10. Waiting for Waterworld

When an "elite" district sets off a battle royale...

In December, after reading The Handmaid’s Tale, my seniors had to envision a future by researching the present — our ills, our opportunities for positive change. One group studied drought and produced a semi-coherent “news report” that involved eccentrically dressed warlords fighting viciously over access to water. They’d never seen The Warriors or Waterworld, but their video brought these films to mind in terms of aesthetics and themes.

I thought of Waterworld when, a few weeks ago, I read a story about the Piedmont Unified School District, which serves fewer than 2,500 students in a very moneyed enclave of the East Bay — one of the most expensive places to live in a region mostly made up of expensive places. The district has made what the article dubs an “unprecedented invitation” to “put out the welcome mat” for close to 200 kids from neighboring districts (read: poorer ones) to attend its “academically elite” schools via interdistrict transfer. 

The goal? Increase student diversity and avoid hemorrhaging money amid declining public school enrollment — at a time when the debt-burdened Oakland Unified School District, its neighbor, is controversially closing schools and families are leaping from the sinking ships to find new communities.

Being a very straightforward news story and not at all a simplistic celebration of this move, the article doesn’t get into this, of course, but I’d also wager that Piedmont would like to look like they care about students in less affluent districts. That they’re aware they’re an island and they’d like to build bridges. Or appear to be doing so. Or something.

Percentage-wise, Piedmont’s population has hardly more Black and Latino students than Oakland has white ones. Piedmont households have a median income of close to a quarter-million dollars. Oakland’s is more like $74,000. Of course, there’s money in Oakland too; it’s just cordoned off in specific enclaves. Anyone who has taken an elementary school tour in OUSD knows some loud (and knowing) parent inevitably addresses the amount of money the PTA can raise in a year. Because they know it’s the water, so to speak, the fresh stuff. Joaquin Miller Elementary’s PTA pulls in $400,000 a year. Glenview Elementary’s PTA says it spends $300,000 a year. Fifteen public schools in Oakland combine to raise $5 million; the rest all together amass a “small fraction” of that, according to the linked release by the Equity Fund, which distributes donations from relatively flush PTAs to needier schools. To my knowledge, my kid’s school’s PTA raises something in the mid-five figures most years. And it’s not even in super-dire straits, I don’t think. I imagine most readers know, but PTA fundraising provides what normal school funding can’t (won’t). Parents like me (like parents in Piedmont) want and even expect a chance for our kids to learn and practice a musical instrument, aides in classrooms, counselors, smaller class sizes, access to technology, language enrichment, sports equipment, a library full of books, and so on. 

That’s what the water grows. 

And Piedmont is saying: look here, you parents of the land beyond who think their children may die of thirst, gather ‘round, gather ‘round, because you can all have a shot at a golden ticket, a passport to a sip at the fountain. 

Am I getting it wrong? The Chronicle story says Piedmont spends close to $19,000 a year per student, but doesn’t the golden ticket have something to do with the Piedmont Education Fund being able to raise close to $3.5 million in the 2020-21 school year? That’s a whole lot of liquid. That’s the fatta da land.

And so, while I don’t really begrudge the children of Piedmont their treats, I find the soliciting of neighboring charity cases crass, a performance of caring. This is why, for all the magic and whimsy of Wonka’s creations, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory strikes me with every re-read as a Dickensian nightmare, a bilious lozenge barely even hidden in a chocolate-coated fairy tale. Two hundred Charlie Buckets — that’s it! Forget Berkeley. The city of Oakland alone is home to nearly 35,000 public school students. Amplified in the local paper of record and elsewhere, such a symbolic gesture serves only to stir the desperation of parents who want opportunity for their kids and cannot live in Piedmont or pay for a private school. It reads like trolling, and much does, honestly, in the world of education, where positions on topics — like anti-anti-racism fervor or anger over past school campus closures — are clearly proxies for larger positions — anti-union, pro-charter, anti-taxation, anti-intellectual, and so on. Obviously, golden tickets are not an authentic way to build diversity or help students in a district like OUSD, where the institution, run well or poorly, is never going to wrap its arms around the massive challenges it faces because it’s never going to be funded to provide more than the bare minimum for students. And the other parts of the social safety net will never be secure enough to alleviate the burden. Despite the relative wealth of America, it cannot be nimble, flexible; it can’t make it rain.

