S11E17 – The Intersection of Private Decisions and Public Responsibility

S11E17 - The Intersection of Private Decisions and Public Responsibility

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is The Intersection of Private Decisions and Public Responsibility.

Dr. Val: And we know that picking a school for your child is a very personal decision, and that there are a lot of things that you weigh when you're making that decision. And it can feel very stressful before your kids get to school and every day until they graduate.

Andrew: Yes. The personal decision of where to send your kids to school, which, depending on where you are, it looks like a school choice process. Maybe it looks like where you decide to live. Certainly the option of choosing where to send your kid is not available to everyone.

But it's one of the privileges we think about when we think about people coming to school choice with privilege.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And so, we've had many conversations with guests about why they have chosen different schools, the experience at those schools, and what has happened as a result of choosing those schools in those environments. And we will continue that today.

Andrew: Yes, today we're actually diving into something we haven't really talked a whole lot about on the podcast before, which is people who choose private school. And we haven't spent a lot of time talking about it, in part because, you know, it's a small percentage.

Depending on where you are, that percentage can vary. But across the country, it's something like eight or 9% of people choose private schools, so,

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: It's not a huge impact on the overall landscape. But, I have had a tendency to bring, uh, a decent amount of judgment to folks who have opted out of the public school system. Certainly folks who would otherwise seem to be people who are supportive of the idea of public education, but who have opted out. And, I think that's certainly part of why we haven't really talked a lot about it.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I mean, for our listeners, of course we listen and we don't judge, until we actually kinda do judge.

Andrew: We try, we try.

Dr. Val: Right! We try. And, I have to agree with you, Andrew. When someone says they're choosing the private option over the public option, I usually think about it from an educator standpoint. And I know that the educators at private schools aren't necessarily better than the educators at public schools. And so, I'm, I really struggle with like, why are you choosing this particular environment instead of the public one that's available to you?

Andrew: Particularly when that option is free and is part of supporting–

Dr. Val: Right.

Andrew: –you know, this institution that I think we both believe is really crucial to having a multiracial democracy is our public education system.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: This is a similar experience that our guests today had. They're both educational researchers.

They were looking around at their colleagues, the people they were working with, who were also working on education research. And were also expressing very pro-public school ideas. And, were opting to send their kids to private schools. And rather than writing those people off and just simply judging those people, they decided to use their research skills to try to figure out what was going on there. What was happening to lead to those choices, and what the impact of those choices were.

Dr. Val: And let's give a round of applause to people who don't just sit on their biases and their judgment thrones! [Val chuckles]

Andrew: Absolutely.

Dr. Val: And actually, and actually want to ask additional questions about what is happening and what people are thinking. I'm glad they took the time to ask that question, because I think the conversation today really pushes us.

Andrew: Yeah, so, uh, Lisa Sibbett and Stephanie Forman are educational researchers in the Pacific Northwest, and they found a large number of families who had started out in public school and then left for private school, for various different reasons. And they had a number of long conversations with them about why that was, about how they felt about it, about what the experience was like. And then they turned that into a research paper that is just a fascinating look at the choices that people made, the impact that that had. And, actually our Seattle chapter leader, Katie Strange, introduced me to Lisa and Stephanie over email. They shared some of their work. I thought it was fascinating that we should probably have 'em come on and, uh, and talk about it.

Dr. Val: And, and you'll hear a lot in the conversation, but one thing that you'll hear is the idea of the rules of engagement specifically around White fragility. Robin DiAngelo wrote about these rules of engagement, essentially saying that if we want to engage White people in conversations around racism and anti-racism, there are certain rules that we have to follow. So if you have not checked out Robin DiAngelo's Rules for Engagement around White Fragility, check that out. We'll put them in the show notes.

Andrew: Absolutely. All right. Should we take a listen?

Dr. Val: I would love to.

Andrew: Let's do it.

[THEME MUSIC]

Lisa: I'm Lisa Sibbett. I work at various universities in teacher education in the Pacific Northwest. I live in Seattle and I’m a former high school teacher. And Stephanie and I grew up together.

Andrew: Oh, fun!

Stephanie: Yeah. So my name is Stephanie Forman and I'm a research scientist at the University of Washington. I'm also a White mom. And that also comes into play–

Andrew: Yeah.

Stephanie: –with the research that Lisa and I did. Yeah, and it's very connected to the experience that we have as White people living in the city, living in diverse mixed neighborhoods. And trying to figure out how to live well and be community members, and not just gentrifiers.

Andrew: Yeah. Lisa, do you have any kids?

Lisa: No I, I don't have any kids. But I think a lot about the responsibility who do not have children–

Andrew: Hmm.

Lisa: –to families. So I actually have a newsletter about that, called “The Auntie Bulletin” that's about kinship relations and how we support families when we ourselves don't have kids. So this kind of larger question about our responsibility to other people's children has been a big preoccupation of mine for many years.

Andrew: Yeah. Why? What made you care about that And then also that sort of as it relates to social justice and racial justice?

Lisa: You know, I grew up in a really big family. My partner and I never wanted kids and then sort of right as I was approaching the end of my fertility years, I suddenly did want kids.

Andrew: Hmm.

Lisa: And we started trying, and had a I had a lot of lost pregnancies, and it was kind of a long wrestle and process of letting go of the idea of having children of our own.

