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Martin Luther King
First today, from Key West the Newspaper - www.thebluepaper.com, the rrailing reader comments add even more flavor.
MONROE COUNTY’S SECRET ROAD-MAP TO RE-SEGREGATION
It’s 7:30 am at the bus stop on Truman and Emma. Eleven-year old Dimitri is about to climb into the morning school bus. Like him, most of the kids sitting on the bus are African American. Like them, he has a mere 40% probability of graduating from high school with his classmates; a stark difference from his white brothers, who have an 83% graduation rate [2013 data].
When we interviewed parents in Bahama Village about this disparity their responses raised an unexpected red flag.
“I didn’t want my son to go to HOB,” says the mother of a fifth grader, “He’s going to the white school.”
BP: “The white school? What do you mean? What white school?”
Mom: “No, it’s just the way we talk. I mean Poinciana.”
BP: “You guys call Poinciana the white school?”
Mom: “Well, yes.”
So, what are they talking about? Is it just a matter of perception or has Key West somehow re-segregated its school system?
This morning we are following the orange bus on its way to Gerald Adams Elementary School on Stock Island. The bus stops in front of one public housing “project” after another: Porter Place, George Allen Apartments, Fort Street Apartments. By the time it parks in front of Gerald Adams, behind 4 other orange school buses, a large majority of the young children pouring out with their backpacks and new clothes are either black or Hispanic. Of the 545 students at Gerald Adams only 141 are white [non-Hispanic].
On their long journey to school however these kids have passed three other elementary schools without stopping: Sigsbee with 508 students, where only 7% of students are black. Montessori with less than 2% blacks. Strangely enough, the third school, Poinciana Elementary [like Sigsbee and Montessori which are Charter schools] has no school buses. Parents must drive their children to school and many students are “out of district,“ enrolled in the school by choice after being placed on a waiting list.
“Well this is the best school,” the crossing guard tells us as we stand on the sidewalk watching the traffic.
“Why aren’t there any school buses?” we ask.
“I don’t know,” says the man.
“But the kids from Bahama Village are being bused all the way to Stock Island.”
“Ah, you noticed that,” says the man who is African American and he adds with a smile, “I have no comment.”
Sixty years ago the Supreme Court, in Brown v Board of Education, unanimously declared segregation in schools a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Segregation “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their [minority students] status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone,” wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
We decided to look into the issue of racial integration in Key West schools. What we learned is that segregation in Key West is less an ugly beast breaking through the door than a pervasive old stench creeping back out of the walls. It is done, so to speak, in our sleep by simply not questioning a myriad of innocuous practices, which ultimately happen to result in serving the old prejudices.
So here is the Monroe County secret road-map to re-segregation; the tricks of the trade.
THE BUS ROUTE TRICK
According to Patrick Lefere, who is in charge of school transportation, school buses don’t stop at Poinciana because the district border around the school doesn’t extend past the statutory two mile requirement for bus service.
For segregation watch-dogs, it is precisely the geographic design of those districts which is suspect. The fact is, school buses basically round up kids from all the public housing “projects” and the Bahama Village neighborhood and ship them all to Stock Island [Gerald Adams] or to HOB. Those two schools teach a completely disproportionate percentage of “minority” and low-income students.
THE CHARTER SCHOOL TRICK
When the Florida legislature adopted the 1996 statute allowing public schools to be formed as “charter schools” the goal was to foster “innovative teaching methods”. Privately run charter schools are still considered public schools and are fully funded with taxpayer money. As to their pioneering innovative methods, critics say they are often limited to being magnets for white students moving out of integrated schools.
Sigsbee Elementary became a charter school in 2011 and now has 508 students enrolled. 340 of them are white [non-Hispanic]. Sigsbee alone has more white students than Gerald Adams and HOB Elementary combined.
A teacher we talked to at Gerald Adams Elementary, who asked to remain anonymous, seemed to have no illusions about charter schools:
Teacher: “I’ll give you one fact. We have an average of 100 students entering pre-K at Gerald Adams each year but this year our 5th grade class has only 49 students. Where do you think they all went?”
BP: “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Teacher: “They went to Sigsbee. Sigsbee is actively recruiting our best students. They take the cream of the crop.”