And who will dive atop that welcome mat to lay a claim to a speck of fertile terrain, a flash of gold? Well, the pushiest parents, the hungriest, possibly the whitest. 

There’s the issue of snatching enrollment from neighboring districts and therefore their money, which Piedmont needs less, especially considering Oakland’s closure crisis. One quoted Oakland parent characterizes this as a win for school choice, for opportunities, for options — and, while I do not want to discredit her work in the least bit, because I don’t know it, she’s not an ordinary parent. The story notes that she runs an education organization but neglects to make it clear that this organization announces in the first sentence of its web page that the Oakland school system “has failed.” 

As the article points out, a lottery process happens if there are more applicants than spaces, which, of course will be the case, and that will provide anyone invested in The Verdict with Waiting for Superman-worthy theater to only strengthen the marketing angle. Can’t you see this movie? I can. It won’t exist in reality but the follow-up reporting should further prick the imagination. A little chap — non-white, of course — sits next to his mom on a couch in a small but clean apartment — a space that reflects pride, care, and a paycheck that won’t match the demands of Piedmont rent. She opens the letter and they hug. He’s going. For the next twelve years of his life, she’ll know he’ll be learning alongside the children of the elite, and since they want and get the best for their kids, he’ll scoop from the same well. 

It’s not real opportunity for any but a lucky few but it’s a big win for this narrative about education, that some schools purely suck and some are amazing and that, since nothing can be done within a flawed and underfunded institution to make it better, a parent’s duty is to jump ship and scrap, stab, and scrape a path to a promised paradise. 

Of course, we as a society, from country to state to county to municipality, could stop trying to thread the needle of passably educating students by the barest of margins by spending the least we can in a reliably unimaginative fashion, knowing that the districts with the most resources will make up the difference and take care of their own and that the struggles of the poor and non-white can be blamed on teachers or administrative ineptitude. The article points out that Piedmont has 57% higher proficiency rates on standardized test scores than OUSD. That’s a measurement of what more money and individualized attention can do for overwhelmingly more privileged students (of whom less than 1% are English language learners). Elite and therefore academically so, in terms of the specific measurement. And that’s not news. Find me a school in a small, wealthy district that has terrible test scores.

As a teacher of high school students, I want my classroom to be a space where competition does not reign supreme, where individual students feel like talented pieces of a collective that can function with true fairness. That everyone can offer something, that everyone can commit to growth. I am sensitive to the nefarious forces aligned against many students — poverty, racism, transphobia, mental health challenges, family traumas — and aware that I cannot do much about them besides listen and care and teach skills they need and dedicate my curriculum to opportunities for healing, expression, bonding, and righteous critiques of injustice.

And yet I catch myself preaching an uncharacteristically individualistic philosophy — something bootstraps-y, rolling out a narrative of scrap for kids who, in a fair world, deserve better. Yes, this sucks, and it’s not right, I’ve said, but, sheeeeeeeit — this is your only life. Find a reservoir of strength. Find every resource you can, every nurturing force at your disposal. But learn and be curious because your life depends on it. Impose your will on the world you have to the best of your ability. I absolutely get the symbolic appeal of the golden ticket, the ladle of water just within reach, even as I find the framing distasteful and the reality far from shiny.

When we were touring OUSD elementary schools for our daughter in the months preceding the dropping of the pandemic anvil, we attended a Temescal meeting of school integration activists and intrigued parents. Delivered by impressive, erudite (and mostly but not at all entirely white) parents, the message boiled down to this: 1) white parents have to desegregate schools with the choices they make for their children; 2) send your kid to your neighborhood school; 3) do not look at the Great Schools website (note: don’t); and 4) get involved, donate, and have faith that social reproduction will work for you (read: your kids will be fine) even as you reduce its weight for others.

In my mind, we split the difference, tossing six names into the lottery and settling on the one we got into: an urban school with few white students and a good reputation, one without green space, subject to highly visible public urination by neighborhood characters. We could have transferred to Joaquin Miller in the first week of the school year but we didn’t. 

Now, a year and a half later, my kid’s in a class where students speak no fewer than thirteen languages outside of class. Every morning, the kids greet one another with each in a circle-time ritual. I heard them Friday when I stood in line at the Scholastic Book Fair. Cantonese, Amharic, Spanish, Vietnamese. My daughter has thus far had uniformly experienced and excellent teachers. Y is biracial. I’m glad she’s learning in a truly diverse environment, where, when a girl tells her on the playground that she only plays with “blond kids,” others in her class — very few of them blond — respond as you’d hope.

