[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]Though I was born in Brooklyn, I’ve never been inside a New York City public school. By the time I came of age to attend school, the schools were so “bad” that private or parochial school was a must. Even in my inner-city Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, about half of the kids on my block weren’t enrolled in the public schools. All that was before the Reagan revolution’s endless tax cutting, “starve the beast,” supply-side, Republican economics became all the rage.
Now public schools are even “worse.” I hear nothing but bad things about the Los Angeles Unified School District. The chief complaint I’ve read again and again in the local media is that the school district is seventy-five percent Hispanic and eighty percent of the children attending are in poverty. From the way these kinds of figures are always glommed together with the negative characterization about the schools, I am to assume, that being poor or Latino or both is somehow a “bad” thing for schools. Then time and again, teachers regularly rail that the schools are bad because there’s too much bureaucracy, that too many of the children come hungry and unprepared, that there’s too much emphasis on testing, that there’s no room for creativity, on and on. Parents rail because the schools they see are ill-equipped. Art? Nope. Gym? Who needs it? Decent classrooms? Why bother building new schools when trailers can be stacked ten deep on any campus?
Seriously?
Given my grim memory of public schools in New York (I had neighbors who could neither write in cursive nor recite their times tables by fourth grade), and my present but even grimmer perception of public schools in our country’s second largest city, you won’t find it surprising that I have no intention of sending my own child to public school.
My dear husband, however, is a product of American public schools. Except for the years he was in a private graduate school program (where he met me), he was entirely publicly educated. From Long Island to suburban Colorado to that state’s flagship university, his schooling was entirely taxpayer funded (or at least, in the case of college, substantially subsidized).
The Days of Theory Are Over
Now that we have our own child, what always has been a theoretical discussion of public versus private has come to the fore. Sadly, my life, which once consisted of intellectual discussions of art, travel and politics, has devolved into far too many backyard discussions about private preschool admissions (already—he’s just 13 months old?!), and the terrible state of LAUSD public schools.
Years ago, I read a book (focusing on “white flight”) that postulated most parents glean their information about the local public schools from rumor and innuendo instead of facts. Rather than go down that road, such that before I know it I’m buying a house in La Cañada-Flintridge, Beverly Hills, South Pasadena or Manhattan Beach— just “for the schools”—I decided to do something almost no one I know has done. I signed myself up and took a tour of my LAUSD “home” school.
Public schools are for poor people.
I know it hurt to read that. (It hurt to write it.) But should I mince words? Lots of public goods are for those who can’t pay for the benefits provided themselves. When folks finally can afford it, many opt for what the private sector has to offer. Whether it’s buying a car rather than taking public transportation or paying for your own doctor over going to a public hospital, people generally prefer private if they can afford it. Isn’t that just how our Reagan disciples want it?
After an hour and a half in a public elementary school, I couldn’t open my wallet wide enough to send my child to the best school I could afford. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Actually, I know what I was expecting. I was just disappointed. I was expecting the American standard for middle of the road public elementary schools from the 1970s and 1980s when I was a child. Or I was expecting what I’ve seen on scores of television shows: Bright and airy classrooms (this is California, after all), with open windows, colorful walls, art, and sturdy but functional furniture. Lots of outside playground space, vast green lawns (no matter how environmentally unstable), a large auditorium with velvet seat cushions and curtains, a gymnasium and a cafeteria.
How Very Dreary
Maybe my expectations were too grand. I knew, intellectually, that schools haven’t really had any capital improvements in the last few decades, and many school classrooms were in “temporary” trailers scattered across campuses. The reality made me want to cry. I started my tour in a cramped classroom smaller than my living room with only one window, covered on the inside by heavy blinds, and on the outside by thick wire mesh. In order to be heard, the principal had to turn off the heater, which rattled the walls. I tried to imagine what it would be like teaching in that one room trailer every day. Cafeteria, no. The children just eat outside or in the classroom. Don’t even get me started on school lunches. I wouldn’t feed that processed crap to my dogs. A gymnasium, gosh no. With forty-five minutes of gym a week, it really would be wasted space. There was an auditorium, though. It was more functional than pretty.
It’s where we had a chance to observe a drama and music class. The teacher is not paid by LAUSD. This ebullient woman had a clear passion for what she was doing, and the children obviously loved her. But her continued employment is contingent upon whether the PTA can raise the funds to support her year after year. We saw more classes like that — each once a week and each not supported by our taxpayer dollars. These “extras,” I was told, set this school apart from other schools that must rely solely on tax monies.
Many of the parents on the tour weren’t even in our “district.” These were parents with “worse” local schools who were hoping for permits. I kept being reminded that this was a “good” school.
So after all this where do I come down on the public/private debate? Private, of course. All I could think during my hours there was that if I could pay my way out of this, like I pay my way out of coach on airline flights, or how I was able to buy a safer (but more expensive car), then damnit, I would. My child deserves better than this. Sadly, all our children do. But I can’t worry about them. Perhaps another child can win a permit and take my child’s spot. After all, I hear it’s a good school.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