He couldn’t explain how this active recruiting takes place, only that he’d heard it from parents. He blames Gerald Adams slowly dropping from an “A” school in 2012 to a “C” [nearly a “D”] school last year [2014] on the steady exodus of the school’s high academic achievers to Sigsbee Charter School.
“There’s no miracle,” he said, “If our school is left with a high percentage of children with special needs, children for who English is a second language, and all the best students move to charter schools, the overall grade for the school is going to drop.“
Sigsbee Charter School is not only racially unbalanced, it also receives more money than the other public schools. In addition to a $ 325,000 grant when it first opened, the school obtained a $ 570,000 grant in 2012, which it used for the creation of a state of the art science program. Charter schools are also more likely to receive substantial donations from a higher number of affluent parents. While only 13% of Sigsbee students were eligible for free or reduced lunch last year, HOB and Gerald Adams were each at 75%. Arguably some charter schools manage to be not only separate, but also unequal.
THE STUDENT TRACKING TRICK
In sixth grade most Key West students are re-concentrated into one school – HOB Middle School. This is when “teams” and “honors” classes are introduced.
The creation of an “honors” track and a “regular” track results in a school comprised of two parallel universes, where African American students are almost totally absent from “honors classes”.
In recent years student academic tracking has become very controversial throughout the country. One debate made the news when the principal and two assistants [at Gilroy High in California] resigned in protest over the school board’s decision to introduce honors classes. Principal Wendy Gudaluwics was concerned that Hispanic students wouldn’t enroll in honors classes even if they could do the work because their parents might not be aware the classes exist and wouldn’t push their children to take them.
Her concern fits to a tee the honors enrollment process used in Monroe County. The following is a quote from MCSD’s report to the State on the status of equality in education in Monroe County schools:
“Through academic counsel with students and parents, 9th through 12 graders are enrolled in Honors courses.”
In such a system, the amount of family support a child has is clearly a determining factor. Many minority and low-income students, like some in Bahama Village, whose families may have been torn apart by poverty or have issues with the justice system, are at a huge disadvantage.
It gets worse:
We previously reported on an alarming tendency of at least one Key West High School guidance counselor to push white students toward an honors track while blocking black students.
“We each went to see the same guidance counselor with our moms, the same week,” Naomi told us. “Bhajan was put in honors classes, but I was told I could absolutely not take honors classes.“
Our video interview of Naomi and Bhajan shows two teenagers who grew up together living on boats anchored behind Wisteria Island. Neither had gone to school before or had kept any home-school records. Neither had been tested in any way. The only difference between them was Bhajan was a white boy and Naomi was a half-black girl.
“He got all the honors classes he wanted and I had to take a remedial class!” says Naomi, “I was bored to death. My first essay was about Halloween. I thought it was pretty good. The teacher gave me a C because she said she believed it had been plagiarized!”
At this point, no one is going to convince Naomi that she has not been the victim of racism. We recommend you don’t even try.
An isolated incident or a systemic problem?
The numbers speak for themselves: In 2013 black and white students were graduating from Gerald Adams with almost identical FCAT reading scores [65% of blacks and 66% of whites were proficient in reading].
However, the information we’ve received from current students tells us there are as few as 3% black students to none at all in most of the honors classes. Enrollment in honors classes is discretional, there is no clear pre-requisite, and it escapes outside control because the enrollment lists are confidential.
No one can know for sure how many Naomi’s in Monroe County’s school system are floating in the pool of disillusionment and broken dreams, performing precisely to the low level expected by a system which has seemingly given up on them.
“Regular Classes”: Code for Substandard Minority Classes?
The issue of “honors classes” vs. “regular classes” is not about whether the “honors” academic standards are too high, but whether they are in fact too low.
All of the teachers, parents, and students we have interviewed over the past month seem to be convinced that the “honors classes” are in fact regular classes. Which would mean that the so-called “regular classes” are in fact substandard classes.
Because they are wrongly identified as “regular” classes, “the system” can sit back and relax when in fact administrators should declare a state of emergency in those “regular classes” and send a remedial cavalry to the rescue.
