I'm driving on Dead Indian Memorial Road, and I shouldn't be

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I’m riding through southern Oregon right now in the passenger seat of my family’s gray Prius, on our way from Sunriver to Ashland.

On Dead Indian Memorial Road.

Siri just directed us — out loud — to turn onto Dead Indian Memorial Road. I was conscious of my boys being asleep behind me.

According to oregonencyclopedia.com:

“Dead Indian Road is one of the oldest trans-Cascade travel routes in southern Oregon, connecting Ashland and the Rogue River Valley with the Upper Klamath Basin. The road crosses the headwaters of Dead Indian Creek a short distance west of Dead Indian Road’s junction with the much newer Keno Road, which heads south to Howard Prairie Reservoir. In the 1990s, Jackson County decided to change the name to Dead Indian Memorial Road, but controversy over the name continues to erupt.

“The name of Dead Indian Creek, the source of the road’s name, dates to the early 1850s. Several variations of the name hint at a story that settlers killed Indians on the creek, but there is no evidence to support that account. Neither does the name derive from General Phillip Sheridan’s infamous statement that ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian.’

“The most likely account is that Ashland-area settler Patrick Dunn and others discovered the bodies of several Indians in summer-encampment huts or pickups along the meadow near the headwaters of the creek. They could have died from disease, or other Indians may have killed them as part of the bitter and ongoing war between the Rogue Valley’s Takelma (or Shasta) and the Klamath.”

I can’t claim to have researched the history of the area, and I’m not old enough to have overlapped with Patty Dunn, but the Oregon Encyclopedia sure is quick to let white people off the hook. They’re making sure to label these deaths of legend as Indian-on-Indian violence, even as they claim there’s “no evidence to support” the idea that settlers perpetrated violence on the native people they encountered.

It just starts to seem ridiculous.

The United States was founded on racism and brutality. That’s just true. My predecessors in white supremacy, privilege and oppression did their best to physically eradicate the native people they encountered. Then, rather than teaching me about the genocide in our recent past, my textbooks called it “manifest destiny.”

The Nazis were monsters, but we’ve been miseducated to believe our own genocide didn’t happen and/or was justified. Manifest destiny.

We continue to see that justification reinforced subtly even today. Right now, today, some 20 years after the Washington Bullets changed their name to the Wizards, there is still a professional football team in our nation’s capital called the Redskins.

Try to imagine a soccer team in Berlin using a volatile Jewish slur as its nickname. That would just be wrong. No gray area — just horrifying. Meanwhile, fans and sportscasters and reporters across the country (with a handful of noble exceptions, like the Kansas City Star, where a sports editor years ago stopped printing the word) still toss the slur “Redskins” around as casually as if it were nothing more than the name of a football team.

The Cleveland baseball team is still known as the Indians, and its mascot is named “Chief Wahoo.” A white woman played Kevin Costner’s Native American love interest in “Dances With Wolves.” Tonto speaks only in grunts.

These names and images and ideas work together to program us into fundamentally and unknowingly believing in the justification of subjugation, into believing in white supremacy. It’s insidious.

I think we’ve got to change every one of these names that doesn’t pass the smell test of respect. If it’s been appropriated, then let’s give it back.

Of course, this alone won’t be enough. Just making sure that our society and our institutions don’t blatantly support continued racist discrimination against a violently oppressed people is only a start. I don’t know what it will take, how we could begin to really make things right, but we’ll never find out until we start to humbly, publicly acknowledge the truth of the past.

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See also: 10 Days, 10 Photos, 10 Songs: An Awareness Campaign for Standing Rock

Washington Attorney General joins web of charter lawsuits, asks court to throw out political arguments

The web of lawsuits around Washington State's charter schools has gotten tighter and more tangled.

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Parents and students involved in the charter school suit stand behind lead attorney Rob McKenna at Tuesday's press conference.

Led by Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office, the State of Washington filed a motion today to dismiss two of the plaintiffs’ core arguments in El Centro de la Raza v. Washington, another lawsuit filed against charters under the leadership of the Washington Education.

"Those arguments are (1) an attempt to tie charter public schools to the state’s underfunding of basic public education, which is a separate matter that is under active supervision by the state Supreme Court, and (2) an attack on last academic year’s operation of charter public schools, an argument that a court cannot entertain because, in these circumstances, the plaintiffs’ argument can only be read as assuming too much or too little, too late," said the Washington State Charter Schools Association in a statement, "In either case, both arguments are also meritless."

Today’s filing follows yesterday’s announcement that 12 families representing the charter sector filed a collective motion of their own calling for the dismissal all of the organizational plaintiffs named in the lawsuit.

"The motion was filed on the grounds that the advocacy organizations are merely attempting to rehash policy arguments in a courtroom by recasting them as constitutional concerns – policy arguments that were decided at both ballot box and in the 2016 Legislative session," said the WA Charters statement. "The Washington Education Association, the League of Women Voters and El Centro De La Raza are among the lobbying groups the intervenors are asking the court to dismiss."

The state’s existing charter public schools opened after voters passed a ballot initiative in 2012. When the Washington Supreme Court identified a glitch in the voter-approved charter school law that conflicted with the state constitution, a bipartisan group of lawmakers studied, vetted, and in March 2016 passed a bill specifically designed to address the Supreme Court’s concerns. Legal experts from both sides of the aisle, including non-partisan staff attorneys, combed through SB 6194 to ensure it would pass constitutional muster and restore the will of the voters by creating a path for charter public schools’ long-term success.

Washington’s operating charter public schools began their second school year this month, having quickly become a vital part of Washington’s public education system for the students and families they serve. The schools already are making a quantifiable difference in the lives of hundreds of Washington families, particularly in historically under-resourced and under-served communities.

