Maybe You Can Fight City Hall

Whew! I know I said I would update on my parent group's big Meeting With the District, but my life has been thrown a few curve balls the last couple of weeks. I feel like a goddamn outfielder. Blindfolded with no glove.

So, the meeting: the result was better than we had even hoped for. Our goal was for the district to hear our concerns and to work toward addressing them, our hope was that the district would agree to partner with us in some capacity in order to do that. We knew the partnering thing might be kind of a longshot. A representative from one of the community advocacy groups has been sitting on our meetings for support. She has been involved with parents in other districts who have tried similar things, and their districts have told them no, they don't need the parents' or communities' help. So we didn't know what to to expect. We thought maybe they'd throw us a bone and let us sit in on some board meetings, maybe take our info and say thanks, they'll take care of it and get back to us. We figured they would be defensive and bring out all the info on programs they've implemented, and why this shouldn't be a problem because they've done A, B, and C.

We worked really hard, starting out with stories from the families, and pulling from that a document covering what we believe to be the root causes of what our kids deal with. From there we came up with a presentation to bring before the district. We had prioritized all our issues and decided to focus on addressing the top three: Personnel (hiring, training), Discipline, and Expectations & Programs. Sounds simple, but it was a lot of work and emotion to get to that point.

They agreed to meet with us, as you read in the other post. The superintendent himself, and all three of his assistant superintendents, as well as others from the district. We had some support from a couple of community groups and also a representative from our city's new Diversity Commission. We were nervous, y'all. We're just parents, we've got no budget, we're not a non-profit, we don't get paid for our hours on this, we haven't had facilitator training or community organizer training. We work, some of us are single parents, and when it came down to being in a room facing this row of white faces with Ph.D's ... it was a little intimidating.

But we did it, and I think we did a really good job. The district was not defensive. They thanked us for coming, for bringing our expertise in this area. Said they realized there were problems, and they would like some help in how to go about addressing those problems. They agreed that the face of our district is changing, as far as the students, but it is staying lily-white as far as the teachers and administrators.

They agreed to work with us.

Not just "hey you can come to some meetings, thanks for these resources, we'll keep you updated," either. They agreed to form three teams to address this. Yes, I said three. One for each of our areas, so that the process wouldn't be too linear and drawn out, because nothing would get done that way. Wow! And, check this out: they agreed that this effort needs the backing of those actually in positions of power, so on their side, each team will be represented by a top level administrator. I'm talking the assistant superintendents themselves, y'all. Each of them will be on a workgroup. We will be the other parts of the workgroups. We said we believed the students themselves need to be involved, and they said yes to that as well. The workgroups will come together as a whole group periodically.

How 'bout them apples?

Hell yeah.

So we'll see. We're cautiously optimistic. One concern is that we all be operating from the same level of understanding. At the meeting, we brought up the issue of training -- it needs to be deep, ongoing, and across the board. Not some hour-long diversity training that you take once a year, makes everyone feel good, and checks off the institution's diversity requirement for that year. That's not good enough. And it's not good enough to send 2 or 3 people from a school to a deep useful training, and say we're done. What about the other 350 teachers, administrators, counselors at that school?

The sensitive issue will be their level of training -- they let us know at the meeting they themselves have had loads of training, they recognize the importance, yada yada. We'll see. I want to know their understanding of the issues. I want to know how they define institutional racism, white privilege, I want to hear their understanding of how that differs from personal prejudice, because it's a whole different thing. In order to be effective, we need to operate from a common base.

It's one thing for them to say "yes, there issues, yes we need to address them," but if our understanding of where those issues stem from is fundamentally different, then the process of coming to solutions will fall apart. As one of the parents put it,

It's about seeing the light, not just feeling the heat.

Bingo. We want to see the consciousness raised, not just compliance under pressure.

Another concern is they seem very much to want to take charge, so we're going to have to be mindful of how WE want to organize ourselves and the direction that we want to move. There are different ways of doing business, and as encouraged as I am by their positive response, we'll have to be mindful of being "guided" to where they want us and along their path. They, of course, are the experts with school administration, but we are the experts in this arena. We just have to remember that.

Anyway, it was a very positive result, and I'm really encouraged. It's more than we expected, that's for sure.

I was so proud of Teen Demon at the meeting! She "drove" the powerpoint for us, clicking the slides and all. After the presentation, she spoke up and told the superintendent about a survey that her Multicultural Club had done at her high school. The survey to was to find out how students of color feel about the school climate and where they fit into it. The superintendent said that sounded like a great idea, he'd be interested in seeing the results. At this point, Teen Demon could've just said, great, thanks and the meeting would've moved on, but she spoke up again and told him that she would like to see this survey implemented district-wide. She said she believes it's important for the administration to understand what the students themselves are feeling about their environment and their experiences, and that it's necessary to do that for the whole district, not just one school.

Go, baby! She was so confident, too. She told me she definitely wants to be on one of the work teams, and wants to start now. She friggin' rocks. She should run for President.

I am going to work on the Personnel work group. I kind of had to adjust my thinking on that; that was the section that I presented at the big meeting -- again with the "it's better for them to hear it from a white person" in that subject: if a white person says we need more teachers of color, it must be true, because they don't have an ulterior motive! It's not self-serving if they say it, they are just being objective! Whatever. I really hate that and it makes me very uncomfortable, but there it is. (And we could totally see the different reactions, too, both to my section and to my summary. Grrr.) Anyway, that was the section I presented, but I really didn't feel qualified to take on that workgroup, because it involves hiring as well as training, and I just felt that a white person meeting with different groups for recruiting purposes might be kind of off-putting. So I had volunteered to work with Expectations & Programs. I actually do have some experience with implementing programs when my kids were younger.

I ended up questioning that though, based on the reactions of the other 3 women I'm doing this with. I called one of them later and asked her to talk about her opinion on that. Turns out they believed that I should be doing Personnel, that it would set off fewer defensive reactions, that a white person insisting on changed hiring practices will be taken differently than a person of color saying we need more people of color. Well. Basically, "they're your people, honey, they'll work with your ass."

I really didn't feel all that comfortable with that assessment. But this work is not about my comfort level. It is not about me deciding what's best. I think that being an ally in this kind of work involves working with people of color and deferring to their judgement on things that they have a deeper understanding of than I do. I have a role in this work, but it is ultimately not "my" work, if that makes any kind of sense. White people as a whole (not all individuals, don't get your panties in a bunch) have been making choices and deciding "how things will work" for people of color since this country got started. Our comfort level (as a whole) has always come first. If we want to challenge how the power structure of our society supports that, we have to learn to work in different ways. So I needed to listen to my friends and trust their judgement of this, even though it kind of makes me squirm.

Again, I know I sound all soapboxy with this stuff sometimes. As I said in my last post about it, it's not like I woke up and decided to make this shit up. It's a result of having a unique "window" into this shit, via my children and the experiences of our family. How can I deny this shit, when I SEE the different reactions I get when I walk out of the house alone, when I walk out with my kids, and when I walked out with my Ex in the past? How can I deny it when I see the different reaction I get from the principal as compared to the reaction parents of color get? It is there, and no, you wont' see it often as a white person. Of course we don't see it, it doesn't happen to us. It is not our reality.

Damn, I started off just to tell about the results of the meeting, and I did go ahead and get up on that box again, didn't I? It's just that this stuff is real and it's important, and it's frustrating when people don't see it or believe it's there, or realize the impact it has on these young people.

OK, that's all. We meet with them today at three for our first big group meeting.