Posted on 02/25/2005 8:16:55 PM PST by WindOracle
Advocate for staying joins fleeing parents
Harding Elementary School PTA President Meredith Brace has led a battle for several years to stop her white neighbors from transferring out of the heavily Latino Westside campus.
Now she's joining them, saying she's not willing to make her son the guinea pig any longer.
The Braces are like hundreds of other local families who, over the years, have sought transfers out of neighborhood schools that are filled with mostly poor Latino children.
"I'm gone," said Mrs. Brace, who on Tuesday requested and was granted a transfer for her first-grade son out of Harding and into the more affluent Hope School, within the nearby Hope Elementary District. "I've just got to the point where, 'Sorry guys, I need what's best for my kids and there's a school that's two miles away that offers all those things I want.' "
About 40 percent of the 462 students at Hope School are there on transfers from the Goleta or Santa Barbara elementary districts.
Some school officials and neighborhood families view Mrs. Brace's departure as a red flag. If someone who has advocated so fiercely against white flight won't stick it out, who will?
A liberal whose father is Superior Court Judge George Eskin and stepmother is former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, Mrs. Brace had been considered over the years as the Great White Hope for Harding.
"This is a major blow," said Santa Barbara school trustee Bob Noel. "Meredith was kind of like Supermom in terms of doing things for her school. . . . You can read racism into this, but I read more of an issue of social class. People don't want to look and see their kid is in a classroom where most of the students are underachievers and where friendship circle possibilities are very, very small because they don't speak the same language."
Harding is 90 percent Latino, 6 percent white. Hope is 73 percent white, 20 percent Latino. Hope families have raised enough money every year to keep on staff an array of specialists in art, music, computers and science -- all the "extras" Mrs. Brace wants for her son, who is 7, and her 4-year-old daughter.
As PTA president, Mrs. Brace said she has tried to start after-school enrichment programs in art and theater at Harding.
"We made it so affordable, $20 for a six- to eight-week session. We told everybody, 'Come on, do something extra for your kids.' We had so few people sign up, we had to eliminate a lot of the classes," she said. "I've met some very lovely people, but we have nothing in common. Every time my husband and I would go over for an event, my husband would feel like it was his first time. We haven't made any friends."
Harding parent Cristina Hernandez said she's seen the school's racial mix change, but that Mrs. Brace shouldn't give up.
"I've been here 14 years now, and all of a sudden we turned around and all the white parents had gone," she said, speaking in Spanish. "They don't want their children side by side with our children. (Mrs. Brace) shouldn't leave. She should stay and keep fighting."
It was about three years ago, before her son entered kindergarten, that Mrs. Brace started going door to door touting Harding's achievements, trying to convince her neighbors to join her in giving the school a try. She even took on the PTA president post before her son had entered kindergarten.
Once her son started, she remained PTA president, volunteered in the classroom, boosted fund-raising efforts, and continued to hold regular neighborhood meetings to make other white families feel comfortable with the campus. While she said she's not bilingual, she used the Spanish she picked up while living in Costa Rica and Mexico to try to connect with Latino parents.
Some of the white families she had convinced to enroll their kids at Harding later bailed out. She said her son has struggled to make friends.
"He hasn't been invited to a birthday party. There is absolutely no after-school interaction," she said. "For his birthday, he invited four of his classmates. Only one came."
Then she was miffed that her skills -- she's a credentialed librarian -- weren't capitalized on in her son's classroom.
Another Harding mother and friend of the Braces, Brenda McDonald, said she had independently decided to transfer her kindergartner out of the campus. Mrs. McDonald is also considering Hope School, or Washington Elementary, which is still within the Santa Barbara district.
"At Harding, the teachers are wonderful. The principal is great. It's the socioeconomic chasm. It's not a gap, it's a huge difference in the population," said Mrs. McDonald, who described herself as a middle-class professional. "We don't have a lot in common with the other families. At the same time, do I want to drive five days a week now every day for the next six years? Then again, if half of the Westside is going in that direction, maybe we can carpool."