More than 67 percent of charter public school students in Washington are students of color, as compared to 43 percent of non-charter public school students statewide. In addition, approximately two-thirds of charter public school students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals. At four of Washington’s charter public schools, that number exceeds 70 percent.

Charter schools are a type of public school, approved and overseen by a state or district authorizer. Like all public schools, they do not charge tuition, they are open to all students, and they are publicly funded. However, charter public schools are held more accountable for showing improved student achievement. In exchange for greater accountability, teachers and principals are given more flexibility to customize their teaching methods and curriculum to improve student learning.

NAACP's 'moratorium' on charters is about putting politics ahead of kids

Washington State’s public education system is broken.

Consider this, courtesy of Sharonne Navas, executive director of the Equity in Education Coalition:

“Forty percent of Washington State’s children live in families with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line, and a disproportionate number of these are children of color. Washington State also has the fifth biggest opportunity gap between black and white students in the United States, and the gap between Hispanic and White students in Washington – about two and a half grade levels – is nearly as large.”

Seattle Public Schools, like many others across the state, also has a well-documented history of disproportionate discipline of students of color.

We need things to change. Our kids need different opportunities and different results right now, even as most of Seattle remains oblivious to the segregation and inequity in our schools. That’s how far along we are in solving this problem. Most people don’t know or admit it’s a problem, and many more don’t or wouldn’t care.

Meanwhile, those of us who agree that students of color are not getting the educational opportunities they deserve — which should unite is in spite of any and all other differences, considering the scale of the problem we’re facing — spend as much time fighting each other as we do fighting for change. We keep splitting hairs until we find we’ve split ourselves, gradually falling into factions: you’re either pro-charter or pro-union, part of the anti-reform crowd or one of the privatizers.

Recently the NAACP issued a strongly worded resolution regarding education. Rather than decrying our inequitable traditional public schools or demanding change for perpetually under-funded, low-performing schools, the NAACP chose to tag itself into this childish game by choosing a side, calling for a “moratorium on the proliferation of privately managed charter schools.”

It also resolved to “support legislation AND EXECUTIVE ACTIONS (capitalization per the original) that would strengthen local governance and transparency of charter schools and, in doing so, affirms to protect students and families from exploitative governance practices.”

Seattle Public Schools are governed by a school board whose majority does not represent the interests of most students or families in the city. Does the NAACP plan to step in and save us from the exploitative governance practices we’re currently struggling under? Maybe by overriding our half-baked school board, or by forcing an equitable McCleary solution through the legislature?

No, this is not an earnest voice calling for equity, but an acknowledgement that charter schools sit balanced on a deeply entrenched line in the sand. And instead of attacking the source of inequity regardless of politics, the NAACP is publicly declaring that it’s chosen a side.

To wit: Julian Vasquez Heilig, who serves as Education Chair for the NAACP chapter that wrote the resolution, broke the news of the resolution on his own blog on July 29. In the handful of posts since, one has been headlined "Will @ShavarJeffries chicken out?" (Jeffries is a charter supporter and head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)), and another bore this image of his name violently opposing his pro-charter enemy (below).

Woof.

This is not the tone of someone looking to collaborate to solve a problem. This is Vasquez Heilig using the NAACP as a platform to build his own brand and proliferate his own views.

Most of us agree by now that students of color are not getting the educational opportunities they deserve. Most within the NAACP, I imagine, believe the same. Rather than elbowing each other to get to the front of the line, let’s go our slightly separate ways with mutual support and race to the finish. If our traditional public schools are so good, don’t issue a moratorium on what you perceive as the competition — go out and prove how damn good those public schools are.

NAACP CEO Cornell Brooks’ bio says “he is working with Association leadership and membership to build an NAACP that is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and one million members strong."

My multi-racial family lives in South Seattle. My sons are biracial. My oldest attends our neighborhood school: by definition, an inner-city, urban, traditional public school that struggles to educate kids of color and has had three principals in the past four years. My youngest is likely to follow him there in a few years.

This is real for me. It’s real for a lot of people. Our public education system is not working for enough families like mine, and while it's hard to come out with an opinion that runs contrary to a respected civil rights organization like this one. Still, a recent survey showed that 72 percent of black parents favor charter schools. For all its strengths, the NAACP does not monolithically represent the interests or opinions of its constituents on any single issue, and in this case, they seem particularly out of step.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for charters. The public school system would simply meet the needs of all of its students. Instead, we live here, now. With so much of the opportunity gap resulting from a fundamentally inequitable system, students of color and low-income students need more options that allow them to choose out of our broken system. Charter schools give those families a pathway to school choice.

The NAACP is making a political statement to block families who need change from choosing a better school for their kids, to block the further development of one budding alternative to the schools that have failed kids of color since forever. Let’s hope their next resolution is to stop playing in the sand, and to start putting kids first in every conversation about education.

Read more from around the country:

• Shavar Jeffries on the NAACP’s Resolution Calling for a Moratorium on Charter Schools
• Black School Choice Group Pushes Back on NAACP Charter School Moratorium
• The New Mis-education of the Negro: How the NAACP is Selling Out Black Families

Seattle City Council is trying to sneak in a vote to build a military police bunker

The Seattle City Council is trying to squeeze through a sneaky little vote to build America's most expensive police precinct in north Seattle. 

City Council members -- including Tim Burgess, it seems -- have maneuvered to schedule a vote for Monday, when Councilmember Kshama Sawant, a hero for marginalized communities who opposes the proposition, will be away. The vote -- set for two days (!) from now, on Aug. 15 -- would approve a $149 million budget to build a bomb- and ballistics-proof bunker, diverting scarce public dollars to support the further militarization of police even as we fight nationwide for demilitarization and humanization of law enforcement.