Andrew: Hmm.

Lisa: Fortunately though, we live in co-housing with some really good friends of ours who have kids. So, we eat dinner together, like, four nights a week, and so, we have a very involved kind of kinship relationship with the family that lives next door to us.

And then the educational justice angle, you know, when I started teaching I was working in a poverty impacted and ethnically diverse urban school in Seattle.

And then during the recession, lost had to move to a wealthy White school district, which was the only school districts that had any jobs at that time. And so I was trying to teach for social justice to, like, rich White kids. And it was so hard to figure out how to do that. And so,

Andrew: Yeah.

Lisa: I actually went back to grad school to research that and figure out, like, how do we help get, uh, White right people really board in a way that's actually constructive and not destructive with work toward social justice. So, all of those projects kind of, I think, dovetail around this idea of our responsibility to other people's children.

Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we often talk about parents and caregivers, and it sounds like you are, you are certainly a caregiver to a number of children, even if they are not directly related to you. Stephanie, why do you care?

Stephanie: Yeah, I mean like Lisa, I was a teacher. We grew up in a more rural kind of environment. But I think coming to live in the city, I was a bilingual education teacher. That was the world that I was living in, but there's a lot of questions about how to do right as a White person teaching children that are not White.

Andrew: Yeah.

Stephanie: And so that was my experience. There's a lot of ways to do that… badly.

Andrew: Right. No shortage of examples of that, right? Yeah.

Stephanie: There's a lot of harm that you can do in your well-meaning attempts to do right.

Andrew: Yeah.

Stephanie: My work also kind of examines that question about “How do you do right by kids? How do you build schools to do right by kids?” and “How do you think about leadership and policies that you create so that you can make sure that you're doing right by those kids?”

And then as a parent myself, it's much more personal, right? Those are ways that I interact with schools as a professional, and then having the lens of being a parent, the multi-faceted nature of those problems just becomes much more present and much more clear. That's where the personal meets the professional.

Andrew: Mm. Yeah. And where the, you know, kind of academic version of the research and then your own children that you care about entering a system, and all of a sudden you're like, “Oh, wow! This feels a little different. This is not just an intellectual exercise anymore. This is about my heart.”

Stephanie: Yeah. We have values. And how do we live those values?

Andrew: Yeah.

Stephanie: And how do we take in, into account the context that we're in,

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: In order to figure out what those values mean and and the way to do that.

I think Lisa and I both have enjoyed our collaboration, because we both think about that in, in our personal lives and in our professional lives.

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: And a lot of that revolves around children in schools.

Andrew: Yeah. And children in public schools seem like you both have a, a pretty strong commitment to public schools. Tell me about that sort of love for public schools.

Lisa: We both went to public school. We went to school together. And it feels like in the world of educational research where, where we we been trained, there's a huge amount of lip service to public education as a necessary engine of democracy.

Andrew: Yeah.

Lisa: And a place where people who are different from each other learn to live well together.

Andrew: Yep.

Lisa: And respect each other, and support each other. And schools are one of the only, sort of, public domain places that people from all walks of life in the United States actually still come together. We don't have that many other–

Andrew: Right.

Lisa: –civic spaces anymore. There's a lot of lip service to this in, in educational research, but the backstory to our own research study was that we have colleagues who research public education and the value of public education, and then they send their kids to private school.

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: I think this also relates to the context in which we're living, right? We live in urban neighborhoods and we value things like diversity. We live here because we want to be part of a dynamic, thriving community, and we work in roles that are in support of public good, right?

Lisa and I share a lot of common friends. We share a lot of common colleagues, so this is something that we talk about a lot. And I was, in particular, as a parent of kids in public school, I was really in keeping with my values. I worked in public school, I care about public school, I wanted my own children to go there.

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: And my kids are actually having a great time in their public school. It's a place that feels like the right place for them, and the right place for us to be so that we can be participating in our community. But then we would have experiences where our colleagues or friends would leave.

Andrew: Right

Stephanie: And for me, that was really lonely. Because I felt like going to public school and having my children in public school was something that I wanted to do with people in my community. It was a commitment that we were making together. And then when I saw folks leaving, it felt like a betrayal. It felt like I was the only one who was kind of this for the good of all of our children.

And so that's really where the conversation started between Lisa and I, about how do we understand what our friends and colleagues were doing. You know, how do we make sense of people we thought were really aligned with our values, and really aligned with this approach, and then were doing something that seems so antithetical to that mission. And I think my reaction was to have a lot of judgment.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: To think these people were just being hypocrites, or that they were going against their values. And that felt bad. I didn't wanna feel that way about the people in my community and people that I respected, and whose commitments I respected.

So, we thought here we are with a bunch of skills as researchers. Why not use them to start investigating this dilemma and just try to understand what's going on with folks when they're having this experience? So that was what launched our work, was just this feeling of being bewildered and, and being lonely in this. And wanting to really understand why people were doing this thing that seemed out of character.

Andrew: Yeah. I, the, the judgment part I definitely resonate with. I'm sure there's plenty of, of listeners who are like, “Oh yeah, people leave for private school, whatever.” Ready to just sort of write them off.

What I really appreciate about your work is that you hold a lot of space for them and, you know, look at this choice squarely and, and take it seriously with certainly more grace than my inclination is to bring to it, which I really appreciate!

