Good site for parents of little kids in Roslindale, West Roxbury and JP
By adamg - Sun, 11/23/2008 - 10:15am.
If you have a baby in Boston and want to send him or her to a public school, you eventually come up against The Lottery - the game that decides which school your kid goes to. And veterans will tell you that finding the right numbers, um, schools, to play in The Lottery is no easy task.
Geeky Mama lives in Roslindale and has a toddler. On Braving the BPS Lottery, she's posting her reports on her visits to schools in the West Zone (basically, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale and West Roxbury), along with news related to public schools in Boston.
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School Assignments
Ms. Geeky, I wish you well on getting your kid into the school of your choice. I read the links and the rules on 1st pick, 2nd pick, etc. What a croc! Bureaucratic double speak. The fact behind this entire thing is THE FUTURE of a child is the issue.
All too often parents like yourself don't get the choice they want. Now they have to decide whether to find a private or parochial school or move out of Boston all together.
Sadly, this last option occurs frequently. Until the day comes where parents actually decide where they want to send their children to school and not some egghead sitting in a cubicle, parents stuck with this choice will opt out.
This all goes back to Judge Garrity and the debacle of busing. It has been a total failure and for some reason no one will do anything to reverse it.
Boston is loosing young families in large part because of lack of control where parents want their children to attend school.
So what's your answer?
School choice is great - until everybody chooses the same school. Given that most of the schools in the West Zone are small 1930s-era building with no room for quick expansion, what do you do when one school becomes the "hot" school and more people apply than there are seats?
Not those other parents
We're not talking about those other parents having choices. It's about us parents having choices. If those other parents would just stop choosing our choices, there wouldn't be a problem. Why can't they be happy with what we don't want?
Way better than it used to be
In the mid-80s my niece and nephew were bounced around because they lived near where Roxbury meets Dorchester, and they were white. That meant that my niece was reassigned MID YEAR in first grade to a school about seven miles distant, at a time when her parents didn't have a working car. Then they lived just off Morrissey Blvd. for a time, and they tried to send one kid to Eastie and the other to Columbia Point. Meanwhile, she couldn't get access to a half-full gifted program because "a minority student might move in mid-year". It would have taken 10 to make a difference, but whatever.
You can't always get what you want, but the current way is much better than the past way, if my SIL's experience with Boston schools serves.
Busing legacy
Back then, busing for desegregation reasons was still in force. The courts are now out of Boston school-assignment issues, although the current zone system is a legacy of that (Boston spends some amazing amount of money on bus services because so many kids - our kidlet included - do not go to one of their walk-zone schools).
Part of the problem
The schools aren't where the kids are.
There was a lot of crying and moaning in Medford when the smaller schools shut and were replaced by modern, but larger facilities.
I pulled out my census data and mapped the old schools, the new schools, and the location of all the school age children based on the 2000 census.
Guess what? Three of the four new schools were closer to where the kids were than six of seven of the old schools.
Of course it was never about walking to school anyway. It was about having to share a school with "those" people from that "other" neighborhood.
The problem is the very idea
The problem is the very idea of choice. Let's do a thought experiment. Eliminate choice - set up districts around existing schools, and require residents to send their children to the local district.
What does that do? It reveals the real problems with the system at large. Instead of giving parents the hope of getting out of "bad" schools - accepting that the bad schools exist - you shine a light on the "bad" schools. Why are they considered bad? How do you deal with it? Those questions are just too embarrassing to deal with, so they do the "choice" charade instead.
Another perspective
Instead of concentrating on "bad" schools, think about the advantages of a "choice" system. Even with a centralized curriculum, there are differences in the way schools approach education. Some are stricter than others and concentrate more on a traditional Three Rs approach, while others give students more freedom in learning. Some schools "require" uniforms (turns out you can't legally force a public-school student to wear a uniform), others don't, etc. Parents get to decide on the school they think is best for their kids.
It works well in Acton, where all the schools are on a single campus and differ based on their educational philosophies, and it could work in Boston. Yes, Boston does have the added issue of "bad" schools (I'll admit it - we eventually decided not to put our initial choice as number 1 on our lottery form because its test scores were so bad), but please don't think that all parents are making selections strictly on the basis of how bad their walk-zone school is. If that were the case, the lottery system wouldn't be nearly so agonizing - and you'd have even fewer people staying in Boston trying to make a go of public schools. You also wouldn't have the phenomenon you see in the West Zone of a new school becoming the "hot" school every few years, not because the school has suddenly imported a star team of teachers but because a large group of parents decide en masse to "take over" the school.