The north precinct is in need of renovation, but this is an ill-advised project to begin with. As with all police measures, and especially those with militaristic aspects, this will disproportionately impact kids and families of color. They need your voice. Here's how to do your part:

• SHOW UP on Monday, Aug. 15, and voice your dissent to the council.
• Email the city council now -- especially councilmembers Lorena Gonzalez, Bruce Harrell, Lisa Herbold, and Rob Johnson -- and demand that:
  • 1. Black lives, and lives of people of color generally, actually begin to matter in Seattle when it comes to city policies and projects;
  • 2. The city council either vote against the resolution being pushed in favor of allocating $149 million to the police bunker, and/or call to postpone voting on the resolution until Councilmemeber Sawant returns;
  • 2. The city council access and use the Racial Equity Toolkit before any further action is taken in favor of the bunker, as a process exists that the council is NOT following at this time;
  • 3. The city council not make any money allocations at this time. The community is forced to wait until September-October of each year to present any funding requests, often much smaller in scale. The Seattle Police Department should never have priority over the community;
  • 4. They defund this bunker project completely. There are viable public safety alternatives that cost far less in taxpayer dollars and Black lives.

The Privilege of Ignoring Race

A year ago today, I was out in Ferguson.

Two years ago today, Michael Brown had been dead for a day, murdered on Aug. 9, 2014. A few weeks later, I wrote this. This seemed like a good time to take a second look at it.

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I have read and heard and seen a lot of people saying a lot of different things about race in the wake of the Michael Brown tragedy — some compassionate, some ambivalent, some ignorant. This is something true:

I took this picture this morning. Then Lindsay told Julian about Michael Brown, about who he was and what happened to him. She told him about how most police officers are people to trust, but that sometimes they make mistakes. She told Julian that it isn’t fair, but that sometimes he will need to be extra careful as he gets older because of the way he looks — that he will have to be that much more careful to stay out of trouble, to stay away from what looks like trouble, to stay in after dark, because it’s a matter of safety. She told him about having called to check in with his uncle Spencer a few days earlier, about asking Spencer if he was safe in L.A. and if he was being careful. She asked him if he understood. Julian asked a question or two, Lindsay answered, and then it was done.

This is what all this means to me:

Some have argued that the Michael Brown shooting isn’t about race. Many others have at least wondered. As you may know, I am white. I can tell you from experience that it is a privilege to ignore race. It is a privilege to be able to wonder whether or not this tragedy is a racial issue. It is a privilege to not have to start poking tiny holes in your six-year-old son’s bubble of innocence and sweetness in the days before he starts kindergarten.

We had conversations about race in my family when I was very young, too, and most of them were also very direct. Most of them even acknowledged the presence of danger and the possibility of violence. I vividly remember getting a version from my dad in elementary school of what his dad had told him as a kid: that there aren’t many good reasons to fight, but that if he heard anyone using the N-word at school — or using any other slur, or using anyone’s race or gender to hurt them or make them feel small — he had better step in and put a stop to it or come home with a bloody nose for having tried. That might not exactly fit with Dr. King’s belief in non-violence, but the message was clear: This is important. Not only do we not tolerate hate or racism, we will actively fight it. It’s a family value.

There is a subtle-but-important difference between these two sets of conversations, though. My parents (also white, coincidentally) chose to have these conversations with me and my siblings. They encouraged us to choose to stand up against blatant racism and hate. But I was not the target in the hypotheticals. I was on the sidelines. The guns wouldn’t have been aimed at me, so the conversation was different.

Lindsay and I talked with Julian this morning because he won’t have a choice. Julian needs to hear this, because he cannot choose out of his skin color or his black heritage. I can choose into the conversation, choose to step into the conflict. Julian does not have that privilege. He is about to start attending public school in a district that has recently been under scrutiny for disciplining black boys much more frequently than any other group. He will be stereotyped, he will too often be seen and heard through a racial lens, and he cannot avoid it. He cannot choose a different path. Before long, he will be, say, 10 years old and tall for his age. Soon after he will be a teenage boy of color living in a major city. He won’t have the privilege of staying on the sidelines when a police car drives past the park where he’s hanging out with his friends after dark. He won’t have the privilege of deciding it’s not about race when he makes a mistake and gets caught. And Lindsay and I, as parents, don’t have the privilege of giving him an option. We don’t get to decide whether or not he’s ready, because he has to be ready, because he has to stay safe. Because someone will call him a horrible name, and someone will treat him differently — probably unintentionally — because of how he looks, and because at some point, someone will view this sweet, loving kid as more of a threat, and he needs to understand what’s happening if he’s going to stay safe. He has no other choice.

Career Bridge Career & Resource Fair

NAACP resolves to issue charter school movement a reality check

I’ll admit it.

My first reaction was to think, “No, they’re wrong!”

The NAACP approved this resolution, authored by the California-Hawaii chapter, last month. If ratified by the national board in the fall, it will become official policy. Look it over and see what you think:

No, they’re wrong!

But then again… who am I to have an opinion about the NAACP’s opinions?

Julian Vazquez-Heilig (chair of the committee that authored the resolution) and Jesse Hagopian are among the many already lauding the resolution and the strong stance against charter schools, viewing charters and the Teach For America/ed reform sector as puppets ushering a pathway to privatization. 

Other black leaders have been outspoken in their disagreement with the resolution. This from the Washington Examiner:

Jacqueline Cooper, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, told the Washington Examiner that the moratorium was "inexplicable."

"The fact that the NAACP wants a national moratorium on charter schools, many of which offer a high-quality education to low-income and working-class black children, is inexplicable," Cooper said. "The resolution is ill-conceived and based on lies and distortions about the work of charter schools. At their next meeting, we urge the board to reject this resolution and protect parental choice."

Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform, also criticized the NAACP in a statement. "The public charter school moratorium put forward at this year's NAACP convention does a disservice to communities of color," Jeffries said.

"This moratorium would contravene the NAACP's historic legacy as a champion for expanding opportunity for families of color. In communities of color throughout our country, public charter schools are providing pathways to college and careers that previously were not available."

Jeffries added that the NAACP seemed to be unjustly attacking charter schools while turning a blind eye to bad traditional public schools.

"Indiscriminately targeting all charter schools, even the many great public charter schools that are offering students a bridge to college, while ignoring underperforming district schools, undermines the quality and integrity of our entire education system ... We'd be happy to partner with the NAACP to sanction or shut down low-performing charter schools. We'd oppose with the same resolve as the NAACP any charter that seems designed more by a desire to segregate than to innovate."

Steve Perry, founder and head of Capital Preparatory Schools, went on NewsOne Now to criticize the national NAACP. "They couldn't be more out of touch if they ran full speed in the other direction," Perry said. He said the national group is "out of touch even with their own chapters ... This is more proof that the NAACP has been mortgaged by the teachers union and they keep paying y'all to say what they want to say."

According to a report released in January by the Black Alliance for Educational Options, black students in public charter schools learn the equivalent of 36 extra school days per year in math and 26 extra school days in reading. The gains are even higher for black students living in poverty.

Like every discussion of education, race and equity, this requires a nuanced conversation. Like every non-fictional scenario, the lines are not black and white. Vazquez-Heilig, talking with The 74, interpreted the resolution he helped write as living in the gray area.

“I think what the NAACP is saying is we need to stop and take stock,” he said. “It doesn’t say we need to abolish charter schools, but we need to reevaluate where we are with charter schools right now.”

I have been an outspoken supporter of charter schools in Washington State, and I remain supportive today. I hear this as a reality check — and not one that just appeared overnight.

Traditionally, many civil rights groups have been vocally pro-charter because they know that more options are better. But at a certain point, those new options have to prove they are structured and run in a fundamentally different way, or else they will be revealed simply as different versions of the unacceptable status quo. The UNCF, as just one example, wrote a report four years ago now called “Done to us, not with us."

No matter how well-intentioned and good-hearted the education reform movement might be, unless it is guided by the voices of the communities it seeks to serve, it can’t really be the solution.

The data, however, supports charters, and there are many, many success stories and positive outcomes, just as there are many failures.

Charter schools create the space, governance-wise, to be the fundamentally different entities we need — a true alternative to the status quo. That freedom is badly needed, and it’s what makes good charter schools such a good alternative for the many students not set up for success in our current public school system.

But this possibility of equity is not guaranteed, and charter schools won’t live up to the promise of their freedom without an explicit, intentional focus on equity in process and outcomes; a commitment to examining everything through the lens of race, class, and privilege; a redistribution of power so that students, families and communities have the power to shape their schools’ design.

Otherwise, if reform is enacted without input and local leadership, it’s left up to the individuals running the schools to ensure equity. It’s up to the individual teachers and school leaders, and the individuals at charter management organizations, on school boards, and at charter school associations. And that’s at best a roll of the dice if they have not fully examined their personal biases and their organizational equity practices.

What's being called out here is paternalism. Let’s be clear. If you are white, you are probably not talking about race, and you (we — me too) are certainly not talking about it or living it in the same way as a person of color.

So, if a charter school, or a charter management organization, or a charter association, or a school board, etc., is predominantly run by white people, they need to be vigilant about blind spots, about centering students in every decision, about listening and learning in communities, building true partnerships with parents, forging authentic relationships with civil rights organizations and community leaders, examining their models, curricula, and discipline policies.

And, and, and, and.

The plot is still thick, but regardless of who does and doesn’t support the NAACP’s resolution, it remains a reality check.

For the ed reform movement, it is a call to do more than “engage” the communities it serves. If education is to be reformed, it needs to be done in a way that empowers communities of color and helps them to reform their own schools according to their vision and the wisdom of their lived experience. 

For me, as a white person, it’s a call, or a reminder, to constantly check myself.

I still believe in the promise of charter schools. I still believe in the academic integrity and good intentions of the education reform movement, of Teach For America, at the same time that I recognize the accomplishments, challenges and enormous promise of our traditional public school system.

I support any system, movement or ideology when it is building on the assets and input of students, families, and communities. If they promote better academic and broader student outcomes in a culturally responsive way, they have my support.

But they have to continually earn my support, just as they have to continually earn the support of the students and families they serve. I have to be continually sure the organizations and people and ideas that have my support are living out the promises that earned that support in the first place.

And I have to be sure I’m not saying, “No, you’re wrong,” when a community of color says what they believe is best for themselves.

Erin Jones leads primary voting for state superintendent

Today is the final day to vote in Washington's primary, and according to Paige Cornwell of the Seattle Times, Erin Jones sits atop the field of nine candidates for state superintendent of schools with 24 percent of the vote.

That is great news for our students and our schools, and it puts a crack in one of our remaining shameful glass ceilings. Jones would be the first black woman to hold statewide elected office in Washington.

With 20 percent of the vote, state Rep. Chris Reykdal will likely join Jones on the November ballot. Reykdal has been an outspoken opponent of charter schools, but he said last month he would support charters as part of the public school system if they are upheld as constitutional by the state Supreme Court.

Ron Higgins, amazingly, is currently third at 17 percent -- the same Higgins who has said he wants to "stop sexualizing education" and would do away with gender-neutral bathrooms.

Jones and Reykdal have seemed to be the frontrunners for some time now, so this preliminary news comes as no real surprise, though I find it interesting that the majority of voters chose one of the other seven candidates. (More on them here.)

