Weary

I haven't posted in nearly a week. I am feeling like that box turtle in the photo, wishing I could just pull myself inside of my shell and shut out the world for a while. The assaults on the things I hold dear are so many, from the global (climate change, war) to the national (war, healthcare, education, reproductive choice) to the very local: a small group of people in my town have noticed that after 13 years of budget cuts the arts have been slashed, and they're upset because their incoming kindergartners will be getting a much reduced arts program in our school district. Their solution? To put together a small charter school (44 students) that will integrate the arts into academics (Pardon me while I get sarcastic: What a Novel and Innovative Concept!) And they have "shopped around" (literally in disguise, like secret shoppers) and decided that they want to house their little boutique school in my neighborhood school (where my child goes and I work) and share my principal. They have framed the debate with themselves as both the innovators and the saviors of our under-enrolled central city neighborhood school, while the district administration and board of education -- understandably hesitant because they've had to cut 7-10 million dollars from the budget every year since 1993 -- are obstructionist. And the people in the school community? They haven't even approached us, yet last week articles appeared in each of 3 newspapers claiming that it was an initiative coming from within our school.

I've been a teacher for 20 years. I have always integrated the arts into my teaching. For more than a decade I have watched with my heart in my mouth, as funding was cut and the standards movement which spawned No Child Left Behind moved into place. In the early grades I have seen play time, discovery, and creativity be superceded by the need to get kids reading at a certain level because they will be tested in third grade and they'd better be reading. My kindergartners are all supposed to be reading by June! And I still teach by integrating the arts into my curriculum.

So imagine how I feel that this group of people -- basically nameless and faceless to me -- stands on the outside and points their finger and says accusingly, "You're not giving children enough of the arts!" Imagine how I feel when they intone, "You know, some children learn academics better through the arts." It is personally offensive.

Even more offensive is the energy they are putting into getting something special and wonderful for their children, and leaving the thousands of other children in this school district -- many of them low income -- behind. 44 children will be served by this school. If they get their way, it will be dropped into a school that already struggles for resources, in a potentially very divisive scenario. If they are so concerned, why not send their children to a neighborhood school and get politically active, volunteer, write grants for artists in residence?

As far as I am concerned, charter schools are another form of privatization. In fairness, the concept has been used innovatively, for example a few years ago when our district was able to build a new middle school in a very low income neighborhood, so that the kids living there would no longer need to be bused hither and thither. But in this case and most cases it is driven by a small group of families who want a private school education balanced on the backs of everybody else.

I know public education is far from perfect, but I will be the best teacher I can be, and advocate for it with my last breath.

I am angry, but I am so weary of the battles.