Was it just, like, the personal relationships? Was it this, like, feeling of loneliness? Like, why were you willing to not just write this off as another example of White opportunity hoarding and move on from it?

Stephanie: I will say that that has been a long process for us to get to that place (at least me in particular), that I felt angry at some of the folks that were close friends of mine, that were colleagues, who you know I thought were working together. I thought we were doing this important work that we both believe in. And now you're abandoning this mission that we share.

So, it took a while I think of listening to people's stories for me to kind of make peace with the fact that you could be two things. Right? You could be both holding a commitment to, to everybody's children, to our public institutions to building our strong community, but also need to prioritize your family.

That was not a quick realization on my part. That took not only just listening to people's stories, but I mean that's the beauty of research is it gives us a process to really analyze and think carefully about the stories people are telling us, and dig into those details. And I think we saw both, right? We did see people who we would say “This feels like opportunity hoarding.” But we also saw a lot of people that were gutted by this experience. And so, those were the kind of folks that helped me think a little bit more deeply about what it can mean for folks, to have to carry those, those two things together.

Andrew: Yeah.

Lisa: Steph, I, I love how you put that in. I am just thinking, talking to all these people, and listening to their experiences. And hearing from some people who not only were morally struggling so hard, but we heard from families who tried for years and years to make it work in public school. Then we we also heard families who were, like, in October kindergarten like,

Andrew: Right.

Lisa: “Well, she's scared of the bigger kids, so we're gonna move her to private school.”

So, just a big range of, like, when you dig into the real stories, what's really going on there.

And then the other thing that was really helpful, was actually people read our drafts, including the study participants. Some of whom were like “Hey, I don't think this is a real fair representation of me.”

Andrew: Hmm.

Lisa: Because our first draft was much less generous toward them! [Andrew chuckles] And also having outsiders read that and say, “You know, you need to represent these people in a more loving way, especially if our objective is to support people in changing their minds, or changing their behavior, then we can't actually subtly or directly throw them under the bus.”

Andrew: Right.

Lisa: We actually have to be on the, position ourselves on the same team if there's gonna be any, like, movement in a good direction.

Stephanie: And that's been helpful, I think, in thinking for me about how to have interactions with other families, is that it was really clear from what we heard from participants that shame was not gonna help them persist.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Right.

Stephanie: That my judgment was not the thing–

Andrew: That wasn't the one, the one thing that was missing. That if you just judged them hard enough! [Laughter] Right.

Stephanie: Yes. That was not the thing that was, like, gonna keep them in public schools even when their child was really having a hard time. So, we wanted to really balance, you know, holding people accountable for the choices that they were making, but also having a little bit more just empathy and understanding of the kinds of things that were driving them. And to make visible the fact that they weren't doing this without, like, a lot of harm to their own senses of self.

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: They weren't just sort of like gleefully leaving a hard space for this, you know, wonderful experience that they had ahead of them. That they felt lingering guilt. A lot of them wished that they could go back. They wanted to do it differently.

Dr. Val: Did they… go back?

Stephanie: You know what, some of them did!

Lisa: Some of them.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm

Stephanie: Yeah. We did hear from some folks that they did return, or they were in the process of returning. And those were really great stories, actually, because it felt like some of the reasons that people had left, they had sort of figured out. Right? So we talk about that being sort of a model for others that you could potentially raise, that once you're gone doesn't mean you're gone forever.

Dr. Val: Right. You can always choose again. Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: Yeah. And that there's reasons to come back too.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: That it's like, you do lose out on some really great things when you leave public school. You lose out on the community that you've been part of. So, coming back, you don't have to feel like you're ostracized forever. That you can regain that connection to the community that you've lost. So, those folks who did return are like hopeful beacons for us.

Dr. Val: I don't know. I'm just, I'm just, I'm just really struggling because regardless of how hard it was, it was a choice to another public school, not to a private school.

Lisa: Mm-hmm Mm-hmm

Dr. Val: Right? We have made multiple choices to move public schools because we were like “Eh, this one's not working, so let's go to another public school.” And so, I'm listening and not judging but I am wondering about their commitment to the public school idea if the private was the next immediate step.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: Our context also is a little different. Where we live in the Northwest is like a low choice context. In some parts of the country, there are all of these different options that parents have at their disposal, and that's just not true in our situation.

It's kind of like your neighborhood school or a limited number of, like, gifted and talented or other option programs. And then there's private. So in a lot of ways–

Dr. Val: Mmm.

Stephanie: –our context is a little bit more extreme.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Stephanie: Which for us, it's useful because it really makes the difference between public and private, very stark, right? There’s not middle ground there. There's not charters, there's not things that are kind of private, but kind of public. So,

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: It helps make that difference very clear. But I think around the country, a lot of folks are, are gonna think about all of those intermediate steps that you might go through.

Lisa: Yeah

Andrew: It's the same action, right? It's the same “pulling out of my community and going somewhere else.” And you see it really starkly because the options are limited. But in a place like Denver, it's using the school choice process to go to a quote, unquote better school.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Buying a house in the gentrifying neighborhood because it's cheaper, but then using the school choice process to opt into a different school. So we see that that same tendency show up.

