I did not say that, so there’s no reason to think that.
I don’t think that and I didn’t say it, so I won’t be addressing it.
I am simply stating that Northerners are delusional about level of racial enlightenment, and I decline to both-sides it to spare anyone’s feelings. You’re not as superior as you might think.
Even assuming this to be true, there would be a good explanation. It’s because those who are too liberal sometimes get stuck in a “good is the enemy of the perfect” type mindset. We then end up with mid-term elections like 1994 and 2010 where a lot of hard earned work gets thrown away because of this mindset. Call me naive, but I think the country would be in a much better place had Clinton and Obama had Democratic majorities during their entire time in office.
I suspect charitable fundraising of any kind, including from minority led parent teacher associations, would come to a stand still if this were the case. If the PTA raises $5,000 and it has to go to the whole district, what benefit does this really have for their own children? We’re probably better off doing a better job funding schools through tax dollars. Tax dollars that aren’t necessarily determined by local property taxes. (Though I don’t know how they do it in New York.)
It is highly unlikely that PTA fundraising at a public school is going to be significant compared to the effects of public funding. Its’ not the PTA fundraising that usually makes the difference, it’s the local property taxes.
One night of fundraising at one of the private schools is more than the entire year’s fundraising at the public high school in our area.
It’s their money isn’t it? Or are you talking about the tax benefits?
Parents with the means and inclination to do this can send their kids to private schools.
Really? Cite?
Look, sure some good white people aint perfect, so?
Let us get rid of the openly racists, the Lost causers of the South, those that wave the CSA flag or wear nazi armbands, the morons in the right wing militias, etc- once we get rid of the deplorables, then we can work on making those on our side better. Until then- I have run out of fucks to give.
You’re missing the point of what I was saying. In the schools I was talking about, they’re in the SAME district, with the same property taxes and per-capita funding. So it’s all equal there.
Due to the district’s “neighborhood school” policy, there’s some de-facto segregation going on, and it is very evident in the academic performance of the schools and in things like the PTA fundraising.
Personally, I think it’s due to community differences in parental involvement in their children’s education and parental assertiveness with respect to the school district. From what I gather, at the whiter, wealthier schools, the parents ride the administrators and district like rented mules to get their way as far as how they think the school should be run, maintained, etc…
Some of it is probably that the district needs to have some balls and call the white parents’ bluff and say “Go ahead and sue. We can outlast you.” . But a lot is the fact that the parents get involved in a serious way, while other parents apparently do not.
I’d really suggest listening to the series, a lot of the comments in the thread seem to be from people who didn’t/haven’t. It addressed some of the points brought up.
To be fair - the series focused on a specific school and took a really close look at a specific time period. And also, to be fair, the series does have a bias.
But it was clear that, the amount of money raised by the PTA (or a PTA splinter group, depending on how you look at it) was obscene. It was significant to the effects of public funding. That is something that can be done when you have parents with means (or proximity to means). And it explored the results of the influence that that kind of funding could have on a school.
There was a comparison with a school that doesn’t allow parental donations and fundraising and noted some of the differences that happen between that school and schools where parental funding is allowed.
It was clear that (in this school) it wasn’t about parental involvement, that here, the common narrative that “those parents just don’t show up” wasn’t true. There were plenty of involved, present, active parents who were effectively ignored by school officials because they were also poorer POC.
Well, townhomes and condos DO imply the presence of a HOA, which is a slippery slope to Perdition.
This phenomenon was pretty evident at some school rezoning meetings in brooklyn a few years back. The white residents (of a very liberal area, 90+% of the those precincts voted for Obama) showed up and got vocal about the horrors of redistricting. At one point a black woman stood up and asked if we could have this conversation without assuming that her children were criminals mental deficients and drug dealers. That quieted them down but the advocacy didn’t stop and ultimately the white school stayed white and the black school stayed black.
In that case, some kids were actually going to attend school closer to where they lived but a bunch of black kids would end up at the white school and a bunch of white kids would end up at the black school.
You know in the case of school redistricting, it is most likely that the parents want to keep their kids in the same school, with their friends. Many parents and children want that, without being racist.