Low expectations rather than rescue efforts seem to be the common denominator for “regular classes.”
“In fact, it totally depends on the teacher,” said one student who recalls having had a geography teacher, Mr. Eggers, who completely turned his “regular” class full of “problem” students into a “very motivated group.”
BP: “How did he do that?”
Student: “I don’t know. I think he was just asking more of everybody.”
“Random” Team Assignments Based on Cultural Choices
Another suspected tracking method is the assignment of students into two separate “teams” when they enter HOB Middle School. According to school administrators, assignments to the “A” team or the “B” team are completely random. It’s just a fluke that the “A” team has nearly all of the top honor roll students and the “B” team has the bulk of students with the lowest test scores. Some parents are not convinced.
“Look,” said one parent, “It’s simple, the “A” team has all of the band students and the “B” team has the P.E. students. If you are a kid from Bahama Village, playing the Oboe or the French Horn for hours at band practice might not seem all that attractive. You want to play football or basketball and you can’t do both so you end up on the “B” team and that’s one of the ways they manage to separate these kids.”
One last thing:
No Black Teachers
Many studies on school segregation and closing the racial academic achievement gap stress the importance of same race role models. But when it comes to black students, the reality is that Monroe County School District has almost no African American teachers. There are 486 white [non-Hispanic] teachers, 78 Hispanic and only 5 black teachers [2013].
With a Masters Degree in Political Science and a teaching degree, Bahama Village resident Sonny Reves was once a black man trying to get a job teaching in Monroe County’s public school system. “I always wanted to teach,” he told us, “I finally managed to get a job in a special grant program. It was an extra-curricular educational program, but when the grants were terminated after six years, we all hoped we would be transferred over to the public school system. I was the only black teacher in the group and the only one who was not hired.” Sonny recently retired as a cable TV installer for Comcast, never having managed to get hired as a teacher again. “And I tried,” he said shrugging his shoulders.
How to Fix It
“We used to all be friends when we were in elementary school. Then you get to middle school and everything seems to change,” laments one student.
School Board member Andy Griffith is well acquainted with the problem:
“Reform demands competition. Charter schools and corporate vouchers come on the scene offering parents a choice. Parents who are involved in their children’s education make the best partners in order to educate children. Choice results in involved families leaving the conventional schools. Our minority schools in Key West have 79% free and reduced lunch [an indicator of poverty] and our charter schools have 7%. Some competition. But choice is good right? Well choice results in segregated schools in a small community. But segregation is bad right? Yes, it is but we can’t seem to find the answer to having both.”
Our question is this:
How hard would it be to hire more black teachers? To redraw the districts and bus routes so as to balance the racial diversity of the elementary schools?
Certainly, the charter schools should be required to take care of their fair share of social and constitutional obligations. Under Florida Statue 1002.33(7)(8), charter schools must actively pursue efforts to mirror the racial mix of the community and the school board has the power to close the doors when they fail to do so.
Finally, we should stop pretending that the non-honors classes are “regular” classes, admit that those classes are producing substandard results, and make immediate efforts to bring those students up to speed and do so until racial tracking has become irrelevant.
5 COMMENTS ON “MONROE COUNTY’S SECRET ROAD-MAP TO RE-SEGREGATION”
Todd German forwarded a poem the other day, which his daughter Valerie had found online and sent to him:
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Poetry/Stevens/The_Idea_of_Order_at_Key_West.html
The Idea of Order at Key West
Wallace Stevens
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.
For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.
It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
Yesterday morning, I bumped into mi homeless amiga Jeanie, sans her beloved grey parrot Scorpio.
I first met Jeanie and Scorpio on Higgs Beach in early 2009, at the kiosk nearest to the bathrooms.
bathrooms down at far right end of the kiosks
We struck up a conversation, Scorpio deigned to walk off her shoulder onto my wrist. Then, a homeless a fellow showed up on his bicycle at the most distant kiosk and started shoving homeless people around and threatening to kill them. Jeanie said he had beaten her up once, and had said she was going to kill her. She said he had beaten up a lot of homeless people, really bad.