At least at the elementary level. Don't get me started on middle schools or high school for kids who don't want or who can't get into an exam school.
My point is that it's been
My point is that it's been over a generation since that nasty racist School Committee has been gone. So if bad schools still exist, what's the cause, and who's to blame? As long as you hold out the hope of choice to parents as a relief valve, there won't be the pressure necessary to face up to the problems. Sometimes you can't solve a problem until you're forced to admit you have a problem.
School Assignment
As long as the word choice is used, when in fact, the choice is limited, then there are no choices. As I said earlier, the only other option to go to is the private/parochial way or to Acton (as one other respondent pointed out).
One reply talked about a mid year transfer across the city! What kind of crap is that? Especially when it involves a parent who has trouble getting about.
Get real. Is there any wonder that people are voting with their feet?
Let parents decide (a novelty) where they want their kids educated. If this present system continues, more and more young families will move to the suburbs. This is what is going on now and has been going on for years. Wake up, this present system is a failure.
Much of what you say rings true, pit3012.
However, while it's agreed that the busing solution that judge W. Arthur Garrity and the experts under him implemented really was a disaster, the Boston public school system is a system that's been in decline for the past 80 some odd years, and the older, nastier, more bigoted Boston School Committee threw an already badly crippled school system into an even worse state, resulting in a poorly designed and poorly executed large scale federal mandated busing program that made many people more angry, fearful and suspicious of each other. That being said, I believe that there were many pre-existing, longstanding problems that existed prior to busing that were greatly exacerbated by the old Boston School committee, who, through their intransigence, made the implementation of a tougher measure inevitable, which, as has been pointed out, furthur exacerbated already existing racial/ethnic polarization and sped up the process of pre-existing flight from the city's public schools.
All of the above having been said, I believe that, had the old Boston School Committee been more flexible, a more workable solution would've been possible, there would've been an opportunity to bring already-volatile situations under control, and the Boston Public School system at large would be in far better shape today
Again, what is your solution?
Let parents decide (a novelty) where they want their kids educated.
Fine, let's discuss a real-world example. For whatever reasons, the Kilmer School in West Roxbury is a "hot" school these days. Seems like everybody wants to get their kid in there, especially now that it's K-8 (so no more worries about your kid winding up at the Irving Middle School for grade 6).
The Kilmer only has two classes per grade. That's roughly 48 kids. You can't expand that because there's no room - especially at the upper school (the old Lyndon) where irate neighbors already hate the kids and will sue if you try to do so much as add a playground set to the totally inadequate yard, let alone add onto the building somehow.
So what do you do when the parents of 49 kids want their kids educated at the Kilmer?
Why the Kilmer is hot
I'm not trying to diss the Kilmer. It's hot because kids are getting a generally good education there and that's reflected in standardized test scores (a couple years ago, the school had the third-highest third-grade math scores in the entire state).
Part of it is due to the fact, I think, that
there's an insufficient amount of money being invested in the public schools, partly because so many families who have the means, money and resources to do so have either pulled their kids out of the public schools and put them in private/parochial schools, or have packed up and moved out of the city altogether, leaving the city's public schools to the poor, both white and non-white alike, who have neither the money, the means or the resources to get their kids into better schools or to leave for the 'burbs. This has resulted in less of a tax base coming into the city public schools, and therefore a more compromised education has resulted, in part because of that.
Another problem is that poorer kids, whoever they may be, are expected to fail, and it seems that the system has done its damndest to see that that happens. notwhitey, as you've pointed out, it's been more than a generation since the old, nasty bigoted school committee has been gone, but they left much permanent damage in its wake, if one gets the drift.
The Past
Just a quick reply. Independentminded said that the old school committee was responsible for a legacy of failure. I disagree. The original court orders handed down by Judge Garrity eliminated any vestige of the old committee. The onus is on his decisions and those who have perpetuated them.
Dump them and busing. Use the vast amount of money being thrown away on paying for the whole busing fiasco and reinvest into paying for something importatnt, like education.
