Loving Public Schools Without Pretending They’re Enough

We’ve been talking a lot lately on social media about school choice, neighborhood public schools, and the idea that “good schools are everywhere.” We asked people why they weren’t choosing their local neighborhood school, and it caught some attention. Some of that conversation has landed well. Some of it has stirred up discomfort. And recently, a chapter leader named something important that we want to take seriously.

She said our “Public Schools Save Democracy” campaign kind of gave her the ick.

Not because she doesn’t believe in public education.
Not because she wants privatization or vouchers or segregation.
But because it felt too simple for a reality that is anything but.

She was naming something true:

• Public schools are struggling.
• They are chronically underfunded.
• They are deeply segregated.
• And many of them—both those that concentrate whiteness and those that serve mostly low-income students of color—are actively reproducing racism, classism, and white supremacy culture.

Because social media prefers things that can be said in the time it takes to tie your shoe, we have been short-handing some of these conversations, in order to carry our message to new eyes. And, since nuance isn’t something that makes videos go viral, if you don’t read the captions and then head to our website and listen to the podcast, it can be easy to come away with the idea that we think all public schools are thriving. Especially if you are listening through a social media mindset that is always looking for a fight. 

We need to long form this one, because it is really important. 

Public schools, as they currently exist, are not automatically democratic.

And they do not save democracy just by existing.

What We Mean (and Don’t Mean) When We Say “Public Schools Save Democracy”

When we say Public Schools Save Democracy, we are NOT saying:

• Every public school is doing right by kids.
• Families should tolerate harm in the name of the collective.
• Any critique of public schools is betrayal.
• Public systems are inherently just.

That kind of thinking would be dishonest—and frankly, dangerous.

Public schools are human institutions. They reflect the values, fears, policies, and power structures of the society that created them. In a country built on racial hierarchy and economic extraction, it would be shocking if our schools weren’t shaped by those forces.

Many (not all) public schools:

• Track students in ways that mirror racial and class divides
• Over-police Black and brown children
• Under-serve disabled students
• Prioritize compliance over care
• Normalize scarcity for some kids and abundance for others

Naming that reality is not anti-public school. It’s just being honest about our past and our present. 

When we say “Public Schools Save Democracy,” what we DO mean is that:

• We believe in THE PROMISE of what public schools can and should be
• Keeping this promise is necessary for thriving democracy
• We need to hold public schools accountable to this promise and we (Integrated Schools) operate from the belief that it’s only possible to do that when we’re invested in the system.

So Why Not Just Say “Public Schools Are Failing”?

Because that framing—especially when amplified without context—is exactly what fuels privatization, defunding, and abandonment.

At our Fall Chapter Gathering back in December, ​​Katelyn Jackson, Parent Organizer with Parents United for Public Schools helped frame the problem of the intentional degrading narrative created about public education by sharing a terrible, terrifying quote from conservative policy researcher Christopher Rufo: “To get universal school choice you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.” The corporate interest and political powers who want to dismantle public education (and democracy) directly benefit from a population that distrusts public education. When we play into this narrative we shore up the power and interests of the very few. 

So we don’t say ”public schools are failing” but rather that they are being failed. We fail our public schools when we ask them to fix the consequences of:

• Child poverty
• Food insecurity
• Housing instability
• Underfunded healthcare
• Structural racism

We fail our public schools when we strip them of resources and blame them for outcomes they cannot control alone.

When families with privilege opt out en masse, the harm compounds. Funding drops. Political will erodes. Segregation deepens. And the schools left behind are then used as proof that “public education doesn’t work.”

That cycle is not accidental. It’s political.

Democracy Is Not a Building — It’s a Practice

Here’s the nuance we’re trying to hold:

Public schools do not save democracy on their own. People practicing community care and building multiracial democracy through public schools might.

Democracy requires:

• Shared institutions
• Collective investment
• Ongoing struggle
• Accountability to one another
• And proximity across difference

Public schools are one of the last places where that could happen at scale. Not because they’re perfect, but because they are public. They are one of the few spaces where we are required—at least theoretically—to ask:

• Who belongs?
• Who decides?
• Who benefits?
• And who is missing?

Those are democratic questions.

Why Integrated Schools Pushes on Choice (and Still Holds Complexity)

When we ask hard questions about why families don’t choose their neighborhood public schools, we are not pretending those schools are universally safe, nurturing, or equitable. We are asking something more uncomfortable: 

How do individual choices—especially when patterned by race and class—interact with structural harm?

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. Families make real decisions under real constraints
2. Those decisions, taken collectively, shape the fate of public institutions

Our work lives in that tension. We are not here to romanticize public schools. We are here to interrupt the narrative that recasts the ways we’ve failed public education as the “failure of public schools” – a narrative deliberately crafted to sow and cultivate “universal public school distrust.” We are here not to deny or ignore public schools’ shortcomings, but to interrogate the ways our own choices exacerbate the problem; to hold ourselves accountable for choices that move the needle toward democracy rather than away from it.

Public Schools Are Where We Save Democracy

So maybe the truer statement is not that public schools save democracy, but that they are where WE save democracy. We do this not by insisting on loyalty to public schools at all costs, but by practicing integration ourselves and by:

• Demanding equitable funding
• Naming segregation honestly
• Supporting educators without sanctifying systems
• Listening families who leave and those who stay
• Refusing the false choice between critique and commitment

And yes: by asking families with privilege to reckon with the implications of their own choices. 

In a society that pays lip service to equal opportunity while sacrificing public good at the altar of individual “choice,” we ask families privileged enough to have real options and a cushion of support to ease any discomfort a sub-optimal situation might inflict to choose their local, non resource-concentrating public schools.

Integration is not a purity test; it’s a practice. Each family’s—each individual’s—practice is going to look a little different, and that’s ok. 

Like democracy, public schools aren’t perfect, and probably never will be. Practice doesn’t make perfect, after all, but it’s the path we take toward knowing and doing better—for our children, for our community. We believe the path toward true multiracial democracy winds through our public schools. Integrated Schools is not about loyalty to our schools as they are, but about keeping faith with what they can—what they (and we) must—become.