Hopefully enough of those soon-to-be-disenfranchised voters will swing Jones' way. My concern now is that it's hard to imagine someone voting for Higgins, say, in the primary, and then for Jones over Reykdal. We'll see.

Youth Speaks Seattle is seeking fierce young artists for a social justice institute

Calling all youth poets, dancers, musicians, artists and activists!

Youth Speaks Seattle (YSS) is looking for fierce young artists (aged 14-19) interested in making art, learning about social justice and earning $150 this summer at the YSS Arts Liberation and Leadership Institute. Application deadline is July 31st.

The five-day institute will be held Aug. 22-26 at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, where leaders will build a tight-knit, loving community with 20 other youth artists and activists while working with Daniel Pak from the music group Kore Ionz and with community activist/visual artist Henry Luke.

In addition to professional development and skills around promotion, event planning, public speaking and facilitation, participants will learn about forms of oppression and how to fight against them using art and community. They will also receive a $150 stipend upon completion as well as credit for 60-plus community service hours.

Download the application here or apply online here.

From Youth Speaks Seattle's website:

Since 2003, Youth Speaks Seattle has been the city’s premier collective for youth spoken word poetry, creating avenues for youth voices through creative writing instruction and performance opportunities. Over the years, Youth Speaks Seattle has conducted residencies and visited classrooms in nearly all of Seattle’s public high schools, hosted a thriving monthly open mic series, transformative all-city writing circles and explosive poetry slam competitions.

In 2011, the renowned youth-led poetry program became a part of Arts Corps. We are proud to continue the Youth Speaks Seattle legacy with twice-monthly open mics, weekly writing circles, the hallmark Poetry Slam Series and a fierce Spokes board of Youth Leaders.

Tacoma’s Charter Public Schools to Host Open House Tour for New Families

SOAR Academy, Green Dot Destiny Middle School and Summit Olympus High School will host a tour of open houses on Thursday, July 28, for Tacoma families exploring their public school options for the upcoming 2016-17 school year.

The tour of open houses will give potential students, parents and caregivers the opportunity to tour each school building, ask questions and meet school leaders and teachers, and hear the experiences of founding families and students who are returning to Tacoma’s charter public schools for the second year.

As all three of Tacoma’s small, personalized and academically rigorous charter public schools head into their second year of operation, each school is growing to serve new grade levels in Fall 2016.

SOAR Academy, which eventually will serve K-8, served K-1 in its first year and will grow to serve K-2 in Fall 2016. Green Dot Destiny Middle School, which served sixth grade in its founding year and will serve grades 6-8 at capacity, is enrolling sixth and seventh grade for Fall 2016. And Summit Olympus High School, which opened to ninth graders in its founding year, is enrolling ninth and tenth graders for this coming school year.

Enrollment is open for Fall 2016 at Tacoma’s charter public schools. All schools are tuition-free and open to all students. For more information: http://wacharters.org/enroll/tacoma/.

WHAT: Tacoma Charter Public Schools Open House Tour

WHEN: Thursday, July 28, 5 – 8:15 p.m.

LOGISTICS:
The open house tour begins at SOAR Academy and then travels to Summit Olympus and Destiny Charter Middle School. Bus transportation will be provided for those attending the full three-school tour, and will return to SOAR Academy at the end of the tour.

5:00 pm: Meet at SOAR Academy, 2136 MLK Jr. Way, Tacoma, WA 98405
5:30—6pm: Tour SOAR Academy
6:30—7pm: Tour Summit Olympus, 409 Puyallup Ave., Tacoma, WA 98421
7:30—8pm: Tour Destiny Middle School, 1301 E 34th St, Tacoma, WA 98404
8:00 pm: After the Destiny Middle School tour, participants will be dropped back off at SOAR Academy.

RSVP here. View the Facebook event here.

About Washington’s Public Charter Schools
Charter schools are state-authorized public schools. Like all public schools, they do not charge tuition, they are open to all students, and they are publicly funded. However, charter schools are held more accountable for showing improved student achievement. In exchange for greater accountability, teachers and principals are given more flexibility to customize their teaching methods and curriculum to improve student learning.

Washington’s charter public schools are helping to close the education equity gap. More than 67 percent of charter public school students in Washington are students of color, as compared to 43 percent statewide. Two-thirds of charter public school students qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, as compared to 45 percent statewide. At four of Washington’s charter public schools, this number exceeds 70 percent.

Who's running for state superintendent in Washington?

I went to the OSPI Candidate Forum on Tuesday and got an up-close look at how important this superintendent’s race is for our kids.

If you read nothing else, read this: Erin Jones is the clear choice to be Washington’s next state superintendent. She is the first black woman to run for statewide office in Washington, and she has been a lifelong advocate for racial equity. She has been a classroom teacher and a school administrator, and she’s worked for OSPI. She is a champion for students.

I have written about her in the past as well, but I want to be explicit and call on everyone who considers themselves equity-minded to vote for Erin Jones in this election. Focus on your common ground. She represents the bold change and unwavering equity lens that has been missing in our public school system. She needs your support now because our kids need her leadership.

Okay, you can stop reading if you want. Though I will say, Tuesday’s OSPI Candidate Forum was a pretty fascinating event. Extremely intimate.

I was impressed from the beginning by Erin Okuno’s introduction of the whole thing. Before ever mentioning a candidate’s name, she urged everyone in the room to use this chance to talk about race and inequity and to maintain that focus. It set a powerful tone.

Then we sat in groups of roughly 10 and talked with each of six state superintendent candidates for a full 15 minutes apiece. One right after another. It was surprisingly excruciating at times, but it was deeply insightful as well.

