It’s time we push for sustainable decision making for our schools
My daughter and I were featured in the Denver Post (May 10), for Bike to School Day, a national event that encourages students and families to make healthy choices. I love the concept and am flattered that school friends and neighbors were excited and happy to see us in the news. I love that my daughter’s school put on the event and we love the school for so many reasons.
However, this is a particularly sore subject for me, and to be honest I’m feeling tormented by it all. As I approached the school with my kids, I saw that there were reporters and I could sense their intention. This was supposed to be a sweet, feel good story that brightens people’s day. They were beaming smiles at us and thought Alysa was so cute, which she is of course, but it was a fake bike to school day for us and really the whole story is entirely superficial.
If anyone knows me, I like to keep it real. While I would love to be all positive, I just can’t. I can’t help but to push hard for common sense and sustainable decision making in our school district and beyond.
My kids had a great time riding their bike and scooter to school and were really excited. I felt a lot of precious joy to see them having fun and have a new enthusiasm for starting our day. It felt good to briskly walk and get some exercise with them. Through it all though, I fought back tears of being completely upset by the ridiculousness of making this happen: I loaded the bike and scooter in the back of the car and drove to school like we do every day, but this time, we parked just a few blocks away. I wanted my kids to enjoy the event and they begged to participate. If we would have biked from home, it likely would have taken an hour crossing busy city streets in the middle of rush hour and then, my son would surely be late to his other school.
It bothers me that in a city that scores neighborhoods by walkability, with residents who value a healthy lifestyle, and, more like me, parents who want simple solutions regarding the logistics of getting our kids to school every day, Denver Public Schools’ push of school choice and privatization reforms has intentionally undermined neighborhood schools and has created a system where going to the school closest to your home is not the norm. The district spends enormous amounts of money encouraging families to choice into schools outside of their neighborhood all in the name of “a great school in every neighborhood” and, all the while, this system is inherently designed to undermine traditional neighborhood schools, especially in neighborhoods with high poverty and kids of color. If you don’t believe me, all I have to say here is that actions speak louder than words. It is a system that, as far as I have overwhelmingly heard, is not what families want.
Last year my neighborhood school was shuttered because, ultimately, community voice and participation in decision making is just as superficial as this Post story was. What concerns me even further is that for a feelgood story at a diverse school with a good amount of low income and kids of color, the white, privileged family was pictured instead of the whole other group of cute kids in the background from all races and income levels.
This story is as fake as it gets and it is like the other half dozen or so times I’ve been in the news the last couple of years for stories that highlight, in a blink of the eye mind you, pro-public education advocacy. These stories don’t give substantial information on the matter.
So, I take this opportunity to continue to fight the racist, corporate model of education reform, to call on people to support their neighborhood schools and demand that those schools be equitably resourced and evolve and make progress towards having a whole child — whole teacher — community school based model.
I want parents and community members to see past the rhetoric and vote for people who truly have both a narrative and verifiable list of actions that address the severe problems that our education system is facing.
I am disenchanted both by the media and community members who do not take a deeper look at what is really going on — in an un-self centered way — and do something about it. Our children’s and communities’ wellbeing now and the future wellbeing of humanity depends on it.