Chance for integration

In November, the consultant presented a new option. It would have integrated the schools, but it was a radical redrawing of all of the boundaries. Where earlier proposals would have required a few hundred students to change schools, the new plan, known as Option J, would have moved 2,100.

Given the large number of students that would have been affected, it was clearly just a theoretical exercise. It was quickly voted down.

But Detwiler, the teacher, upset that they’d never discussed diversity, didn’t let the moment go. Video of the meeting shows her taking the microphone.

“It is a real disappointment that we weren’t brave enough to have the conversation about this earlier,” she told fellow committee members. “Wouldn’t it have been important to have gone to public discussion, so that people couldn’t hide behind property values as the reason why they don’t want to really integrate their schools?” There was no response. This was the meeting in which Sanford stood to admonish parents about their language. He said he believed all the parents were in the room for their children, but that no one was thinking of the community as a whole.

He got applause, but neither his nor Detwiler’s words would affect the outcome.

After the meeting, Detwiler sat in her car and cried.

“I was just so frustrated,” she said later. She was angry that the wider world would so easily dismiss the Johnnycake students — kids she knew had big plans and goals.

“They have some inkling that there are things working against them,” she said. “But they don’t know how deeply set that is.”

Detwiler decided to tell her fifth-graders about the redistricting process. She showed them an online survey designed to solicit final input on the new boundary maps for Catonsville.

The 10- and 11-year-olds knew their school needed more space. They spoke of how the cafeteria line was too long, and how their art teacher needed her own classroom.

She told them that there had been a process that would have helped with those issues, but that some people didn’t want their kids to come to Johnnycake, or Johnnycake kids to go to their schools. She explained that people didn’t want their kids to travel farther to a school that was rated lower than the one they went to now.

She was referring to Greatschools.com, a website with school reviews and rankings that is widely consulted by parents and real estate agents. The site had rated Johnnycake a 3 out of 10.

The kids were indignant. They could not understand how their hard work — the musicals, the after-school clubs, their