I hang out on Twitter a lot, and I saw Courtney Gibbons wrote this great tweet:
I wrote a letter to the editor, and it made it into the local paper (in print and on the website)! Please ignore the comma splice in the 4th paragraph (and they let me teach writing-intensive classes…). https://t.co/ldpU6xv44k
— Courtney Gibbons (@virtualcourtney) March 16, 2018
Inspired by her, I wrote a letter to the Charlotte Observer after reading an article about how Charlotte Mecklenberg schools are segregated. I don’t think they published it, but I was so wound up that I wrote an entire op-ed piece about matching PTA donations. Which was also not published! So I’m putting it here! And then today I read a longer, better piece about the same thing in the Washington Post.
[I]t released a report about parental contributions to school finances that noted that PTO revenue had reached more than $425 million in 2010 but was concentrated in affluent schools. This resulted in “considerable advantages for a small portion of already advantaged students,” the report said.
So here’s my take on this!
Opt In to Charlotte
Last week, I attended a silent auction fundraiser for our three year old’s preschool. I bought two paintings and movie tickets and some ice cream gift cards, which cost $300. But actually it set us back $600, because we pledged that for every dollar we donated to our school, we would donate a dollar to The Learning Collaborative, which provides tuition free preschool with hot food and transportation to low-income, single caregiver toddlers from at-risk neighborhoods. It’s our small way of investing in Charlotte and fighting inequity.
According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school’s “Breaking the Link” report, which was mentioned in the article reporting Charlotte-Mecklenberg as the most segregated in North Carolina, in 2013 Charlotte ranked 50th in economic mobility out of the 50 most populous cities in the US. In terms of opportunity and the American dream, we place dead last. If parents, community members, and government leaders want our rank to rise, we all need to invest in public schools, which are the greatest incubator for social change.
School choice is a personal family decision, and I’m not saying that parents shouldn’t choose private schools. But they should consider public schools, instead of immediately dismissing them, as I have heard many parents do when the high-income Dilworth and lower-income Sedgefield zones merged. Joining a higher-income with a lower-income school is one way to more equitably distribute resources.
Of course, merging schools is up to CMS, and it’s difficult–Those zones are right next to each other, while other high income schools are surrounded by other high income zones. We parents can pair higher income and lower income schools in another way, without government intervention—via the Parent Teacher Associations.
Families in both private and public schools invest further in their children’s educations by donating to their PTAs. We can opt in to Charlotte by matching our PTA donations—for every dollar we spend on our child’s school, we can donate an equal dollar to a higher need school. We can do this on an individual basis or civic-minded higher-income PTAs can set an example of community building and investment by pairing up with lower-income schools.
PTAs are direct lines to the needs of a community. They pay for books, playground or sports equipment, classroom upgrades, or whatever else a particular school needs. Through the PTA, we can invest in Charlotte by investing in the city’s children.
Since high income families donate to high income schools, our PTA donations exacerbate inequity. “In some instances, equity means giving those with less more,” the report says. But PTA money does the exact opposite, giving more to those kids who already have more. Donating to other PTAs can help give more to those with less.
Matching PTA donations is not a viable long-term strategy to fight structural inequity. One public high school student told me that half of his freshman year teachers had left his school by senior year, and he had had four guidance counselors in as many years—some had fled to South Carolina for better pay. CMS needs to pay teachers and guidance counselors more. Donating PTA money won’t solve inequity, but it is a concrete and easy action we can take while waiting for them to find solutions.
There’s one other concrete thing parents can do: advocate for mixed-income and affordable housing. Charlotte’s lauded goal of building 5000 affordable housing units within three years is great, but those units need to go somewhere in the city. Many fret about property values if affordable housing units moves into the neighborhood. We can rise above that and say, if not here, where? If not now, when? And if not us, who will help make Charlotte a place where every child has the opportunities they deserve?
Baking and Math 