Superintendent of Santa Barbara schools Brian Sarvis granted Mrs. Brace's transfer request it "with regrets."
"It's a big loss to the school," Mr. Sarvis said. "But I see Meredith as a parent making the best choice for their child, and other parents making other choices for their children. I don't think any one parent is that critical, but that's not to take anything away from Meredith. She has been wonderful."
Mrs. Brace says she'll stick with her PTA president post until a replacement is found, even though her son starts at Hope School today. Over the years, she has criticized district officials for maintaining open enrollment as an easy way out. Now it's a policy she is taking advantage of.
"They keep telling me, 'No, Meredith, we've got to keep options open to parents or they'll leave.' It's so plain and simple. It's created such segregation. It's left us with a situation that is almost gotten beyond repair."
She said the policy allowing transfers within the district -- and outside of the district when a parent comes up with a valid reason -- has destroyed many neighborhood schools by exacerbating white flight.
With her 4-year-old daughter getting ready to enter kindergarten, Mrs. Brace had recently been courting a dozen other white families in her neighborhood who have children of the same age.
"Every single one of them is going somewhere else, and they had all looked at Harding," she said. "I said to myself, this is not getting any better, so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. This is not the teacher's fault, or the principal's fault. They're wonderful."
At Harding on Wednesday, mom Amy Voss and her son, second-grader Eric Voss, said they're pleased with the school and planning on staying.
"I like Harding a lot," Eric said. "They got good friends, good teachers. Mrs. Schwyzer is the best."
Teacher Carol Schwyzer has been at Harding since 1991. She described Mrs. Brace as heroic for even taking on the challenge.
"It's sad to see Meredith go. She had such wonderful energy. But is it OK? Yes, we are OK," she said. "We are doing the best we can with who comes through the door. We love our students."
At the same time, Mrs. Schwyzer isn't pleased that Harding has gone from the diverse school it was when she first arrived to the racially isolated campus it is today.
"It's not OK, but it would take a major shake-up on a more systemic level to fix things now," she said. "That balance has tipped too far.
"You see what Meredith was fighting against. She had a vision of how things should be, and she didn't see why she couldn't bring other people along. We have to be sad that it didn't work out."
e-mail: ccohee@newspress.com
Sure liberals, let them take over whole school districts while they're at it.
After all, it is "their" land that we stole from them, right?
< /sarcasm >
I know they're not all children of illegals, but many of them are. The American taxpayers are footing the bill for another country to infiltrate our schools.
Nice!
[You can read racism into this, but I read more of an issue of social class.]
Or you could be correct, and read it as an issue of government failure in public schools.
"After all, it is "their" land that we stole from them, right? "
some of us and our families decided to build things like dams , power plants, roads, libraries hospitals, sewers, parks , malls and schools ect.. Others decided not to do these things . If those others who now claim this is land issue, why dont they squat in desert where the is oodels of land and they are free to build their own infrastructure? Somehow I don't think this is really a land issue.
"Would be nice if we had vouchers "
yes I am for that, but that would make too much sense.
In fact, prop 187 which passed by a whopping 60 some percent would have addressed some of the problem. Gray Davis shopped the prop off to the 9th circuit and it was struck down as un-Constitutional.
So much for the people of California having a say in their own destiny.
Thanks again, liberals.
In Los angeles 40% of the students are English Language Learners Most, but not all of the English Language Learners are illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants.
In 2003-04, about 305,000 LAUSD students were native Spanish speakers, about 94 percent of the district's students learning English as a second language. Their Academic Performance Index, is below average and they repesent 65% of the dropouts in the district and those who stay are are among the lowest scorers on the California High School Exit Exam. Only 53 percent of passed the math portion, and 57 percent passed the language portion. Compare this to the other students in the district, 85 percent passed the math portion and 88 percent the language portion.
