There are places where “touring schools” is just “good parenting”, and yet that is not a universal experience. One mom shares her experience of living in a community where “touring” to determine a school’s quality is not the norm, and how she is navigating making equitable educational decisions with her family.
There is no Integrated Schools “formula” for choosing and enrolling our children in a new school, and what is important might take a different shape for families depending on their particular racial makeup. To illustrate that, Katherine, a mom in Los Angeles, shares her family’s kindergarten enrollment story.
Though getting to know a global-majority school through a tour or some other approach is valuable, it’s not sufficient to our commitment to integrate schools. It’s also about showing up in a way that honors the existing families and rich cultures that already exist at the schools we choose.
En masse, white parents have never committed to desegregating our schools, much less the messier and more radically hopeful work of integration. Even when we rally around ideas like diversity and equity, we allow “good” parenting to trump justice. And in so doing, we have hijacked the public in our public schools.
