How a ‘New Secessionist’ Movement Is Threatening to Worsen School Segregation and Widen Inequalities

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/article/179870/how-new-secessionist-movement-threatening-worsen-school-segregation-and-widen-inequal



A new secessionist movement, anchored in the South, provides yet another reminder that “separate” still means “unequal” when it comes to the racial dynamics of the nation’s public schools.

The small middle-class town of Gardendale, Alabama, outside Birmingham, voted on November 12 to secede from the Jefferson County school district and then to raise taxes on themselves to finance the solo venture. Then, in March, Gardendale’s 14,000 residents finally got their own Board of Education. Soon after his appointment, one new board member, Clayton “Dick” Lee III, a banker and father of two, said he aspires to build a “best in class” school system “which exceeds the capabilities of the system which we are exiting.”

As Gardendale officials try to construct that “best in class” system in their prosperous community, they’ve relied on advice from their neighbors to the east in Trussville, a wealthy white suburb that broke away from the county schools in 2005. Gardendale, where about 86 percent of residents are white, is the fourth district since the late 1980s to secede from Jefferson County’s schools. About half the students in Jefferson County’s schools are either African-American or Latino, and 57 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch, the standard marker for poverty in public education.

With 36,000 students, Jefferson County’s shrinking catchment area is emblematic of a new secessionism in which cities, towns, even unincorporated areas renounce membership in a larger school district to strike out on their own. A trend befitting our individualistic times, secessionism, in many cases, cracks apart well-established, broadly defined educational communities into ever more narrow and ever more racially homogeneous ones. Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, new break away districts threaten to exacerbate resource disparities between wealthy and poor communities and sweep away any remnants of desegregation.

[seveneyes]

1. Segregation begins with political parties

Otherwise, Democrats, Republicans and others would all work together to keep everyone in harmony. Segregation is embraced by most everyone, therefore it is likely to continue.

[TBF]

2. Good comment -

and we know who is behind that discord - the people who benefit (the very rich). They encourage everyone to fight each other while they keep their eye on the prize. Blacks vs. whites, men vs. women, etc and they continue on collecting profits as they go ...

[heaven05]

3. 60 years after 'Brown vs Board of Education'

the ' good amerikkkans' in the south as well as many other areas are still fighting to keep people separate and unequal. What is wrong with some people that they can't accept difference as a plus instead of a superior vs inferior equation? 2014, 21st century and the stupidity and ignorance of the 1950's racism has never became history. Now it's disguised as classism, 'wealthy and poor communities'. Jim Crow went underground until the reality of a AA POTUS forced jimmy to show up again, everywhere. When are we going to march on Washington D.C., metaphorically, by the millions, and say to the cliven bundys, the sterlings and 'spring' patriots of this country, NO MORE racism? Never I presume.

[jwirr]

4. Hurt the children. That is their policy. Seriously I doubt they can do much in this area - they

already have all their children in private schools. Unless they are going to pay for poor students to go to their schools and that I also doubt.

[ashling]

5. Divide and conquer has always been the GOP strategy

LBJ in 1960: "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket."


http://www.nationalmemo.com/how-the-right-talks-about-race-even-when-theyre-not-talking-about-race/
How The Right Talks About Race, Even When They’re Not Talking About Race

[EEO]

6. Here are some issues...

Integrating school systems creates tension between different ethnic and economic groups because the parents of those students who are being bused to a lower performing school simply see their children as becoming victims in place of the students who would go to that school but are being bused to a higher performing school. The only way we are going to solve the inequality in our school systems is if we stop funding them locally through property taxes and do away with inane policies from legislation like No Child Left Behind where you reward high performing schools with more funding and punish low performing schools by withholding funding, assuring they will continue to fail.

[devils chaplain]

7. Local funding of schools...

Has always seemed extremely unfair to me. The kids that need additional funding actually get less of it because of their smaller tax base, and these school district secessions are exacerbating the problem even further.