fact that we have a racist, unjust and unequal system.

I'll bet those Neuqua Valley kids and their parents were glad that they didn't have to stay at Harper permanently. Thank God this was just an experiment for the Oprah show, right? A little tour to see how the other half lives and then home to swim in the Olympic sized pool.

Code Yellow

In my first year of teaching in Compton, I had a whole lot to learn, just like any beginning teacher. I had to figure out how to plan lessons that were so engaging and interesting that my students didn't want to talk or misbehave because they were too busy learning. I had to learn that I didn't need to assign thirty math problems as homework when five would suffice. And I had to learn what to do during a "code yellow".

I had never heard of a code yellow before that simmering hot August of 1998, my first in Los Angeles. However, I soon learned that if there was someone shooting in the neighborhood around the school, or if someone came on campus and started shooting, that was a code yellow. If this happened, the school bells would ring in a particular sequence and I was to shut the doors to the classroom and have the students get down onto the floor and stay there till an "all-clear" bell rang. We did not have a PA system at my school so those bells were everything. I remember being very worried that I'd mix the sequence of code yellow bells up with the sequence that meant it was a fire drill. I did not want to be the teacher who took her students outside for a fire drill when they should have been inside for a code yellow.

We'd have unannounced code yellow drills just like we had fire drills and earthquake drills (another new thing for a non-California native). The first time a code yellow drill happened, my third graders immediately recognized the sequence of bells and told me that it was indeed a code yellow and not the fire bells. I immediately ran to shut the classroom door and then turned around to my students. I saw them there, flat on their bellies, so innocent yet so hard in their nonchalance. A few boys were discussing wrestling, arguing over Triple H being better than The Rock. Some of the girls were singing a Spice Girl tune. I shushed them frantically. Maybe the gunman would think there was no one inside if we were all quiet. One student, Santiago, told me, "Don't worry. It's just a drill."

Santi then launched into a story of some of the violence that he'd heard about and seen in the neighborhood. Two minutes later, every student wanted to chime in and share their story. They told me of folks they knew who'd been shot, a cousin who had a gun, random gunshots they'd heard in the middle of the night. One boy told of seeing a gun down in one of the curbside drainage ditches. He'd tried to lower himself into the ditch to get the gun but he hadn't been able to reach it.

A moment later, there was a banging on the door and a voice telling me to open up. I recognized the voice of my principal and remembered her serious instructions that no one was supposed to open their doors, no matter what, until we heard the all-clear bells. I didn't open the door and then, fortunately, the all-clear bells sounded a few minutes later.

Sometimes when I'd get to talking with people, you know the business man sitting next to me on a flight to Chicago or the woman relaxing in a cafe, sipping a latte, I'd mention that I was a teacher in Compton. I inevitably would hear something like, "Oh, you must go to work in a bullet-proof vest." That kind of comment used to infuriate me when I worked in Compton and it still does. It represents all of the images and stereotypes about poor communities of color in the United States.

The truth is, if blacks and Latinos get shot in Compton or Philly or DC, on a daily basis, we are not, for the most part, shocked and outraged. We are not calling for more gun control. We are not questioning why someone didn't notice a troubled kid earlier. Heck, I'll tell you what happens to troubled kids in low-income areas. They drop out or are pushed out of school by teachers that don't want to deal with them. And if that troubled kid gets shot, well, that's life in the hood, right? The unsaid message is that that kid brought it on themselves. You know, they were probably involved in drugs or gangs and that's the way it goes. If only they'd stayed in school...and worked harder than they did, right?

How easy it is to forget what that kid would be like if they didn't have to experience years of code yellows, whether real or practice.

Those code yellow drills repeated themselves regularly over the years I taught in Compton. Those drills, and what I knew people thought and expected of my students, were a reminder of why I needed to work so hard as a teacher, why my students deserved the same education as kids in wealthy areas. So, I learned to lay on the floor and continue the lesson I'd been teaching. I'd ask my students comprehension questions about the story we were reading. I'd give them math problems to work out in their heads.

We'd also talk about college and how it was a wonderful place to go. I'd tell them about how colleges have beautiful green grassy lawns where you can relax and be whoever you want to be. I'd tell them how you get to live in a dorm and listen to loud music and go to great parties and stay up all night without parents there to supervise. I'd tell them that they could go to class and learn about whatever they wanted to learn about and not have to worry about people shooting up the neighborhood or coming on campus with a gun. One time a student asked if there were really no code yellows in college. I confidently rolled my eyes and replied, "No, there aren't code yellow drills in college! People don't shoot each other at college."

It's strange to think that if I was still teaching, I wouldn't be able to say that now. I'd always be remembering that some crazy person could potentially walk into their college classroom and murder them, erasing years of hopes, hard work, dreams and determination.

Thankfully, the thing is that in the years I taught in Compton, my school never had a real code yellow. No one ever walked onto campus and shot up the school. But we were always prepared because of the realities around us.

The reality of violence, sadly enough, is everywhere now. Truly, there is no safe space anymore in the United States.

Educational Equity? Who Are We Kidding?

Elarryo finally picked the Friday edition of the L.A. Times off our front porch today and began to exclaim over the article detailing how Martin Ludlow may be going down for alledgedly using union money illegally in his political campaign. Eight inches from this story was this headline:

"Tuition Hits $25,000 at Elite Schools."

After typing that headline out in this space, I need to take yet another moment to sit back and digest the fact that kids at Gompers Middle School in Watts are supposedly on a level playing field with kids at a school where you're paying that much for tuition. And given that the dollar amount doesn't include the various fees and expenses that kids at, for example, The Marlborough School are going to have to cough up, these parents are clearly believing that spending a good $30K a year is going to make their children have better lives.

The article noted the fact that tuition at Harvard this year is $28K. USC is $30K this year. Are we supposed to feel bad for the parents in the Times' article who self-righteously proclaim how they have to make sacrifices so their kids can go to private school?

"But we have quit the country club, we drive older cars and don't take the vacation unless it has something to do with the children's education. We don't have a nanny; we gave that up. It's daunting."

Oh wow! Poor lady. Giving up the nanny! Such shocking sacrifice!!!

There's a HUGE part of me that screams out that these parents are spending all this money so they don't have to expose their children to the poor Black and Latino masses. I think about what a better school places like Gompers -- or even Dayton Heights where Olinga is -- would be if the schools knew parents that have power were to be reckoned with. The attitude at so many schools is not one of excellence because excellence is not expected of those kids. Marlborough or Harvard-Westlake parents are expecting that their kids are going to go on to elite private colleges and then take their place as a part of the ruling class of this nation. Schools in most of Los Angeles are not run with the expectation that those children are going to do anything other than grow up to be prison inmates, gardeners, and employees at the valet stand.

I'm not hating on Marlborough because I've been there many many times. I just want that for all children...and I don't think it should cost $25K to get it.