As far as I can tell, Chris Reykdal is the only other remotely reasonable candidate of the six. He demonstrated some understanding of the opportunity and achievement gaps, a willingness to talk about racial inequity, and a plan to convince privileged white folks that it’s actually in their (our) best interest financially to close those gaps. He has been an outspoken opponent of charter schools over the past year, but he said Tuesday that he would support charters if the Supreme Court and the legislature uphold them as constitutional. He wouldn’t be an offensive choice for superintendent, but he’s not an inspiring choice either.

Ron Higgins wore an American flag tie and showed us the copy of the U.S. Constitution he carries in his breast pocket. One of his ideas for funding schools was to de-modernize and stop wasting money on expensive new technology that the kids only use to watch obscene music videos and sports and play video games on anyway. (He said that.) He also said he would immediately do away with any gender-neutral bathrooms.

“There’s X and Y,” he said. “That’s it.”

He used the term “inner-city” at least 10 times.

David Spring really wants to be a state rep, not the superintendent. He’s a former teacher, and he’s run for the state legislature multiple times in the past but never won. His main talking point was about corporate tax breaks, and his interest in the superintendent’s seat comes off as political. He just seems to be pursuing a very specific agenda in a very energetic way, and he pins all his hopes for improving student outcomes on reducing class sizes.

The list below comes from his brochure. I’ll highlight #9 as especially problematic, but you’ll want to read them all. It really gets good around #7 and definitely ends with a shot at the moon. Remember, he’s running for superintendent of public schools.

Woof.

Robin Fleming said in her introduction that she had been fighting the opportunity gap throughout her career as a school nurse, educator and administrator. She talked repeatedly about the importance of allocating resources equitably, but she didn’t strike me as someone who would actually know how to do that. She spoke out against standardized testing, did some subtle family-blaming, and revealed some low-expectation bias when talking about students of color. She wants to avoid judging teachers based on student progress and would have individual teachers to be the sole evaluators of their own students — largely anecdotally, it seems. This would be a complete disaster for all students, to be sure, but especially students of color. She also talked in closing about her opposition to charter schools, and then said as she left the table, “I actually taught in one last year.” This does not seem to be true unless it was in another state, and it was pretty strange.

Al Runte is not particularly distinguishable from Higgins, though he’s less cartoonish in his embellishments. Like Higgins, he advocates for something vague about getting back to basics, and he also has an outdated, bigoted view of gender identity, and honestly, by the time he came around, I’d been trying not to react to the mostly depressing things I was hearing from the mostly depressing field of candidates for a full hour already, and I gave myself a break and let my mind wander during this one.

Erin Jones is the clear choice here. If that wasn’t clear before, it’s excruciatingly vivid now. Reykdal is the only other candidate who could do the job, and that’s a low bar. Erin Jones represents a chance for real change in a state whose status quo desperately needs to be shaken. She has earned my vote.

Talking to Kids About Racism and Justice: a list for parents, caregivers & educators→

“Awake youth of the land and accept this noble challenge of salvaging the strong ship of civilization by the anchors of right, justice and love…” — Ella Baker

'I need justice. I need peace.'

Lavish Reynolds bravely broadcast the death of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, at the hands of a Falcon Heights, Minn., police officer last week. Still raw with grief, she tells here the painful story of Castile's final moments and the events that followed.

Be a voice for equity at the OSPI Candidate Forum in Seattle

Five candidates for Washington State Superintendent -- Robin Fleming, Ron Higgins, Erin Jones, Chris Reykdal and David Spring -- will come together to discuss their positions and plans for our schools this month.

Hosted by Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), Equity in Education Coalition (EEC), Coalition of Immigrants, Refugees and Communities of Color (CIRCC), and League of Education Voters (LEV), "this is your chance to hear from candidates about what they hope to accomplish, what their strategies are to close the opportunity gap, and to share with them what you hope they will focus on if elected."

I believe our students need Erin Jones to be the next state superintendent in Washington. She doesn't have the endorsement of the WEA, which at this point I take to be a good sign.

She does, however, have an unblemished track record of putting students and families first, and she has maintained that focus even during her campaign. She will be a powerful voice for equity and a real agent of change in our school system. She needs support.

No matter which specific candidate ultimately receives your vote, we need to ask hard questions and to make it clear to each potential superintendent that it takes a demonstrated investment in equity to earn this vote in Washington.

OSPI Candidate Forum

Tuesday, July 19 from 5:15-7:15 p.m. (doors open at 5:00 p.m.)

at the New Holly Gathering Hall (7054 32nd Ave S, Seattle).

Advance registration is required, so check out the flyer and register here.

Nate Gibbs-Bowling's 'Syllabus for Students When Dealing with Law Enforcement'

Nate Gibbs-Bowling has shared a two-page syllabus for a workshop he leads on students' rights when dealing with law enforcement, which he describes as "most important lesson I teach each year."

"The stakes are high for my students. Whenever I give a talk about teaching, I talk about the lack of predictability and danger that children of color and those in poverty face, on a daily basis. Never is that lack of predictability more dangerous than when it comes to encounters with those who are sworn to protect them. I know that no amount of 'respectability' can keep people of color safe in America; Sandra Bland, Henry Louis Gates and James Blake have taught us so, but my hope is that I can increase the odds for my students and yours."

A Syllabus for Students When Dealing with Law Enforcement

How can I, in good conscience, raise two biracial boys in America?

I woke up just after three this morning having fallen asleep with my computer open next to me, a blank page on the screen. I fell asleep with literally no words and woke with the same.

So, I went back to sleep and woke again a few hours later with my one-year-old son. I made breakfast. I watched the highlights from last night’s Twins/Rangers game with my almost-eight-year-old. I let the dog outside. And just I keep on thinking and thinking.

