Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Randall and Goldman of the GOP on school assignments: Keep your inner-city kids out of "our" schools
Watch this video from October, 2009. It's Bill Randall, a candidate in today's Republican primary for Congress in the 13th District, campaigning with Debra Goldman, at the time a candidate for the Wake school board from District 9 in Cary.
Randall does the talking, Goldman the nodding, but the subject is Goldman's campaign for "community schools." And Randall couldn't be clearer: You who have invested in Cary, he says, have a right to your own schools, and the kids who are bused here from high-poverty areas of Raleigh and elsewhere have no right to be in them.
"Are we insensitive to the fact that there are blighted communities elsewhere?" Randall asks. "No," he answers, "we are not insensitive."
But, Randall declares, those blighted communities and the kids who live in them are NOT Cary's problem. They are somebody else's problem — they're a problem for "those" who are unfortunate enough to live in blighted communities, he says — because:
" ... where the citizens and parents have invested their lives and their livelihoods in getting those communities (he means Cary and other upscale places) to where they are — and continue to invest it them, is it wrong for them to want to sent their children to [schools in] those communities where they sacrificed to be residents? I say no, it is not wrong."
"We are relieving those of responsibility whose responsibility it should be," Randall says as Goldman nods in approval, "when we overstep them and say it's the responsibility of other communities to make sure that happens" — "that" being better schools in the blighted neighborhoods.
I stumbled on this piece the other day — it's about 03:00 — while I was looking for something else. It's very instructive about Goldman's thinking and the rest of the new school board majority as they vote today to change Wake's assignment policy and get rid of diversity — the mixing of rich and poor kids in "our" schools and "their" schools, that is.
It's Republicanism 101, really: If we just stop helping the underprivileged, they'd figure out for themselves how not to be underprivileged. I think I have that right.
Comments (3)
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I'm admittedly still trying to understand the whole bussing policy from a logistical point of view (beyond what I learned in my Californian history books), and it does seem to have some persuasive results behind it that it has worked well to let more folks have an equal access to a good education. So I agree that a "policy that balances proximity with an effort to avoid resegregation" sounds perfect, but whether that is what Wake has presently or not, is something I need to familiarize myself with more before I could agree. I do find the sentiment behind that speech in the video fascinating, though--I don't disagree with his point while at the same time disagreeing entirely with how he arrives there.
Gourmez is a play on my last name, Gomez, and Gourmet. It's a (not-so) clever pun play for my blogging. Becca works well, too. Thanks for replying!
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dislikeI'm with you. I can see both sides, and might well prefer "my" side if I lived in Cary, Wake Forest or other non-Raleigh locale. On the other hand, since I also see the point of diversity, maybe we could compromise and have an assignment policy that balances proximity with an effort to avoid resegregation? More or less, I think that's what we have now.
John Tedesco keeps insisting that the rising number of schools out of compliance with the 40 percent F&R goal is evidence that the current policy is a failure. He knows better, or should. What it's evidence of is a decade-long series of compromises where the 40 percent goal was allowed to slip while proximity was given greater and greater value.
Thanks for writing, Gourmez. (Gourmez? Interesting name(s).
Very clear in the "not our problem" philosophy, that's for sure. But I have to say, I still don't quite understand why it's wrong for Cary citizens to go to school in Cary and Raleigh citizens to go to school in Raleigh. This is the first place I've lived that doesn't assign schools according to addresses, so I see why that idea would be foreign to many people and seem bizarre to them. I'm in the can-see-both-sides camp.
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