He saw her and came our way, yelling what he had mind for her, and for me, who was talking with her. As he neared and told her again that he was going to kill her, and then turned his full attention to me and what he was going to do to me, I pulled out my cell phone and told him I was dialing 911, which is exactly what I was doing.
When the operator came on the line, I told her where I was and that a man was standing in front of me, in my face, threatening to kill me and a woman I was talking with, and to please dispatch a police cruiser pronto. The woman asked who I was? I said it didn’t matter who I was, dispatch the cruiser before somebody gets badly hurt or killed. Again, she asked for who I was. I said I’m someone who knows the city and county officials, and the chief of police and the sheriff, and the state attorney, and I started rattling off all of their names. She said okay, she was dispatching.
I told the fellow what the dispatcher had told me, he turned, got on his bicycle and started pedaling off toward White Street Pier.
Shortly, two KWPD cruisers and an unmarked car arrived. The uninformed officers in the cruisers talked with me and Jeanie, and with other homeless people, and said they couldn’t do anything because it was only their word. However, the plainclothes officer in the unmarked car said he was going to try to find the fellow, whose first name, Brendon, Jeanie had provided. The officer went to his car and drove off in the direction Brendon had headed on his bicycle.
What became of that, Jeanie and I never heard. But it was an interesting introduction to her, and an interesting observation of how some KWPD officers related to homeless people. I imagined, if those had been tourists at the kiosks, instead of homeless people, the uniformed cops would have taken the tourists reports quite seriously.
Jeanie fell and cracked her hip about a year or longer ago. She was then unable to ride her bicycle, or to take care of Scorpio. He was placed with bird sanctuary on Big Pine Key. She was able to stay for several months with a fellow she and I both knew. Someone eventually gave her a tricycle, which she could get around on after her hip mended somewhat, but it still wasn’t mended all the way yesterday, she still uses a cane to walk.
On top of all of that, she had contracted and awful skin infection, not MRSA. which made her skin all red and splotchy. She was hospitalized twice and given big loads of antibiotics. The second hospitalization seemed to have killed the infection, but left great awful looking dead sores on her legs, which she showed me yesterday. She said he owes the hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they know she cannot repay. They took her in and treated her because it was the right thing to do.
Jeanie once told me that she had never stayed at KOTS and never would stay there. She had her cubbyholes where she bunked down at night. She may have a place inside now, or on someone’s front porch, or in a backyard, sometimes she has had that instead of a cubbyhole. I didn’t ask her about that yesterday. I was so happy to see she was over the awful skin infection, her skin on her face and arms looked healthy again, she seemed sort of happy again. I chuckled, maybe angels helped her get well. She has told me she doesn’t believe there are angels.
We talked some about Scorpio, Jeanie misses him terribly, she had him for 18 years, but feels she is not able to take care of him while she is crippled. I said, heck, he can sit on the handlebars of her tricycle, he’d be a lot happier with her than where he is. I told her to think about it, if she wanted him back, I’d drive up to Big Pine and get him for her.
I had in the basket of my bicycle at unopened lightweight rain suit I’d bought just the day before at Home Depot for $13, including tax. Todd German had told me he thought I might find inexpensive raingear there. I had not tried it out, but the label said it was water repellent and it breathed. Sounded too good to be true for that price.
Knowing how awful it is, from the personal experience, of being homeless and getting soaked by a rainstorm, I asked Jeanie if she had raingear? No. I said take this, then. I just got it yesterday at Home Depot. Her eyes brightened, she smiled. Then she asked how much it had cost? I told her, and said to take it. I will get another one later in the day. She grabbed my hand and hugged it, and thanked me.
I said I needed to get to somewhere and to decide if she wanted me to go fetch Scorpio for her. She said okay.
Jeanie was one of the street people featured in Sheelman’s black and white photos in the Hidden in Plain View homeless art, poetry and music exhibition mothered by Erika Biddle in the fall of 2012, at Studios of Key West.
Sheelman with one of his subjects in the flesh and in the photo, left, the lobster trap book, right
Erika Biddle
One of the curators at Studios of Key West later told me that Hidden in Plain View drew far more people than any prior art show they had hosted.