There's this sort of broad framing that you use to, to break down these considerations into, like, collectivism versus individualism. That there's some values that people hold around community, around “what's good for all kids, not just my kid.” And then these values that everybody holds around “what's good for, my children or the children that are important to me.” And that there is certainly at, at least a perception that those things are often intention. I think there's probably real ways in which those things are often intention.

One thing I really appreciate about the work is that you are not either a collectivist person or an individualistic person. You are not either all in on one thing or the other. These are not binary choices, but that everybody is grappling with kind of holding both of these things at the same time. Right? And I think that framing helps not write people off. So, in this moment, somebody maybe leaned a little more towards the individualistic, how do we, you know, bring them back into the fold to continue to think about their sort of collectivistic tendencies.

And so, you sort of set this up as an ethical dilemma. This is not “right versus wrong,” but this is “right verse a different right.” Or varying degrees of “right.” Help us understand that, kind of like, ethical dilemma and the move away from the binary kind of right or wrong thinking.

Lisa: Yeah, there's a great philosopher Rushworth Kidder who talks about ethical dilemmas as being a tug of war between right and right. So he says if you have a “right verses–

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Lisa: –wrong” choice, that's just moral temptation.

Andrew: Hmm.

Lisa: But an ethical dilemma is when you're actually like, “both sides have merit.” And in this case, the, the choice around exiting public school and moving to private school is often because your child is in extreme distress.

Most of the people in our study did so because their kid was having a major, like, mental health crisis or something like that. And they had felt a strong sense of positive responsibility to their child. And understandably so, and rightfully so.

Andrew: Right.

Lisa: But they also were in this, like, deep tug-of-war their sense of responsibility to the collective, and their community, and their neighborhood, and other people's children.

There was nobody in our study, no matter how much collectivism they exhibited, who didn't also exhibit some individualism. And we really chalk that up to living in a capitalist society where we have to–

Andrew: Hmm.

Lisa: –compete. We can't really opt out of those kinds of things. So the one behavior that we saw in every single participant, regardless of their, the values that they expressed or enacted, was shopping around for schools. They were shopping around to other public schools, charter schools, and private schools.

And you almost can't opt out of that kind of behavior in our society. We live in this capitalist society where everything is structured as a marketplace.

You know, I think it's helpful going back to the kind of relating to people a different choice than we would make, or would want to make, with empathy, sort of recognizing that all of us make compromises sometimes.

Andrew: Right.

Lisa: And it's like a decision about what we're making moral compromises on. And the people in this study, most of them really did feel like it was a huge moral compromise, and a lot of them experienced what philosophers call moral injury, which is like the trauma of doing something that totally violates your own values.

That research comes out of research about combat veterans and healthcare providers who have been in situations where they have to make totally unthinkable choices.

And some of our participants sort of exhibited that kind of level of trauma when they talked about the decision that they made.

Dr. Val: I'm just… in my feelings.

[Laughter]

So, you know, a couple episodes we'll get Andrew in his feelings, and a couple episodes will get me in my feelings. I'm processing and I'm holding space for, for folks. And that holding of that space is taking work.

Lisa: Do you have a reactivity to what I was just saying, Val? I’m so curious.

Dr. Val: So Andrew and I have talked about this before in terms of specifically Black parents who choose to exit public schools and go to private schools, or charter schools, because their child is experiencing some harm. Right? So, I can certainly understand and, and have empathy. And it's still, like, still just messes with me in so many ways, because it feels like we're running away from actually solving the problem that we have. And, I don't know how we get to solve the problem that we have if parents continue to make choices to just kind of avoid it. And not for any wrong reason, right? Because I would not want my kid to be in a place where they were harmed.

And so, I totally understand that moral dilemma there. And I, I just, I don't have the answers, y’all.

Stephanie: Yeah. When we first started our study, we decided we were only gonna interview White families. It was too understandable for us that Black families would leave.

Lisa: Yeah.

Stephanie: Because of the sort of historical experiences that Black families have had in public schools. And when we went out to start recruiting folks, we actually had a lot of families of color that were like, this resonates with me and I wanna talk about it. So we ended up actually expanding our sample. And we did have a couple of folks who identify as Black who talked about that issue of like, “I don't owe the public school anything.” You know? “So why am I having all of this guilt? Why do I feel so bad about leaving it?” And I think it was, you don't want to abandon your community.

Dr. Val: Right.

Stephanie: And so, if that's the work you've set out for yourself, then it feels really awful, even though it's in a lot of ways justifiable.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah. Listeners probably can quickly wrap their minds around the harms to the system when parents opt out. Particularly privileged parents of some sort of economic racial, educational privilege opt out of the public school system, we know that money goes away.

We know that it increases segregation. We know that those resources that parents could be pouring into their local school, they're no longer pouring into the school.

I think a thing that I had not, again, probably because of my own tendency towards judgment, the thing that I had not grappled with that you, you all bring up is this idea of moral injury. The story that gets told to White parents is like, “Try until you can't anymore, and then take the easy way out.” Which is the private school, and then “everything will be great.”

Lisa: Happily ever after.

Andrew: Right. It's not like everything's great when you get there. Even if there's things about the school that seem much easier and, you know, these schools don't need the same resources in the same way. But this kind of ongoing moral injury is still something that most of the parents your study were still grappling with.

