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Rabbi's Corner...
Shabbat Vaykhel-Pekuke
Shabbat Vaykhel-Pekuke
March 12, 2010
Fire and Clouds and the Wake County School Board
A pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night: the Israelites’ massive eternal light that led them through the desert. How could it be more obvious? God’s presence guided them every step of the way with a sign visible to the whole house of Israel, throughout their journey. If only we had a sign in our day. We could wake up in the morning look out the window and know the direction for the day. The cloud is lifted and we are moving, the cloud has descended and we stay put for awhile.
And, yet, what do we know of the Israelites and their travels through the desert? Though God’s guidance was ever-present, they still managed to kvetch their way for 40 years. Even with the evidence of God’s presence literally upon them, the Israelites felt insecure and vulnerable.
In 2009 the Harvard University Press published a book by Gerald Grant: Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There are no Bad Schools in Raleigh (Harvard University Press, 2009). The book details the success of the Wake County School System in merging economically divergent households into a truly heterogeneous system that raises the level of education for all its participants. In the last decade the Wake County School System has been recognized nationally over and over again. Del Burns, departed Superintendent of Wake County Schools, has received honors as National Superintendent of the Year.
Nonetheless, despite the pillars of evidence, in 2010 four newly elected Wake County School Board Members, joined with one sitting board member to take over that School Board with a platform to dismantle our nationally acclaimed system. The Reverend, Dr. Tom Rhodes, Sr. Pastor of the Unitarian Universalists Fellowship of Raleigh, has organized a group of concerned religious leaders to highlight the humanitarian values that have to this time been the foundation of both the Wake County Public School System, and Raleigh’s response over the decades to racial and economic disparities.
Let’s take a look at some of that history. Dr. Rhodes traces it back to a millennium before the Civil Rights Movement, but for the purpose of understanding where we are today, it will suffice to begin with Rhodes’ historical review commencing with the 60’s:
“In 1960 the move to end segregation came to Raleigh. More than 150 students from Shaw and St. Augustine went to Cameron Village to occupy the lunch counters there. Many were arrested and sent to jail. And then a remarkable thing happened. Fifty nine of Raleigh’s ministers, most of them white, came together in support of ending segregation. They commended the black students for their non-violent protest and called on the citizens of Raleigh to end discrimination based on race.
“Three years later the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce called for a “removal of all policies that deny rights and services because of race.”
“But even by the late 1960’s the schools still remained largely segregated. This was not necessarily by intention. It occurred because the city of Raleigh and Wake County had two different school systems. The Raleigh School system was largely urban, poor, and black, while Wake County was largely suburban, or rural – and white. Both city and county businesses and leaders recognized that something had to be done, or the entire community would start to rot at the center. White flight to the suburbs was already occurring, and black resentment at unequal funding for schools was growing.
“As Paul Jervay of the newspaper The Carolinian described it, “Folks were fighting tooth and nail against merger, but they fought well, and it was an open fight. It was in your face, and we kept going back and forth. This happened over a period of years. But we kept meeting and we kept talking.”
“But even the merger wasn’t enough to stop white flight. Forced busing understandably caused resentment. Growth patterns were causing some suburban schools to become overcrowded while inner city schools were underused. Something had to be done.
“In 1981, the new Superintendent Walter Marks called for the creation of 27 Magnet Schools that would draw the best and the brightest students into the city, and into the underutilized inner city schools. The applications from the parents living all around Wake County far outweighed the possible spaces (something that remains true today), and the schools immediately filled to capacity. Instead of force and resentment Walter Marks used incentive and attraction, and it worked beautifully.
Additionally, “In 1981, Raleigh formally adopted a Diversity Policy that was focused not on race, but on socio-economic status. Specifically, it said that no school in Wake County will have more than 40% of its students coming from poor families. As a result of this policy, there are no “bad schools” in the entire Wake County system – you can live anywhere in the county and be assured of getting a quality education.