Recent Facebook with Father Steve Braddock on “Hidden in Plain View II”-
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Stephen BraddockFYI- arranged for the Hidden in Plain View exhibit to be on display at the Gato building Oct-Dec. I will let you know exact dates.
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Sloan BashinskyThanks, will publish yours tomorrow, and I want to get a photo taken of my drawing and poems in the lobster trap book.
- Thursday
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Stephen Braddock
I should have exact dates for exhibit tomorrow or Monday- looks like Nov-Jan…but not final yet. Will keep you posted
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Stephen Braddock
Nov 7th will be the start…will likely have a reception of some sort during National Hunger and Homelessness Week Nov. 15th - 23rd. I expect it will remain on exhibit until sometime in January.
Steve heads up Florida Keys Outreach Coalition, a residence program which gives down and out people a chance to turn their lives around, if they have clean urine. Many homeless people are not willing to give up their drug of choice, usually alcohol. Jeanie is one of them. She doesn’t drink a lot, I have never seen her drunk, but she likes beer and has several throughout each day.
I love beer, wish I could still drink it, but an hour or so after having one, I feel awful in my liver and G.I. tract, so I don’t drink beer, or wine, or whiskey, anymore. I just grin and bear it. Or just grin. Or just bear it.
It used to be that White Street Pier, where I now watch sunsets some evenings,
was open 24 hours a day. Now the pier is only open 7 a.m.-11 p.m. The reason for that change was to stop homeless people from sleeping out there on the end at night; I once slept many nights out there. Locals used it throughout the night to fish, picnic, listen to music, celebrate life. Now, they cannot do that during the late hours, because the city doesn’t want homeless people out there at night.
The county government did much the same at Higgs Beach, by fencing in the kiosks, so only adults with small children can be in there - all to keep homeless people from using the kiosks. Now not even the city mayor can use the kiosks, unless he is accompanied by small children.
“SHANGHAIED”
A calling to serve carries its own wisdom,
which legitimates both the calling and the serving
so that the two are one:
Only the one called to serve
can know this wisdom,
and for some who are called
the knowing comes easily,
while for others the knowing is a fiery baptism.
Each calling is different,
and while some callings can be declined,
others cannot,
and those whose calling is without repentance
know they are in it for the duration of the calling,
and while others may try to persuade them out of it,
the calling for ones such as these always prevails;
thus is it advised to all called for keeps
that they view their calling as a blessing
even when it seems at times to be a curse,
and that they try to reconcile the loss of their captain status
and allow the Spirit of God to man the helm of their ship
and be glad and willing crew members thereon,
knowing that all sailing ships of souls
need a crew as well as a captain
to maintain and navigate the ship through
seas of many tones, depths and flavors;
so consider each league sailed
as part of the overall journey
going to where the captain deigns to go
by using whatever winds and sea currents available
to navigate the ship to the experiences
this ship and crew need to have
in order to fulfill their calling and its wisdom
revealed by the journey of many leagues,
many known only to the ship and its crew,
all of whom come to know,
some sooner than others,
that once conscripted
there is no safe jumping ship.
(2004)
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Racial discrimination in the city of one human family schools! Surely you jest! Surely this is just another irresponsible blue paper conspiracy theory being launched! Surely!
When I ran for the Lower Keys School Board seat in 2012, I said many times that every school in the Keys should vote itself to be a charter school, and divorce itself from the insane asylum – the school board and school district administration at Trumbo Point. I did not have in mind back then solving the racial segregation problem with that approach, but it might work for that problem, too.
One of the school board members in that particular race lived up the Keys, maybe Bib Pine Key, maybe Summerland Key. Can’t recall his name, but I think I recall he was backed by the local Republican Party, even though it was a non-partisan race. I bet Larry Murray can recall the fellow’s name.
Anyway, I think I recall that school board candidate had two kids attending Poinciana. I asked him why he was sending them there, instead of to Sugarloaf School, which was in the school district district where he lived? He said it was more convenient for him and his wife to sent their children to Poinciana, because they both worked in Key West. I imagine he knew he had not convinced me.