Philando Castile (left) and Alton Sterling

I've watched two different videos this week of Alton Sterling being murdered, and now they’re in my brain on loop, playing over and over in my head no matter what I intend to be thinking about or focusing on.

I watched a video of Philando Castile dying with a bloody hole in his shoulder and a sweet little four-year-old girl in the backseat while his girlfriend cried for help and repeated the names of streets I recognized from my childhood.

Larpenteur. Snelling. Fry. “Five minutes without traffic,” according to Google, from where my dad grew up in St. Paul. Across the river from where my mother went to high school, from where my sisters both now live in Minneapolis.

Phil Castile punctured my personal bubble. If a police officer can stop his car and shoot him dead in the passenger seat “five minutes without traffic” from the first place I ever went home to, then no ground is sacred. No place is safe.

And that should come as no surprise, really. Minnesota hasn’t changed. In a way, it’s never been safe, like nowhere else has ever been safe, and yet it’s still as safe for me as the day I was born.

I have changed, though — or the shape and color of my bubble have, anyway. Now I’m the white partner of a black woman, and I’m the white parent of two biracial boys. The idea of safety requires a more nuanced thought process for me than it used to.

Our country was founded on racism and brutality, and let’s be clear — that remains its backbone. My predecessors in white supremacy, privilege and oppression did their best to physically eradicate the native people they encountered. My public school textbooks in Fargo, ND, called this genocide “manifest destiny.”

Our founding fathers, meanwhile, lived and died believing they owned black people, and that they were justified in doing so. When that practice was scrutinized, my predecessors protected their privilege. The systemic oppression shifted, and it lived on as lynchings. As Jim Crow. The war on drugs. The Washington Redskins. Mass incarceration. Redlining. Police violence.

We talk of progress, of incremental change, but we live in a country whose founding machinery of systemic racism is still humming along uninterrupted.

Alton Sterling is dead because two police officers were brought up breathing that machine’s smog, along with the officer in Minnesota who killed Phil Castile, and along with you and me and pretty much everyone we know. That smog taught us all to unwittingly view black men as potentially threatening criminals. That smog has poisoned us with a latent belief in white superiority and an unspoken, unacknowledged fear of losing a privileged status that no one deserves to keep. It’s insidious.

And I have to admit, sometimes I just don’t want to understand my place in all this. Because I’m culpable. Whether I “want” this privileged status or not, here I am, still complicit by my mere presence, and still benefiting from the idea of whiteness even at the expense of my own family.

Whether I “want” to be or not, I am still supporting the infrastructure of this systemic oppression with my taxes, my donations, my livelihood — with my very life.

All this thinking keeps on leading me to one question in the end: How can I, in good conscience, continue to live in America?

I don’t have an answer.

It’s not possible for me to live in this country and not benefit from and support systemic racism. I can’t escape my whiteness any more than my sons and my partner can escape their blackness.

Does that mean we have to leave? Is there another responsible decision to make with two young, brown-skinned sons?

I try to fight the status quo. I write this blog you’re reading now about education and race in Seattle and Washington State. I try to call out racism and inequity where I see it and demand something better. I’ve been out on the streets in Ferguson. I’ve been an at-times-crazy person on Facebook and Twitter.

But it’s not enough. Can I ever do more to fight racism than I am already doing, simply by living in America as a white man, to support it?

Our incremental progress was too slow for Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, as it has been for so, so many others. What if it’s too slow for my sons? Why should this finely tuned machine suddenly blow a fuse now?

How can I, in good conscience, raise two biracial boys in America?

That’s what I keep asking myself. And no matter how much I think about it, no matter how hard I look, I’m not finding an answer.

I’m just finding a replay of Alton Sterling’s murder, playing on loop, with Philando Castile dying in the background, and it’s saying, “These could be your sons.”

Seattle just keeps ignoring racism at Garfield High School

Garfield High School is segregated by race. Still. We've known for years and we've done nothing to force change.

Students of color -- especially black students -- are disproportionately disciplined and under-represented in rigorous courses. Still.

And still, their graduation and college acceptance rates lag behind Garfield's white students.

Claudia Rowe wrote an excellent, in-depth piece for the Seattle Times about Garfield this week, painting a sad picture of a school whose hallways, opportunities and outcomes are segregated by race, and of a principal who feels forced to decide between following the rules or doing right by his students:

On paper, Garfield looks like a liberal utopia, a majestic, Federalist-style building in the center of the city with a broad mix of students and long history of academic and athletic success under Principal Ted Howard, a black man.  Yet students of different races inhabit separate worlds. The school’s advanced-track classes are mostly white, as is its well-heeled parent fundraising group, and its annual crop of National Merit Scholars.

Meanwhile, on this year’s list of problem kids permanently removed from campus, 21 of 24 are black.

Garfield, in other words, is Seattle: a place of high achievement and deep divides, progressive ideals sitting atop uncomfortable realities.

This isn't the first time the Seattle Times has unearthed this fault line, though. Back in 2004, the Times ran this article about Garfield: "Decades of effort fail to close gap in student achievement."

It talked of "paper integration and a school whose hallways, opportunities and outcomes were divided between black and white:

      Perhaps in no other Seattle school have parents and teachers struggled for so long to achieve integration's promise of racial equality -- and been so stymied.

Of course, we already knew about it then, too. 

In 2000, The Stranger told us "A Tale of Two Schools: At Garfield High School, the Education You Get Depends on Your Color:"

A former Black Panther, Dixon [a Garfield High security guard] says black kids at Garfield are being neglected and left behind while white kids excel. (I look around and the only white kids I see in the vicinity are a cluster in the hallway, reading Shakespeare to one another.) The Seattle school district, Dixon says, has "built a white, racist program starting with busing. Black kids aren't getting what they need. They're watching the white kids get everything."

