School and city politics are never as simple as they seem (I’m still trying to figure out what the hell happened with Dyett), but this just seems like a good idea: an overcrowded affluent public school and a struggling, poorer school, in the same neighborhood, should combine and create a more integrated, equitable learning environment for everyone.
But of course, the actual recorded comments from the public hearing about the proposal is uncannily similar to that chilling scene of scared white privilege bigotry from Nikole Hannah-Jones’s much talked about TAL episode.
I’m not necessarily convinced that simply integrating schools—i.e., take these black kids over here and put them in this white school over here—will necessarily lead to the kind of rich learning experiences that I would wish for all of our kids. But in this case, my understanding is that the schools are in the same neighborhood. So, wouldn’t this simply be a truer representation of the people who live there? It’s like the Platonic ideal of an integrated school.