Lisa: Yeah, and it's not just about, feeling sorry for them. It's a strategy, right? Because if we can make visible that this choice has costs, that helps (potentially) with us thinking about how we can talk to our neighbors and to stakeholders about the choices that they make for where they go to school. That it's not necessarily just gonna be “happily ever after.”

Dr. Val: What's feeling triggered is I’m going back to “elementary school Val” who went to an all-Black school, and imagining that some parents are like, “This school isn't good enough for my–

Lisa: Yeah.

Dr. Val: –kid,” but it's “good enough” for so many kids! And that's the part, I just don't know how to, I don't know how to handle that part! And that's the part that feels personal, and painful, and,

Lisa: And yucky.

Dr. Val: Very much so, very much so.

Lisa: Yeah.

Andrew: In the examples you present in, in your paper, there's certainly stories where it's like, “Oh wow. Okay, yeah. There is, like, actually something that this kid really needs that is not being provided.”

And certainly, there were examples in, in your study of people, I was like, “Really? Like, I think probably he's gonna, he's gonna be okay!” But the experience for parents is still “Something is bad for my kid, and I need to do something about it.” Which I think is, like, easily understandable. So, how do you think about that, kind of, range of reasons that people gave for why they couldn't stay in the public system anymore?

Stephanie: As we were kind of listening to parents' stories and going through our data, it came up for us a lot where like, “Is this a valid reason? Is this, is this not a valid reason?”

Was this parent right in doing this and was this parent not right in doing this? And Lisa and I, I think, hash through this a lot. And what we came up with is, like, we just don't have any sort of scale. We don't have any sort of ability to put a marker and say like, “If you come on this side of the scale, then you are justified. And if you come on this side of the scale–

Andrew: Right

Stephanie: –then you're not.” And so, what we kind of came to over time was just like, we can't really make that judgment. We can't really decide whether it's worth it or not.

And so, I think what ended up doing was just saying like, parents are gonna make their choices, and then they're gonna do the things that they feel like is the best in a bad situation, right? They're confronted with a situation where they can't win. Either they're gonna disappoint their own selves about their values, and they're gonna have loss, or they're gonna continue to struggle and feel like their kid is not being served and they're gonna have loss.

I mean, There's not an easy way to say that.

Andrew: “If you score 52 or greater–

Lisa: Yeah

Andrew: –on the ‘my kid is being harmed’ scale [Laughter], then you are justified in leaving versus…” Right.

Stephanie: It’s not a, a “pain Olympics” that we can–

Dr. Val: Right

Stephanie: –you’re not a winner or a loser. And so, we kind of stepped back from, from, from doing that, from answering that question.

Andrew: Yeah

Stephanie: And tried to think about like, people have made these choices, for whatever reasons it felt justifiable to them, but how could we use the values that we know they have? Because they did initially–

Dr. Val: Right

Stephanie: –opt into public school. They wanted–

Lisa: Yeah

Stephanie: –to do that. How can we reconnect those folks with their values and what are some ways that we might re-engage them?

Because for us, that was kind of the saddest part, right? I mean, it's sad that people are feeling bad, right? We don't want people to go through moral injury. But, from a bigger picture, what's also horrible is these are people that came in thinking that they were gonna advocate for public schools. And then they weren't, because they had left.

And so, what our thinking was is what is more productive is to think about how can we re-engage folks? How can we give people new ways to think about what they're going through so that they can feel like there's still a way for them to participate in, in their public schools community?

Or they can still take the energy they have and go advocate to the school district or go to the state and lobby. Like, how can we turn the pain that they've had into something that feels productive? Even if it's not the choice that I would've made.

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: You know, how can we still–

Lisa: Yeah

Stephanie: –take advantage of the fact that people do have these values and do have this enthusiasm for public schools?

Lisa: We conjecture also that people who experience moral injury and feel like they have violated their own values, they tend to become disempowered to advocate for justice. They feel like they've lost their moral standing. Right? We had a parent in our study who told us that when she first enrolled her kids in the public school, she was so excited to go down to Olympia and lobby for educational justice as a mom of color. She was, like, really excited.

And then, a few years later, she had withdrawn her kids from the public school and she no longer felt like she had that standing to go lobby. And I suspect that that happens a lot when we violate our values. Then we feel like our voice is not legitimate to advocate for justice. And so, then you have all these people who actually have these really good important stories about how public school isn't working (‘cause there are many ways that public school isn't working and that it needs to be better supported) who could potentially use those stories as fodder to advocate for education funding and education justice, but who instead remove themselves from that conversation.

So, part of this work is about thinking about, like, how do we bring these people back into the fold of participating in the struggle to build better schools? Including through returning their own kids to public school. We also had some people who moved one kid to private school and kept their other kid in public school. So like, what are the middle paths there?

Dr. Val: When you all were talking about the re-engagement something that popped up in my mind uh, Robin DiAngelo's Rules for Engagement Around White Fragility. And I'm looking at the list right now, but there must be trust between us in order for us to have this conversation. And we all know that building that type of trust to engage someone takes a really long time. That we must be as indirect as possible. And Lisa I feel like I heard a little bit of that, right? Like, “Well you know we can talk about it. We can't, we might not be able to be as direct as we want to in questioning them because we wanna hold space for it.” And then “You must focus on my intentions.”