Dixon's not the first to point out that Garfield exists as a school within a school. The numbers speak for themselves. On one hand, Garfield boasts the best academic reputation of any high school in the city. It has the most merit scholars in the state and nearly half the Advanced Placement students in the Seattle school district. Yet, there is a second, less-than-world-class school within Garfield. During last year's round of Washington Assessment of Student Learning tests -- which rank students according to skills in reading, writing, math, and listening -- the school fell far below state standards in two categories. Garfield officials claim that many students didn't show up to take the test, accounting for the low scores. But even fancy tests aside, nearly one third of all Garfield students are failing or getting a D in at least one course required for graduation.

To make matters worse, the students who are doing well tend to be white, while the students who are doing poorly tend to be black. The student population at Garfield -- situated in the heart of the Central District -- is estimated by the school district to be 47 percent white, 35 percent black, 13 percent Asian, 4 percent Latino, and 1 percent Native American. Yet, 73 percent of students in the advanced classes at Garfield are white, while 19 percent are Asian and only 4 percent are black (Latinos and Native Americans together make up 4 percent of Advanced Placement classes). On the other end of the scale, 62 percent of all African American students at the school are on the "D and E list" (which is, itself, made up of mostly black students), meaning they are in danger of flunking out.

Excuses for the disparity range from complaints that black students don't want to excel and show up at Garfield unprepared for advanced classes to accusations that the school has set up purposeful barriers to keep black kids at a disadvantage. Ironically, as one of the more diverse inner-city high schools in Seattle, Garfield was once lauded by students as a "model for integration success." These days, it's considered a failure. "The first floor is black people, the second floor is white, and the third floor, I don't know," says junior EunJean Song, who's part white and part Asian. "We see it every day and nobody's doing anything about it."

That's 16 years ago! If we've been collectively aware of this publicly funded racism and systemic oppression for at least 16 years (and I don't imagine it would take much digging to prove we've known about it even longer than that), by now we're collectively complicit. We've given a segregated Garfield High School the blind-eye stamp of public approval.

So, we still know that Garfield is segregated. Meanwhile, its teachers have been more focused on urging students to opt out of standardized tests in the past few years than on teaching, let alone standing up and forcing equitable change.

Garfield is still segregated. Are Garfield's teachers and administrators, its school board representatives and legislators going to do nothing about it? 

Are we still going to do nothing but talk about it once every 10 years?

Photo by Jesse Hagopian

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Gibbs-Bowling: 'Segregation is not an accident of American history. It is the story of American history.'

Like virtually everywhere else in the country, Seattle and the broader Puget Sound region are largely segregated based on race and income. This isn't without handfuls of exceptions, but on the whole, it's true.

Our schools are a reflection of our society. My son just finished first grade at Emerson Elementary in Seattle's Rainier Beach. There are quite a few white families in the neighborhood, and almost none are sending their kids to Emerson.

Nathan Gibbs-Bowling has written another sharp blog post, this time reminding us that this segregation was no accident:

We have the power and tools to dismantle segregated schools. To do so, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that somehow, organically, in every major urban area in our nation, a uniform pattern of segregated housing, segregated schools, and disproportionate policing practices simultaneously arose. That is, at best, magical thinking. Segregation was constructed by the government, at the behest of the people (for more on that construction see here, here and especially here). It something we chose to build; it is no different than the transcontinental railroad or the Washington Monument.

We make a choice, we make it everyday. When young, white professionals, live in a working class, mixed race neighborhood as long as they must, but flee to whiter wealthier confines, as soon as they can or when it’s time to have children, they serve as the foot-soldiers of neighborhood and school segregation. Most urban segregation is the result of the absence of white families--white flight. Put differently, people of color do not choose to live in segregation. Segregation is created by white families when they make the choice, conscious or otherwise, to leave communities, en masse. This framing is essential in understanding and solving the problem.

The hallways of my school tell this tale all too clearly. Abraham Lincoln High School was built in 1913 and we have portraits of every graduating class from 1914 through the near present. These are amazing historical markers. I often walk my students through the pictures. I point out famous grads, we discuss how the senior classes in 1942-45 were smaller because so many males enlisted. We note the appearance of the first afros. Every year the same question comes up… “What happened to all the white students?”

The photos are nearly uniformly white until the late 60s (there are a few Japanese students in the late 30s photos, but they vanish after the internment). And then poof somewhere between 1968 and 1972 everything changed. Lincoln is now 75% students of color; it is situated in a city that is 65% white, in state that is 77% white--nearly the perfect inverse. These figures are neither organic nor an accident. 

School segregation is the result of intentional policy choices and governmental interventions. It was constructed, and to end it we must deconstruct it through further interventions. We also must acknowledge that segregation was created at the behest of middle class white voters and business leaders and it can only be undone at their behest.

Let's revisit that last paragraph one more time, because it's important: segregation can only be undone by middle class white voters and business leaders because it was intentionally created.

But not here, right? Segregation? Racism? Couldn't be. I live in progressive Seattle, where everybody's raising chickens and going to farmer's markets and voting Democrat. Where the ills of a Trump-addled America are beneath us.

Or where, as a friend puts it, "gay people can smoke weed at their weddings, but black kids can't get an education."

To be clear, it was a triumph to have been able to vote in favor of marriage equality. But we can't rest on those laurels. We are closing our eyes as a city and as a region to the intertwined realities of race, class and the rest of our lives, and it seems to me that it's happening because it conflicts with our self-image. Our collective ego is so wedded to the idea of being unimpeachably liberal that we can't acknowledge our shortcomings.

As long as that persists, the racist, classist systems that built our segregated liberal bastion will persist as well.

Let's take a deep breath. Here we are. What are we going to do about it? What are we going to do differently?