When School Board member John Dick told Hometown PAC panelist Naja Girard at the candidate forum in the Tennessee Williams Theater lobby that he didn’t know Bahama Village kids were being bused to Gerald Adams, around 3 Key West schools, and he didn’t know no school buses were delivering children to Poinciana, I nearly fell out of my chair, and said to the person sitting next to me, how could a 2-term school board member not know that? He had to know it.
I don’t recall now, in their nuclear attack, did Naja and Arnaud mention that the school board is all white men? Does that kinda remind me of the all white men who rant the first American government and okay’d the continuation of the view that all men were created equal, unless they were not white men. Women got no mention of being equal, either. Nor did indigenous Americans.
I swan, if this conspiratorial article don’t kind of remind me of what I saw plenty of when I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and even later, after the Christian and other private academies sprung up. If it wasn’t for black athlete stars tending to shine far brighter than most white athletes, private schools might have taken over Alabama. But even private schools had to deal with the reality that white men, in the main, really didn’t jump, or run, or block, or score points nearly as well as black men.
Maybe a way for the black people of Key West, where most all of this school racial segregation problem lies, to turn this thing upside down and inside out, is black school children boycott city school athletics programs, starting, hmmm, right now. Yep. Go on strike.
Let’s see how long it takes from right now for the Anglo and Hispanic mothers and fathers, who view school sports as next to Godliness, to have the kind of prayer meetings with Jesus, and the school board members and school district superintendent and administrators and school principals, to get the black and white saltshaker situation straightened out like, hmmm, pronto.
BTW: When I was president of the Montessori Elementary Charter School, there were three women on the school board.
When one of them mentioned to me that the student population at the Montessori school didn’t resemble the makeup of the community (more on that below), I had to mumble, under my breath, that neither did the school board.
Your column raises some interesting questions. Unfortunately, much of the evidence is anecdotal, rather than quantitative.
“How hard would it be to hire more black teachers?” I can imagine that it might be very hard. I am not aware of vast numbers of unemployed, qualified, black teachers in Monroe County. One black teacher’s experience in failing to obtain a permanent job with the district, overlooks the possibility that other reasons might have existed that had absolutely nothing to do with race. If the teacher was convinced that it was the result of racial discrimination, he should have filed a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Commission.
I don’t know what the admissions criteria are at Sigsbee Charter School, but I am certain that they are race neutral. I know because I am a past president of the Montessori Elementary Charter School.
In that role, I attempted to increase the number of minority students in order to achieve a beneficial diversity. By law, we were forced to conduct admissions by lottery, since the number of applicants exceeded the number of openings. Monroe County Supervisor of Elections, Harry Sawyer, conducted the lottery to assure that it was legitimate.
The only thing that we could do to increase minority representation in the student body was to increase minority participation in the lottery. We advertised academic openings in a racially neutral manner, including ads on radio and in the Key West Citizen, flyers in local grocery stores – including the Navy Commissary. I even spoke to black community leaders and clergy about whether they knew of any potential students who might benefit from a more individual, self-paced learning style.
Advertising increased the number of inquiries and applications, but it did nothing to increase the percentage of applications from black students.
I went so far as to write a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, asking whether we could set aside a couple of openings, in order to achieve a targeted diversity that was reflective of the community. I received a response that the Supreme Court had ruled that race could not be used as a consideration for admission. Affirmative action is no longer legal, even though its goals are far from realized.
There is an Achievement Gap between black and white students, but it could be just as easily ascribed to wealth as race. Research indicates that by the time an underprivileged child reached four-years-old, he or she has heard 30 million fewer words. It’s an impact on early brain development from which the disadvantaged child will never catch up. Even Head Start programs are already too late.
Analysis of data from the College Board shows that the students from higher income families and parents with higher educational attainment perform better on the SAT. While some claim that proves the test is discriminatory, the fact is that students who know more, score higher. Guess what… students receive better educations when their parents advocate for them, provide them with enriching programs and take an active interest in their school and schoolwork.
The achievement gap will not be narrowed as long as the deck is stacked to favor the status quo. Unfortunately, even the status quo is threatened by conservative cutbacks in social spending. Childhood nutrition and early education are just two programs targeted by Republican lawmakers in their endless quest to cut taxes on the rich.
