Through Dorris’s Eyes:
Why should the citizenry be concerned about the closing of schools? Some citizens have not given school a thought since leaving. Others only think about schools at tax times whereas, others only think about schools when there is a problem or a major disruption that flashes repeatedly in the media.
Schools for African Americans were forbidden and inaccessible in our past, just 150 years ago. Quality schools were even more rare coming out of enslavement. When it came to measuring competencies against a national norm expectations were not there for excellence for we know why we were in such a predicament. Schools, we must understand has many purposes. It can be labeled the cornerstone of a community. When our education has told us what a cornerstone and the value of one, then we may begin to understand the core value of schools and easy access to education.
Back in the day as noted earlier, a school house was left to the black church where communities who sought to improve supported the schools thinking that through education communities would improve and therefore, the quality of life would be better for future generations.
What does an improved quality of life bring to a community without the responsibility of what to do with those individual improvements? Why should educators and parents labor in the vineyard and see no benefit or very little yield from their labor? Well, America and Houston specifically, we have a problem that has revisited itself from the past.
When young parents move into a neighborhood, realtors taut the schools in the community. Parents are actually given the “feeder” pattern for your address to the cornerstone. Parents are told the names of the elementary, middle and high school your child is zoned to attend. Realtors even tell parents that the school district even offer options for parents to opt out of sending the children to their zoned school and that they can research charter, and special academic public schools.
What parents are facing today is triple fold as it usually is for parents: limited budget, limited amount of time to stay on top of all matters relating to the children’s education and limited knowledge of the rules and regulations of the public education bureaucracy. To make the matters worse, the elected school board officials are not there to represent the needs of the families within the district form which they were elected. Why not you ask, probably in quite a perturb manner? They are elected as trustees, which means that they work to do what they feel to be in the best interest of the school district as a whole.
To be Continued Next Week Until Then…
May God bless and I will see you next week.