June 1, 2011
Dear neighbors,
This is a time of both reflection and looking ahead for me, as I conclude six years on the School Board at the same time that I am packing for our move to China. I am excited to see the details of the tentative teacher’s contract that was reached after 13 hours of negotiation on Tuesday. My sincere thanks go out to all who participated in that important work. Hopefully, the terms will be agreeable to the teachers and Board, and we will be able to ratify the contract on the night of my last full Board meeting – next Tuesday, June 7th, in the Edmunds Middle School Library.
Some of you may be experiencing déjà vu lately regarding the discussion of our district student assignment policies that has hit the newspapers. We talked about this issue a lot in Ward 5 and throughout the city, from 2005 to 2008. At the conclusion of those discussions, the Board voted 9-2 to create our magnet schools and implement student assignment policies that would lead to demographic balance. Those of you with young elementary students have lived with that decision, by ranking your school choices including magnet options. The anxiety over student assignments that has been felt in our ward has had nothing to do with that vote – but rather with the baby boom we are experiencing in the South End. The Board and administration are preparing for an August retreat at which that important issue will be addressed.
Back to the topic of the day, student assignment policy, it is important for everyone to understand that the motions on the table are not a change from current practice – they amount to getting rid of an old policy on our books that was drafted well before our creation of magnet schools. I really don’t have the energy to rehash our discussion about the downsides of high-poverty schools and the need for classroom balance. Our vote in 2008 was based on years of internal and national research, community discussions with more than a thousand Burlington residents, and thoughtful, sometimes painful, consideration of what is best for all our kids. All of this conversation began with pleading from teachers and administrators, who felt that they needed balanced classrooms to help all children succeed.
In looking back, I am enormously proud of what the Boards I have served with have accomplished. I am even more proud of Burlington itself, as a community with high ideals and a strong fabric of community and democracy. We had very hard and truthful conversations and then, with wide support, we laid the groundwork for a District in which best educational principles are followed, every school is excellent and equitable, and every homeowner and taxpayer benefits from our schools.
The discussion we will have on June 7th will revolve around the question of whether to "devolve" to a situation in which we maintained schools with wide disparities. I will certainly be voting no on that and yes on the motions. You all, of course, should feel free to write to me with your own views, and/or share them at public comment next Tuesday, which will begin at 8 p.m.
I said that I didn’t have the energy to rehash, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t be long-winded. For my last post as your representative, I am adding on the June, 2007 post I wrote with Fred Lane at the time of some very tough conversations. It is still a great statement of everything I believe:
On December 11, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. stepped to the podium in Oslo, Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. He chose to speak at “this lofty and historic platform” on the topics of civil rights, poverty, and war. At the conclusion of his speech, King reflected on the opportunities and challenges of his era, in keeping with the optimism of the moment:
“A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited a big house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together . . . a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other. This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.
In spite of the tensions and uncertainties of this period something profoundly meaningful is taking place. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away, and out of the womb of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. Doors of opportunity are gradually being opened to those at the bottom of society. . . Here and there an individual or group dares to love, and rises to the majestic heights of moral maturity. So in a real sense this is a great time to be alive.”
Burlington, Vermont is a long way from Atlanta, Georgia, and even farther from Oslo, but as a community we are engaged in trying to solve problems tackled by the world’s greatest and most compassionate minds for far longer than the forty-three years since King’s speech. Nonetheless, as we go forward, it is our hope that Board members, community members, parents, and students all will remember that our goal should be to raise a generation that will more successfully share this great “world house” than generations before them (including our own) that have failed to eradicate the scourges of prejudice, poverty, and war. We believe that integrating our children from the earliest ages is essential to this lofty goal, and that we all should aspire to nothing less.