Refusing to address minimum wage is another attempt to not only chain poor blacks, but all poor people to future generations of disparity. Meanwhile, the Citizens United ruling allows billionaires to fund massive campaigns, frequently employing not-so-subtle racism, to convince middleclass voters to vote against their own self-interests.
I realize that I have taken a rather long view of the big problem and that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a problem with districting in Monroe County. I believe that while school districts are precluded from drawing maps based on racial data, they can be required to balance economic demographics. If Poinciana school has a significant economic disparity with the other elementary schools, then that should be addressed.
Even though I am glad this issue is getting attention, this stuff has been going on for decades. Our system is about having a comparative advantage. Why is it shocking to see that the education system in the US is set up in a winners and losers scenario? The people with the advantages have the influence to keep those advantages.
Interesting that the Homeless shelter occupied by a lot of potentially dangerous people e.g., addicts, sexual predators, criminal fugitives is in such close proximity to the elementary school which is comprised primarily of minority children. Where is the outrage? Have the school superintendent and board members weighed in on the risk of a Homeless shelter filled with strung out addicts and criminals so close to minority school children? Would the school board react differently if the Gerald Adams school was attended by primarily affluent white children? I’d like to know the answer.
I suppose it’s happened, but when I lived on the street in Key West, I never saw or heard of a homeless person bothering, threatening or injuring a child. Homeless people seemed quite respectful of children. That’s still my impression.
Gerald Adams lower school is a few blocks down College Road from the Easter Seals property. Next door to the Easter Seals property is Bayshore Manor, a county assisted living facility. Next to Bayshore is the city’s botanical garden and tropical forest.
It’s looking like the golf course community will follow through on its longstanding promise to sue the city if it attempts to locate a new homeless shelter at the Easter Seals property. The same lawyer representing the golf course community filed the suit for the marina across from KOTS, which led to the city agreeing to move KOTS some place else. The second lawsuit will take a while to play out. The city has a time certain to relocate KOTS under the settlement agreement with the marina. The city waited too long to decide where to locate KOTS. The Oct. 7 city commission meeting might be interesting on the where to locate the new homeless shelter agenda item.
As for this blue paper article, it looks to me its thrust is there is active racial segregation Key West schools. That, for me, is what the school board and the superintendent need to deal with, and be brought to task about.
In the recent primary election, I voted for Warren Leamard, who is black, because, after observing him at several candidate events, and also talking with him one on one, I felt he was the best qualified candidate. Yet he came in last in the 3-way race against Stuart Kessler and John Highsmith, who are whitle. Highsmith is a Conch. Kessler is an “immigrant”, who had served many terms on a school board in another state and had served on the school board’s Audit & Finance Committee.
I felt, of the three candidates, Leamard understood that what’s important is having happy competent teachers and teaching children what they need to know to get along in life. Leamard appeared to understand the need for far more vocational training, as opposed to so much emphasis on standardized testing and college prep curriculum.
I voted for Catherine Bosworth against 2-term incumbent John Dick, because Bosworth had a teaching background, which Dick does not have, Bosworth is a woman, the school board was all male, and still is, and because Dick left me feeling he had not been straight with Naja Girard after she pinned him down about busing black students around city schools out to Gerald Adams and Poinciana not having school buses at all. That just didn’t pass my smell test.
I voted for incumbent Ron Martin, because he had been principal of Coral Shores High School, which has a great deal more vocational training than the other two high schools, and because he could care less how Keys schools rank in the state. He’s focused on trying to educate children and prepare them for life, is my take on him.
As I wrote in my first comment to this article, I ran for the school board in 2012. The seat now held by Ed Davidson, who prevailed in that 6-candidate race. I learned a heap about the school district by attending school board and audit & finance committee meetings, and who to hire for the new superintendent meetings, and by talking with school district employees privately, which usually meant getting lots of earfuls, and by talking with parents, which usually meant getting lots more earfuls, and by attending candidate forums and hearing what the other candidates said, and what citizens in the audiences said, lots more earfuls.
My impression is the school board and the school administration are slow to change and do not care for outside pressure, and while I hope they are prompted by the blue paper article to deal with what appears to be active perpetration of racial discrimination in Key West schools, I probably will not be holding my breath.