I would never apply for a transfer to Piedmont. I would not participate in that grotesque battle royale even if I felt negatively about my kid’s school. And, having worked at a charter school, I’m philosophically opposed to sending my daughter to one — not that I think they’re a remotely inherently superior option. But I also wonder if there’s an expiration date on my commitment to public schools. I had numerous bad teachers at public and private institutions, including college and grad school. I’ve known numerous bad teachers in my professional life. How firm is my belief? Could just one disappointing year of elementary school change my tune? Would it take two in succession? Hypothetically, how would I handle observing that, in my professional opinion, my kid was truly being ill-served at school? 

Some parents would say she already is. The school culture valorizes academic excellence, memorization, and completing homework more than creative expression. She can’t start an instrument until third grade. She doesn’t learn in a cradle of redwoods like the kids at Joaquin Miller. The few friends Y has at private schools may learn more stuff faster with smaller class sizes, more resources, and fewer challenges related to the English language development needs of a diverse student body. Where I see assets, others might see drawbacks. For me though, the challenge will be sticking with my conviction in the event of real evidence of loss. I wonder if and when circumstances will test my convictions.

Of course, I'm privileged to be less desperate than many parents. I am definitely in a position to donate money. I was somewhat embarrassed when Y raised one of the largest sums in the fundraising walk-a-thon last year — just by hitting up her parents and grandparents. We could easily afford piano lessons independently. I'm also a teacher. I arrogantly assume I can make up for any academic disparities. The truth is way more complicated, and this is partly why I ask myself the above questions. My expertise is not elementary school. I’m tired all the time. I leave my house at 5:30 a.m. to work out or plan my classes and grade papers. I don’t pay enough attention to what Y is doing. I whisk her to martial arts classes, cook dinner fast, query her about homework as I juggle pans. I imagine writing alongside her, teaching her about the descriptive power of verbs, finding the one right adjective instead of four. But I don’t do this stuff all that often. Days move fast. Everything is a downhill slalom with plenty of trees that sprout unexpectedly to bludgeon you. I have to accept that, so long as I’m teaching, I’m going to be thinking about the learning of other people’s kids as much as my own. 

I also know it really matters. I’ve written before about transferring from a public to a private high school, how stunned I was to realize what learning really required, how academic writing actually worked. How you couldn’t just write a pleasing and rhythmic tangle of words and expect accolades. While I saw the deficits of both school environments, I was affected more by what I felt I lacked. Everything I understood about my own educational history changed. I went from feeling like I was a great student with a lazy streak to deciding I was barely passable at anything, even what I once viewed as strengths. I have to be careful not to superimpose that experience and my response to it onto Y. I don’t want to give her a sense that she’s being outraced, even as I know, from my experience in college, that those two years of private school really, really, really helped. 

Each year, my daughter gets closer to my students in age, and I know I’ll be increasingly tempted to see her learning in their context. I see tremors of this already approaching in my advice to ninth graders. They ask me if they should take Honors, and if they like to read and write and have the ability to keep a calendar, I say yes every time. Because, with four sections of Honors Lit 10, the “regular” option isn’t what it was seven years ago. When I give this advice, I imagine my kid asking a teacher like me in seven years, and I think about the student that I expect her to be marooned in a class where no one in her lit circle group will have ever done the reading. 

(Note: I want not to be a nightmare, the kind of parent teachers dread. I worry. Future teachers of Y, I promise in these pages for the record: I will never send you a link to an article I present as “food for thought,” criticize your pedagogy, haggle over half a percentage point, or suggest you’re responsible for the fact she has been spending class surreptitiously listening to third-tier nineties alternative rock on earbuds concealed beneath artfully combed hair.)

My values collide with my experience. If circumstances changed, what would I be willing to do to be more sure she will get what took me until age sixteen or seventeen to start to understand? To learn to practice discourse, to socialize around texts, to be a problem-solver, a generous leader and a thoughtful follower, a fighter, a survivor in a world that feels more dystopian every month? I know this is both the normal flickering of a parent’s brain and also crazy talk, the stuff you think but don’t always say. I’m saying it because it’s the underlying ethos of this monthly writing experiment. If the question is, would I ever pay tuition, the answer is yeah: I might.

And if I did, I know I’d mourn much more than the cost of the ticket.