The growth in the number of these students in the last dacade has doubled accounting for the district's entire population growth, according to the Department of Education.
I guess to some extent that is chickens coming home to roost, since it was pseudoscience embraced by Europeans that led to this wrongheaded thinking. They created racial theories to justify their imperialism over "inferior" races. Now that idea has grown into a mindset that will probably be impossible to eliminate.
The stupidity in this is exemplified by the fact that an Egyptian (classified black by many) very likely has much more in common, genetically, with with an Italian (classified white) than with a Zulu (also classified black). A Morrocan African almost certainly has more in common genetically with a Hispanic from Spain, than native of Zimbabwe.
Racial classification is the ROOT of racism.
While our diverse backgrounds are a good deal of what has propelled this nation to it's status in the world, it is only because we assimilate, taking on good aspects of the cultures, while discarding that which is lesser. Those who refuse to assimilate, who wish to transform this into a copy of their own cultures, stand in the way of America continuing that rise to greatness.
"Diversity" and "Division" have the same word at the root... DIVIDE. People are not brought together by celebrating their "diversity", the ways they are different... they are brought together by emphasizing the things they have in common
"prop 187 which passed by a whopping 60 some percent would have addressed some of the problem. Gray Davis shopped the prop off to the 9th circuit and it was struck down as un-Constitutional."
Had the federal government carried out its responsibility to stop illegal immigration and addressed the issues of legal immigration, California taxpayers would not be facing the massive expense of providing thousands of new classrooms.
"People are not brought together by celebrating their "diversity", the ways they are different... they are brought together by emphasizing the things they have in common"
yes!
The harm done to us is so egregious that the federal govt. doesn't even want to talk about it.
More and more white families are trying to send their kids to private schools instead of the fine new community school, but there really aren't many private schools around here--it's a bloody long commute to a private school in the morning, even if you can afford it. If you can't come up with an extra $50,000 per year to send two children to private school, like me, your kids will not have many friends in the public school.
My son, now finishing fifth grade in an increasingly dark neighborhood school, adores the school and his teachers but hasn't made many friends. The friends he's made have been black, not Hispanic. The black kids are Americans and share our values and interests. The Hispanic kids try to beat him up because his hair is blonde and his eyes are blue. Some of the kids are very nice, but again, as in the article, we just don't have much in common. My kid rides horses and does historic reenacting for a hobby and lives in a house full of antiques; his parents are an editor and a scientist. What's he going to have in common with these unfortunate children, some of whom live in shocking filth? They resent him, and I don't blame them. When we try to reach out to them they steal from us.
I once had the word 'diversity' defined for me in a business situation by a young black woman.
"It means," she said, "getting rid of all those fifty year old white guys."
Says it all.
Remember when Clinton was in office, we had to fight for kosovo cause an ethic population was being displaced by another, and the human rights violations were too much for a country to stand by and do nothing? In the meantime families living in Santa An California for example were packing up and leaving for fear of their safety due to an illegal invasion to their community.
Or how about more people were killed in Los Angeles by gangs, fueled by the Mexican mafia than was killed in Beirut a few years back during a UN declared state of war... go figure?
The flight is predictable. Public shools worked, for a while, when we had a common culture with shared values. The breakdown of our cultural values combined with a monopolistic government education structure drove the situation rapidly past the tipping point.
We currently have an interesting situation here in the greater Charlotte, NC area (Mecklenburg County) where Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) is one of largest school systems in the country with over 100,000 students and chock full of every sympton of failed education. There is a CMS secession movement brewing in the suburban parts of our county. The story is likely to get bigger and begin to draw national coverage. Stay tuned!
Sorry, what I meant to say instead of "Reading articles like these" and meant to say "Reading posts such as yours".
just what I was thinking ...I've seen this syndrome for decades...people spouting off about what parents should do with their kids - until they have kids of their own , and then the light comes on
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