Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

An article in today’s NYTimes by three education reporters, Eliza Shapiro, Erica Green, and Juliana Kim, reports that Black parents’ distrust of public schools is contributing to the problems those schools face in reopening… and 

“Education experts and Black parents say decades of racism, institutionalized segregation and mistreatment of Black children, as well as severe underinvestment in school buildings, have left Black communities to doubt that school districts are being upfront about the risks.“

“For generations, these public schools have failed us and prepared us for prison, and now it’s like they’re preparing us to pass away,” said Sarah Carpenter, the executive director of Memphis Lift, a parent advocacy group in Tennessee. “We know that our kids have lost a lot, but we’d rather our kids to be out of school than dead.”

And yet NYTimes written in most cases by these same writers echoes the memes that UNIONS are the main obstacle to reopening, The fact is that teachers unions want the same thing as Black parents: they want assurances that the facilities where they work and Black children spend 6 hours a day are safe. The “severe underinvestment in school buildings” is coming home to roost along with the “institutionalized segregation and mistreatment of Black children”. I hope that billions we are spending now will go toward solving THIS problem and the simplistic blaming of unions for closures ends.

Unions want schools to have the infrastructure needed to provide safe and healthy environments… and so do parents: 

Blaming unions for the institutional failures of public education falls short of the mark. The unions, Boards, and– yes— administrators all own some culpability for the deficiencies of public education… and, as the writers rightfully note, the pandemic is bringing those deficiencies to light. 

And superintendents and educators are facing mounting pressure to finally confront the trust problem.

“Covid-19 has blown the doors off our schools and the walls off our classrooms,” Sonja B. Santelises, the chief executive of Baltimore City Public Schools, which began reopening in November, wrote in a recent opinion article. “No longer are our practices hidden behind doors or buried in the pages of policy and collective bargaining agreements; they are now in full view on a screen.” She added, “And our parents are watching.”

Sonya D. Horsford, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said the moment presented an opportunity for public schools to rethink much of what was not working for Black children.

“It’s a great time to have that conversation about the source of mistrust and what we want as part of this recovery,” Ms. Horsford said. “Is it really just getting kids back into schools?”

It IS a great time to have this conversation… but it will never happen as long as the media and politicians fall into the simplistic “unions vs. parents” or “unions vs. administration” narratives. The REAL issue is the practices hidden behind doors or buried in the pages of policy and collective bargaining agreements… collective bargaining agreement that BOTH parties accepted and agreed to. Here’s hoping the conversations about practices hidden behind doors or buried in the pages of policy and collective bargaining agreements emerge and strident arguments about the role of unions stops.