Figure out what is wrong, and fix it

Iam on another plane. This one takes us from Cyprus to Venice. Adelaide is reading and I am thinking. Like I always do unless I am asleep.

I wish there was another healthy way to turn off my brain but there’s not, at least not on a plane. At home I could take a walk or watch trash TV or force my thoughts out through my fingers by kneading bread, petting dogs, or playing the piano. On this plane it’s the keyboard or nothing. So, to borrow from Luther albeit in a much less dire situation, here I sit with my laptop. I can do no other.

What I am thinking about are Tim Keller, Athens, and the taking over of the Marvell-Elaine School District by an out-of-state charter company. I have no idea if these things are related anywhere else but in my head.

Tim Keller is an evangelical preacher/writer I respect even though I disagree with him about some things. He died recently. The measure of this man is a subject broached in my Twitter feed as well as with a few of my real-life friends. The consensus seems to be that whether people concur with his views or not—and among those discussing it are conservative evangelicals who like his literal interpretation of the Bible, liberal-minded Christians, an agnostic, and a gay, atheist Jew—there is agreement that he tried to follow Jesus, which meant doing right by people regardless of how their beliefs contrasted with his.

This subject of doing what is right came up between Adelaide and me in Athens while we walked around the Acropolis. To go in, Adelaide received a student discount, and I wanted an educator discount. But the ticket lady said it was only for teachers who had students with them, and Adelaide was obviously my child, not my student.

I wondered if she’s ever heard of homeschool. For our family school is school and home is also school, though not officially so. Adelaide could vouch for that. She had to shut me up from trying to teach her the Greek alphabet on the subway.

Anyway, I told the lady she is my child, but I was also teaching her. She nodded then charged me full price anyway. I thought this was wrong and it aggravated me, but sadly for Adelaide did not thwart my educational efforts.

As we looked up at the Parthenon, I told her about the Elgin Marbles and how they were taken from the site; she could see them at the British Museum later. And in true Adelaide fashion, she blinked at me and said, “Pieces of the Parthenon are in London? Why? Why are they not here?”

What ensued was a little history of how through different centuries people blew up the Parthenon, and looted it, and desecrated it before Elgin paid to excavate it and take home the marbles. They might not have survived at all had he not done that.

“But they belong here,” Adelaide said. I explained there’s an ongoing debate about the complications, but Greeks believe that too, and I generally agree with them.

“None of the complications matter enough,” was her reply. “They should be here, where the Parthenon is. It is the right thing.”

The right thing is what Rep. Jim Wooten kept talking about when asked why he would not vote with the rest of his party for the Arkansas LEARNS Act. He felt it was wrong to bring a universal voucher system to the state at the behest of wealthy donors. Wrong to regulate public schools to death but give vouchers away to private and homeschools without the same regulations. Wrong to pay new teachers $50,000 but not raise veteran teacher pay accordingly. Wrong to force a school like Marvell-Elaine to close or be managed by a charter.

While in Mykonos I read a guest column by Martin Rawls, who in his piece led readers—including me—to believe he was a teacher at Marvell-Elaine Public Schools. My first draft of this column identified him as that, but after fact-checking myself, I found that he was a committeeman of the Young Republicans of Arkansas and teacher/ coach at Marvell Academy, a private school founded as a segregated academy in Phillips County. Rawls criticized the lawsuit on behalf of Marvell-Elaine and claimed people there are elated to be “saved” by LEARNS. I saw this argument another place, basically framing the choice as binary: LEARNS could “save” the school by making it pay $250,000 to a charter company to run it, or LEARNS would close the school. It is like the choice between being saved or sent to hell, except in this case salvation isn’t free, and instead of heaven the school gets to not die. Yet.

When faced with such a choice I imagine students are happy still to have their school, teachers are glad to be keeping their jobs, and the community is relieved the district won’t close. But those are not the only options. It is simply the choice LEARNS offers.

And I suspect LEARNS—the Department of Ed, the governor, the Legislature; they are all the same—offers that choice for the same reasons the British Museum keeps the Elgin Marbles. Doing otherwise involves complications that come down to money. And those complications matter enough to those in power to keep them from doing the right thing.

I do not believe Sarah Sanders or our Legislature wants to hurt children or communities. There are those who would go that far, but I don’t. One does not have to believe evil intent to see that whether the desire to hurt children and communities is there or not, the desire to help them is not as strong as the desire for power.

One need only have sat in the House Education committee meeting before the vote to comprehend this fact. If anyone still doubts, they should ask Representative Wooten, or Google what he has said. He explains it well.

What can a charter do that Marvell-Elaine Schools isn’t already doing?

If there is some magic solution a charter provides, why is it not the policy of the Department of Ed that we provide these solutions ourselves? The answer is that there is no magic solution, and everyone in education knows it. Marvell-Elaine does not need to be forced to hire a charter to operate its school. Like all of Arkansas’ public schools, Marvell-Elaine needs to stop being evaluated by a test that measures affluence instead of growth.

It also needs investment in its community, the kind of support that, to use the governor’s words, doesn’t “trap children in a failing school because of their ZIP code.” Paying a charter won’t solve that long term. What solves that is doing what it takes to fix what is wrong with the ZIP code.

But for those whose priority is power, rather than doing what is right, that solution is too complicated.