Like, “This is not what I actually meant. These are not my actual values. But please focus on that, because the choices I make matter less than my intentions.”

And so, when I first saw this particular list at the time I was doing racial justice work in educational spaces with teachers, and I saw this list and I was like “Oh my gosh, this list makes so much sense.” And at the same time, it felt so weighty! [Val laughs]

So exhausting. Like, why do I have to play this game? And why, why do I have to play by these rules? And every time I play by these rules, I actually make some headway? So, what do, like, so, so what do, what am I supposed to do with the fact that these rules actually work? And I don't wanna play by them at all. Right?

So, I certainly wanna hear some of your thoughts around the fact that yeah, we might have to play by these rules to, to re-engage folks (especially White folks) who have made a different choice, and how do we feel about that?

Stephanie: I think one thing that Lisa and I have talked about is like, this is, these are the people that we talk to are people for whom public schools should have worked. Like they have all of the things–

Dr. Val: Right!

Stephanie: –that should have made public, like they have voices that–

Dr. Val: Right

Stephanie: –should have been heard. They have resources, they have all of the things that people need in order to successfully navigate public schools. Makes me think about if we can get them back, you know, if we can help them navigate before they even leave,

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Stephanie: Then those are things that are gonna have impacts for folks that are struggling more, but have fewer resources. You know, or a little bit more movable, but just didn't have ways of thinking about their choice that would've maybe helped them engage in the first place.

Dr. Val: Yeah. If we are talking about people who initially decided like, “Hey, I wanna do this. I'm committed to this. I'm going to try it,” those are the people we absolutely don't wanna give up on. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Lisa: Right.

Dr. Val: And it still feels exhausting to have to play by these rules to get them re-engaged.

Stephanie: Yeah. We talk a lot about how this is really swimming against the stream of all of the stories that people are hearing about what it means to be a good parent. Like, all of the ways that people are supposed to provide opportunities for their kids, and help their kids. So, these are folks that are already making a choice, that's a little bit contrary to what a lot of folks in their community are doing. They're already sort of standing up.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Stephanie: It’s a good thing. But at some point they're probably hearing so many of these contrary stories that they're barraged, especially if–

Dr. Val: Yeah

Stephanie: –their kids are struggling then. And then, “Maybe all those other folks were right in the first place.”

So, it feels like there's a lot of room for different kinds of stories that might help bolster people's resolve, you know? It might help give people other ways to think about the challenges they're experiencing.

I mean, the thing that I think is powerful–

Dr. Val: Mmm

Stephanie: –was thinking about like, instead of going it alone, what if there were people who were talking about the, the struggles that their kids are having as things that matter for all of us in the school community?

Dr. Val: Right!

Stephanie: Like, making these collective struggles. The only recourse people felt like they had was to meet with the principal. So it was just a parent and a principal in a room trying to solve this problem. But really these are problems that affect everybody. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Stephanie: You know, not having good mental health supports, that's not an individual kid problem.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Stephanie: I think what we would love is if parents had other parents, and they got together and talked about it.

Dr. Val: Mmm.

Stephanie: And then it was a collective action, right? It's parents working together to solve these problems with educators.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Stephanie: So, if there's not good supports for kids that are having mental health issues in schools, rather than one parent trying to fight against this whole system,

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Stephanie: Why aren't we bringing together lots of parents who are having similar problems with educators, and coming up with solutions that are gonna benefit all the kids? Right?

And what's great about these parents is that they have time, they have resources, they have energy. And if they were to take their stories and their experiences and turn those into advocacy, that advocacy would benefit a lot of kids that don't have the resources to go to private schools.

So that's why we really wanna keep them engaged or re-engage them, is because they have these resources that they can apply to these situations that could still be benefiting the kids that are in public schools with that voice.

Dr. Val: So we recently had a guest on who talks about her own experience. She was a social justice teacher some of the parents didn't like that she was teaching this course and they gathered together to do things like complain to the principal, sit in her classroom and watch.

Andrew: Pull their kids out of her class and have them just sit and do nothing rather than–

Dr. Val: To sit and do nothing. They had to hire another teacher. 17 students.

And as we were talking about teachers that I've struggled with for my own children, I had not for whatever reason reached out to another parent in that classroom to say “Hey, let's team up and try to do something about this.” I was like, “That doesn't happen! Nobody talks to other parents to do things.” But it clearly does, because it impacted Dr. Lyons on our last episode.

Lisa: Yeah, a piece of nuance that I'd love to add to the kind of building collective action conversation, is that a lot of times when parents are dissatisfied with what's going on in a school, the teachers are too. And the leaders are too. When there's a lack of counseling or mental health support, typically everybody's actually on the same page about that. We need more funding for the school.

So there's actually a ton of opportunity there for teachers and parents, and school leaders to organize around that. So, just first of all, recognizing when a problem is a shared problem. And sometimes it's just shared among the parents and it might end up being as, sort of like, oppositional against the school, but a lot of times not.

And a lot of times there are kind of structural issues that schools are up against, that are preventing them from being able to enact the changes that they need to make.

Andrew: Or even, like, talk about the change, like acknowledging that like, “Yes, your experience with this student is a problem, but I can't tell you anything about this student because there's privacy concerns there.” So, like, the information flow becomes a challenge.