Rhodes concludes the historic overview explaining: “Our school system has won national acclaim, and has been responsible for attracting businesses and new residents to the area. This policy has allowed us to educate more students for less money, and with better results. Last year we were ranked 85th from the bottom, out of 115 NC school districts in terms of per pupil spending, but we were fourth from the top in terms of SAT scores. We are the 20th largest school district in the country. And again, we’re near the bottom in terms of spending, and definitely above average in terms of graduation rates and test scores.
“But I’m not speaking about this tonight just to share history or statistics…
“(I bring these concerns) because the coming re-segregation of Wake County Schools proposed by the current School Board is a moral issue, and it is a religious one.
“Like every American city, there is a color line that runs through Raleigh and Wake County. Because of our history it may be more permeable than most, but the color line is there nonetheless.
Rhodes offers this quick test for that color line: “I invite you to search your own childhood memories, and think back to the first time you realized that you were white.
“Many of us can’t do it – it’s like asking a fish to remember their first experience of the water.
… “Almost every person of color can remember the first time they realized that they weren’t white – and it’s almost always a painful memory.
Many of us have a similar, perhaps more muted, memory of when we realized that we Jews are a significant minority. Nonetheless, our Judaism is not publically pronounced every time we step outdoors, unless we choose to pronounce it.
Rhodes reminds us: “The color line is still with us, but you can only see it from a certain angle
– and if you’re white, it’s too easy to be colorblind, or to think that you’re colorblind. But the color line is still there.
“The complexity of the problem extends well beyond the color line, and beyond inside or outside the beltline, and even beyond the dividing line that separates the haves from the have-nots.”
“Rather, it’s the lines in our hearts that keep us from truly seeing one another, from seeing those different from ourselves, that keep us from seeing that just because others’ experiences and perspectives are different than ours, they are no less valid than our own.
Thirty six times the Torah tells us to be mindful of the needs of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. A stranger, a ger, the one who lives among you is to be treated like the native born. The English term for stranger is so archaic, so off putting, it denotes something is wrong with the other, strange. The Hebrew ger on the other hand does not carry the same connotation; it comes from the root meaning one who dwells.
The ger is our neighbor. “If we claim to be colorblind and blind to economic differences, then our “neighborhood schools” should include students and teachers from all walks of life, rich and poor, black, brown and white, liberal and conservative, because we are one community in Wake County.
The current majority in the School Board has lost sight of this underlying value that built our school system. In the short time that they have been in office they have initiated change that has consequences that they have yet to study or understand.
If they have lost sight, it is our responsibility to open their eyes, to let them know that we are listening and we are gravely concerned about both the changes they are proposing and the pace at which they are implementing that change.
20,000 people elected the four new representatives. 800,000 residents live in Wake County, the majority of whom did not have board seats to vote on at all in the last election. Four new School Board representatives, elected by 4% of the population believe that they have a mandate to control the direction of the entire system. In a poll that this School Board took of parents and taxpayers of Wake County 95% of the respondents said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the current system. The data that this Board has collected overwhelming affirms that the citizens of Wake County do not want an over hall of the school system.
The Board has yet to present any evidence that their proposal for Neighborhood Schools meets any educational goals or standards. Evidence to the contrary exists across the state in Charlotte. “Since they dropped their own diversity policy in 2001, they’ve had to spend more per student than we do, more on high-poverty schools (that we don’t currently have), and more on busing even though their county has fewer miles of roads!” Additionally, their graduation rates have dropped significantly more than our own.
The pillar of clouds by day and fire by night are right there before us, and yet the School Board cannot see them. The hasty changes they are proposing to make are now being made with no professional at the helm for permanent superintendent. A search for that professional alone, developing criteria, establishing benchmarks for candidates, investigating best practices in superintendent’s, and measuring the applicants against those practices, must take the Board’s undivided attention. Without a professional at the helm, Wake County Schools are left in the hands of a School Board Chair, who doesn’t even have a college degree, making decisions about the future of our children.
On Monday I will be joining with interfaith clergy from across the county in a meeting to add our concerns and voices to the agenda of the Wake County School Board. I urge you to attend public meetings of concerned citizens taking place across our county to assure that your voice and the concerns of all of the children of Wake County, mine, yours, and those who are the gerim the dwellers we may not know among us, that all of us will be protected.
AMEN
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