KC schools’ fight to win over urban millennials touches questions of equity, race
"Census data sorted by The Star show that people 20 to 34 years old are packing the city’s central core between the state line and Troost Avenue, from the River Market through the Crossroads and midtown and south beyond the Country Club Plaza.
These are the potential education customers whom the district, charter and private schools are fighting over. Historically, many leave for the suburbs when they have children.
Green knows what city planners know, what residential property developers know and what the competing charter schools know:
These new and potential families want to stay, and they are pressing for school options.
There’s a reason popular charters like Academie Lafayette can’t expand quickly enough, said Mike Zeller, a former board member for the French language immersion school.
“The tide wants to come in,” he said. “The second half of the past century — where people were moving away from the center — was an anomaly. We just need to remove the barriers.”
But Green worries about complicated dynamics between communities and schools as they repair decades of lost trust in public education."
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article62077537.html#storylink=cpy