Lisa: Absolutely. You can't talk about any interventions that are happening to support kids and that rightly so, you should not be able to talk about those things. But the more that we can think of all of the stakeholders as being on the same team, the more there's gonna be room for that organizing to be actually effective. Because as soon as parents position themselves in opposition to the school, which I think often ends up happening, even though the people at the school agree! Like, they have the same critiques! Right?

Andrew: Nobody wants an “out of control” classroom.

Lisa: No!

Andrew: Nobody wants to not have mental health support. Nobody wants to have 35 kids in a classroom.

Lisa: Nobody wants 10 minutes of recess. Nobody wants 25 minutes for lunch, you know? So, there's a lot of opportunity there.

Stephanie: You know, oftentimes parents if we wanna be, working with your school if you wanna be partnering, oftentimes you have kind of limited choices, and those choices are, like, PTA, or kind of classroom volunteer.

Lisa: Mm-hmm

Stephanie: Which are good and important. But the kind of discussions we're talking about are different. So that's having the kind of discussions where you're really working with educators to address mental health supports that are gonna happen. Like, that's a really different kind of conversation. And so, that takes a really different kind of parent leadership to happen, to facilitate that conversation. And so, the more you can move towards parents talking about things that really matter, you know, supporting teachers and, like, putting on teacher lunches is great.

Lisa: Yeah.

Stephanie: And you shouldn’t not do that. But I think what parents would really like is to have some partnership.

Lisa: Yeah.

Stephanie: And I think teachers would like that too.

Lisa: Yeah.

Stephanie: Like, those are more substantive conversations. And so, having an organizing perspective, I think enables those kind of conversations where you can't necessarily have a conversation about, like, a school policy that's substantive in a traditional sort of PTA that's more focused on just like, you know, fundraising.

Andrew: Who shows up to those conversations is such an important piece of it too, because to the example from our last episode with Dr. Lyons, like, maybe 30 White parents came together and organized and said, “We're gonna talk about this,” and basically caused her to leave the teaching profession. We want to encourage vehicles for parent voice to show up in the school community.

And we have to be really thoughtful about whose voice we're listening to. When we're thinking about the collective, who's part of the collective, and what issues are actually getting elevated. And I think–

Lisa: Yeah

Andrew: –there is some piece of that work where, you know, we talk here a lot about, like, how you show up really matters in the school, that like, the things you might be concerned about may actually need to take a backseat.

Lisa: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: You know, you might be concerned that there's strawberry milk and it's not great for your kids. And that may be a real issue, and that may not be the thing that is actually rising to the surface for the collective of the parent community at the school. And sometimes you have to think “Okay, I'm actually gonna sit back on this one and focus on these things that seem to be more relevant to a broader group of kids.”

Stephanie: Yeah. I think all of this conversation has to take place in the space where families with loud voices, families with privilege, White families in schools where there's a mixed group of, of kids are coming into that space with humility and with a conscientious look at their own participation.

Andrew: Yeah.

Stephanie: So, it's never part of just pushing my own agenda. It's about, you know, “My, my kid is struggling, other kids are struggling. How do we as a community solve this problem that is really present and really matters for all of us?”

Lisa: I think particularly in urban in neighborhoods that are gentrifying, there's a really important aspect around incoming families with a lot of privilege making sure that the voices of the heritage families that have been in that district for a long time, or in that school in that neighborhood, those voices are a really significant part driving the conversation. So you could have a critical mass of sort of gentrifying incomers, but if you don't have the families that have been there all along as part of that conversation, then that's a pretty big red flag.

Andrew: Yeah for sure. I just really, really appreciate this, for certainly have pushed me out of my judgy space [Laugher] in, into a space with a little more grace and a little more thoughtfulness. And I ,I really yeah, really grateful for you coming on and sharing

Lisa: Thank you for, for having us so much. It's been just such a delight to talk to you and we appreciate the work that you do on this podcast so much.

Dr. Val: Thank you.

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: So, Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: You know, there are episodes that put you in your feelings. There's episodes that put me in my feelings. And this was one of those episodes where I found myself really grappling with much of what they were saying and trying to separate it from the ideas that I had static in my own spirit that I didn't realize until we had the conversation.

I think the first thing that I wanna name is that we recognize and we respect the fact that every public school is not gonna be perfect for every kid. And that parents have the right and responsibility to make the choice that is best for their children. You and I would both do the same.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Dr. Val: I know that my particular action regarding making a different choice for my kid would be to shop around to every public school I could find! [Val chuckles]

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Until I could find one that, that fit. But that's because I, I deeply the expertise of educators in the public school system. I know that, you know, there'll be some that are great, some that are not so great,

Andrew: No matter what school you're at.

Dr. Val: No matter what school you're at.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: And I recognize that there's power in being in that, multiracial multi- socioeconomic space that you won't get in a private space, right? So that’s–

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: –that’s me. And I need to be okay that people are gonna make other choices.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And the, and the thing that I attach to, most personally from an emotional standpoint was that sense of betrayal. Right? So when Stephanie talked about feeling betrayed by parents who said, “Hey, we're gonna do this together,” and then they don't, it does feel like it's a rejection of… me. Of my experience that I thought was great and wonderful.