If one reads my post thoroughly, I pointed out that the Boston
Public School system has been a system in decline since way before busing. So, I believe that the old School Committee made bad situations far worse. Also, I thought that busing here in Boston was rescinded...like in many other places. I also might add that there's an important difference between causing something and exacerbating it; Causing something is causing something to appear or happen that didn't happen before. Exacerbating something, on the other hand, is aggravating problems that were there before--making them worse. I said that there was much flight from the city and its public schools and much racial/ethnic tensions and polarization well before the old School Committee came into the picture, and before busing, which the old School Committee exacerbated, or made worse. So, all that having been said, the latter happened, if one gets the drift.
There is no race-based busing in Boston
There is, however, a tremendous amount of busing getting kids across their zone or even across the city.
And I do blame the racists on the Boston School Committee, because if they had done the right thing and not tried to enforce their separate-and-inequal politics of hate, we never would have had some judge from Wellesley taking over and really making a mess of things.
Ah... but Judge Garrity and
Ah... but Judge Garrity and his Special Masters are the heroes of the story. They ended the separate-but-equal politics of hate, took away management of the school system, and ran it themselves. How can you make a mess of a separate-but-equal racist system?
I'm smiling sadly, Adam. I attended that terrible system, which was one of the crown jewels of public education in America right up until the 1970s. I went to high school in Roxbury in an integrated school in the 1970s. Did you know that such schools existed?
Nope, didn't know such beasties existed
Do tell more, please.
Back then, I was busy going to school in a system with its own problems 200 miles or so to the southwest, so I'm obviously not blathering from direct experience.
Adam My mother was involved
Adam
My mother was involved with parent groups in the late-1950s through the 1960s. She met with integrated groups of parents and school advocates many times. She tells me that the black women she met at the time wanted good schools for their children - not integration. When they opened the Trotter school in Roxbury, a women we knew brought her daughter over there to apply - it was an early "magnet" school. A black woman in line told her to take her white kid and her fat white ass and go home. You see, the neighborhood people had fought for a new school for years, and finally got a shiny new building, only to find out that places were supposed to be kept for outsiders (read: white people). Sounds a lot like the racist white people in West Roxbury who waited for decades for their own high school, and then lost it to busing as soon as it was built, no? Except that that black woman in Roxbury was being perfectly reasonable. She didwait for years for a new school, and the city didimmediately take spaces away from the local (black) kids in the name of integration. Integration threatened to take something away from Roxbury that the community worked hard to get.
The real story of the Boston school system hasn't been written - just a form of "winner's history," with good guys and bad guys. The true story is much more complicated than Racist John Kerrigan against the Black Children. There could of been an evolution in the system, but it wasn't allowed to happen, and allof the children suffered as a result. The biggest victims were the black children - white parents just moved out. When the thing went to court, it was about winning, not about the children.
My take-home message: beware people with grand ideas. The way to hell really is paved with good intentions.
Test scores tell you very little
Keep in mind that when you see reports of MCAS scores for a school or a town, they're including every single student. So, if a school has children with severe/profound disabilities, they're going to have lower MCAS scores. Even children who are functioning at the level of an infant are all counted in the averages of the MCAS scores.
Fortunately, Massachusetts is a state where they don't abuse these children by handing them a standard MCAS form and sending the blank/chewed/torn/scribbled form in to be scored (there are states that do this), but kids with severe disabilities are indeed counted as not having passed the MCAS, since, well, they didn't pass the MCAS.
If you judge a school by test scores, you need to also know how many kids in the school have disabilities that would make the MCAS irrelevant to their education. This specific data isn't public information since it would include personal details about students; all you can find out is how many total kids have an IEP and/or a 504 plan. Even visiting a school and looking into each classroom doesn't tell you, since a child can be counted at a local school but actually be attending a school out of district or be hospitalized or whatnot.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Well, yes
That's why a good parent will drive herself to complete exhaustion by also going on more school site visits than you can imagine, compare notes with other parents at the weekly zone parent group meetings (oh, yes), etc., etc., so when you finally make your comparison spreadsheet, you can go, ceteris paribus (because at this point you're really babbling), you'll pick the school with the higher test scores (although, of course, all other things won't be equal, so you'll wind up agonizing over a decision that you know means either Harvard or life in a cardboard box under a highway ramp).