In some cases the parents just abandon the public schools altogether. I know in Kansas City Missouri they went thru desegregation in the 60’s and 70’s and basically all the whites moved to the suburbs. Those that left sent their kids to private schools. I know parents who live over there and they just assume private school is part of the cost of living there.
Now what we have is a very crappy district that any parents no matter what color with means either move to the suburbs, go private, or sneak their kids into another district. I know at my sons school lots of kids are dropped off by parents with Missouri license plates. They used to do checking but got criticized for kicking kids out.
Perhaps but then i have to wonder why a black woman stood up and asked if people would stop assuming her kids are violent criminals.
Even if we take unconscious racism into account, I believe most parents are primarily motivated to make sure their children have every advantage possible. But this relentless drive to provide their children with the best has come at the expense of minority children. For many decades, white liberals in New York have paid lip service to integration, diversity, or whatever was trendy at the time but their actions have exacerbated the disparate treatment of minorites rather than change it for the better.
And very few of the parents are going to admit out loud that they don’t want their kids going to school with too many black students. They might not even be able to admit it to themselves. So they’ll couch it in terms of concern over loss of academic resources or fears of violence.
I spot-checked the high-PTA numbers in this article and came up with only ~$150/student (compared to essentially zero in other parts of DC.)
So about a percent boost.
Granted DC != NYC. While the number of schools with truly high PTA raises is non-zero (per the podcast), that seems an exception.
I don’t know that there are any nyc public schools with truly high PTA raises. Parents with the sort of money to contribute to truly high pta raises mostly send their kids to private school. Stuyvesant is probably the best public high school in nyc, and it barely cracks top ten in nyc after a long list of private schools. If you can’t afford private schools, you are very likely to move to the suburbs where the public schools are on average much better. There are not enough wealthy public school parents to fund the sort of ginormous pta raises that would make a difference.
The bigger effect is probably (as other have mentioned), the ability to volunteer and have involved parent helpers in every elementary school classroom. A lot of that flexibility is the result of what you would call middle class wealth.
Just keep in mind it’s not necessarily all parental donations. The article I posted (soft paywall, sorry) mentioned them selling Christmas trees.
I just don’t know the breakdown.
In the podcast, the large fundraising isn’t from the parents’ own pockets but rather from their access to other wealthy people and organizations, such as the French Consulate. Donors like that would have opinions on whether they want to contribute to a wealthy private school as opposed to a public school. Either way, they’re not going to put their contributions directly into individual parents’ pockets. So parents presumably can’t use that money to fund private school tuition directly.
Also a lot of these wealthy, liberal, white parents are choosing public school because of personal values, not just affordability.
Sounds entirely backwards to me. Until THEY stop being so bad (something we can’t control) WE can continue doing this thing we know is wrong (even thought we can control that).
No, we’re not perfect. But that’s not an excuse. That’s just us saying we don’t live up to our own standards. That’s us saying we need to keep trying, to keep getting better, not an excuse to stop giving a fuck.
If you genuinely think something is wrong, you won’t say “well, I don’t have to stop until they stop doing something worse.” Imagine that logic in other situations. Yeah, I know slapping my child is wrong, but until we stop all those murderers, I shouldn’t have to do anything! Yeah, I know copping a feel on women is wrong, but until those rapists stop raping, I shouldn’t have to stop. Utterly absurd at best isn’t it? So why use that logic here?
If we have some leftover racist attitudes and bias, then we should be trying to stop them. At the same time, we can try to stop the more blatant racists. Not only is it possible, but the fact that we actually to stop being racist in our own lives shows we’re serious about others. It keeps them from having ammunition to call us racist.
Now, let me make it clear, I’m not saying there aren’t difficulties. I’m saying that there’s no reason we can’t work on those difficulties because worse racists exist. I’m saying the attitude of “I [or WE] don’t have to change until THEY change” is a bad one.
We white liberals have a segregation problem with schools and housing (at minimum). We need to work on fixing that. Pointing at the worst racists when this comes up is a distraction at best.
The podcast concludes with an example of a series of public schools run by a private entity. They have been somewhat successful in maintaining equal access across racial lines by limiting the power of white parents to influence the school. That’s where the idea of naming charitable contributions to individual schools comes from.