The Seattle School District faces a $35 million budget shortfall and the need to recruit a superintendent. The Seattle Education Association's response to this crisis includes endorsing Brita Butler-Wall for school board. Butler-Wall's main objective is to ban all sweetened beverages (including chocolate milk) from the public schools. She is also in favor of putting limits on military recruiters in the high schools because
Many veterans have found that joining the military may open up a new career, but it also may result in injury, disease or death to oneself or to the citizens of other nations. The second possibility was not mentioned in any of the recruiting materials found at Garfield High School recently.And unless every brochure mentions these points, how else would a high school senior know what the military does?
Meanwhile, the Seattle Education Association continues to address serious issues (such as the gap in educational achievement between different ethnic groups) in ineffective ways:
Throuhout [sic] the 2002-03 School Year, our members have made varying degrees of progress in their comfort about being frank and honest about their questions about racial differences and willingness to explore white privilege.Yes, the only way to be honest about race is to "explore white privilege". (If white privilege were so automatic why is it that whites are so underrepresented in the nation's leading universities, both public and private?). But certainly many white people are privileged, which helps explain why the student body of the Seattle School District is 40% non-Hispanic white, while the population of under-18-year-olds in the city of Seattle is 50% non-Hispanic white, and in King County outside of Seattle that number is 69%. [US Census] In other words, large numbers of Seattle's white parents (presumably many of the most affluent and best educated), are opting out of Seattle's public schools for private schools and the suburbs.
One way, obviously, to narrow the "achievement gap" in public education is to drive the highest achieving students out of the public schools. The Seattle teacher union's focus on chocolate milk and race-baiting is not going to do very much to reverse that trend.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 07, 2003 12:49 PMActually, in and of itself, the beverage policy isn't so crazy. At least not compared to the alternative of non-functioning water fountains and sweetheart deals with beverage companies. Schools aren't 7-11's and they aren't under an obligation to provide kids with unlimited junk food.
But, yes, there are certainly more important things to be doing. And that "our members have made varying degrees of progress in their comfort about being frank and honest about their questions about racial differences and willingness to explore white privilege" is simply creepy.
Posted by: Otter on August 7, 2003 03:56 PMOne reason Seattle is so far to the left is that the city had busing for racial balance for years and years. Seattle had never had segregated schools and was better than most big cities at letting people live where they wanted, but that didn't matter to the school board. As you no doubt learn every day, Seattle's geography is not suited to moving large numbers of kids long distances through the city. The white middle class and working class moved out where they could, naturally.
Finally, after years of failure, the city was able to get rid of the worst part of the program although they still try to place students by race when they can, in defiance of I-200. Much of what is wrong with the Seattle schools is explained by the fact that this long fight drove out the rational people.
Posted by: Jim Miller on August 7, 2003 05:39 PMThis reminds me of last year's P-I "expose" of the unfair discriminatory disciplining of Seattle school children. It basically excused any unsocial or improper behavior of minority students as culturally based behaviors that were being misunderstood by teachers. The teachers were being implicitly told to ignore behaviors that are not acceptable in the real world. Generally, these were things that I would never tolerate from an employee or customer of my business. Our schools are willing to TEACH failure and non-adaptive behaviors. Why would any involved parent let their child be exposed to Seattle's schools if there were any other option?
Posted by: Pat H on August 7, 2003 09:07 PMThis white person is privelaged because my very middle class parents stressed education. Privelaged because I took advantage of educational benefits while in the Army to earn an advanced degree. Privelaged because I then worked my butt off.........
Posted by: Wallace on August 9, 2003 09:47 AMIt should come as no surprise to anyone that the teacher's union is tossing out red herrings. If there was a concerted, reasonable attempt to correct the problems with public education, the unions would lose their influence and power and significantly anger their liberal supporters. This applies to educations throughout the US as well as Seattle.
Think about it. There was a recent case in Massachusetts where the school superintendent fired some teachers for not passing a competency test which he also failed, more than once. As I recall, their union stated that the superintendent's failure was not that important, so he was allowed to keep his job. Unions thrive on incompetency.
Posted by: Interested-Participant on August 9, 2003 12:30 PM