Look at me now. Award-winning podcast co-host. And a rejection of those spaces.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And that’s hard. And, and so what I heard though from our guests, Stephanie and Lisa, is it's not as much a rejection of those spaces as much as it might be the pressure, either internal or external, to make a different choice for whatever reason.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And, you know, and I'm, I'm sitting with that and I, I for sure, 100% always and forever, never think there are throwaway people, right? There's no one–

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: –I wanna throw away in this, in this work, in this conversation. I believe in building bridges, especially around issues that I think are necessary for us to come together, to, to make progress. And so, yeah, it was. I was really wondering how I would show up the next time I'm in a conversation with someone who was like, “I'm ditching the public school for this private space!”

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: If I'm gonna come in as a, as a judger, if I'm gonna come in as a listener. And because of this conversation, I'm definitely now leaning into wanting to hear why.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: [Whispers] And still try to convince them otherwise. [Val chuckles]

Andrew: Right. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I do, I appreciate that and I do think, you know, it's easy to slide into the kind of binary. Either you are supportive of public schools, or you are not. Either you have collective tendencies, or you have individualistic ones. And obviously nobody is all of one thing, or all of another. And like we said in the beginning, all of these decisions are a matter of weighing a whole bunch of different things and the units on those things are not the same, right? So you can't kind of weigh out what is the value of four blocks of walking, versus more mental health support, versus smaller class sizes, versus racial…

You know, all of those things are, are all values and you sort of have to weigh them all together. And I do really appreciate the ways that their research and then this conversation with them really pushed me out of my, my nat, natural tendency to judge. Which is not helpful! You know, I think we want those people. Like you said, there's no throwaway people.

We want people who start out with, uh, appreciation for public schools, with, with a value on collectivism and the value of public education to feel that. No matter where they end up in their journey, and no matter what choices they end up making, that they still have a place to be in favor of public education.

And like Stephanie was saying, like, more shame is not the way to get people to, to come back into the fold.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And I, I think that's really why I also appreciate Lisa, coming at this from, someone who is not a parent of her own children, but has relationships–

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: –with children that she loves. Because it, it demonstrates that you don't have to have a school-aged child in order to care deeply about this and to try to understand–

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: –what is happening, regarding folks' decision making in these areas.

Um, if I felt like my choice was between a public school where my children would lose a sense of identity, souls would be murdered, versus a, a private school where their identity is nurtured, that they're loved by their teachers, I would, we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now. [Val chuckles]

Andrew: Right, right.

Dr. Val: You know what I mean? And so, I recognize that there are racial dynamics, and socioeconomic dynamics, into why people make the decision to go to private from public.

Andrew: Yeah, the other thing I really appreciated from the conversation is, you know, “This particular person's choice, do I feel like this is legitimate or not? Am I supportive of this one or not?” That they really realize, like, there is no scale we can use.

I think there are plenty of people who leave public school who could with a little bit more support, with a little bit more community, stick it out and their kids would be totally fine. And I think back to our conversation from last season, the intersections of disability, race, and segregation with Joyner and Shubha whose kids really needed something that they were not able to get in the public system. And that's also a real thing.

And I can guess as to whether or not I would make the same choice, but that's not actually that useful. Right? What's useful is thinking about “Why are the reasons that people leave?” and, and “What is the harm of, of leaving?”

This is the other piece that I thought was really interesting is that, you know, the narrative that I have in my head is that leaving for private school would make things easier.

And some people found that they were ready to come back after a little while. Some people found that, you know, one kid in private and one kid in public, and actually, like, the experience wasn't wildly different. But also these people really sat with this moral injury. This, sort of, harm to their own idea of who they are that I think really weighed on them throughout this process. They did not make the choice and then it was all smooth sailing from there.

Dr. Val: Yeah. We talk a lot about cultivating communities when you are making these choices that are, are against the status quo, right? And how you need a soft place to land if you are making a choice that is outside what your typical group would make. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: You need people to be there for you.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And you said that, with the right community, folks we'll probably be okay.

I think I want the communities to be super authentic for you to be able to say, “This feels wrong, right now.”

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: “I don’t know that my kid is gonna make it. I don’t know that I am going to make it. I am feeling all of this outside pressure. I feel judged all the time. It would be so much easier for me to just tap out and make a different choice.”

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And that's a scary thing to say, because you feel like something's wrong with you morally. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: “How am I so broken that I can't make this work? What does that mean about the values that I've expressed, that I say I believe in and now it feels too hard to do?”

Andrew: Yeah. I feel like we always come back to community here. And they mentioned that often when people are having problems in schools, they try to solve it individually. They try to go to the teacher, they try to go to the principal.

Dr. Val: I mean, that’s what I would do!

Andrew: Maybe they try to go to the school board, maybe they try to go to the superintendent. Depending on, sort of, how politically connected they are. How big the district is, whatnot.

But, then it's sort of like, “Can you solve my problem or not? And if not, I'm outta here.” And we certainly know that the threat of departure is something that White families use all the time in public schools to try to get what it is that they feel like their kid needs.

And so, you know, I'm just struck again by the power of actually showing up and becoming part of the community. You know, “show up, shut up, listen, stay put.” You know, these things that, that we talk about a lot is, like, you, you've gotta become part of the community. You've gotta get to know the other parents and raise these issues that you have with other parents, and see if other parents are feeling these same tensions. Feeling this same, disappointment or struggles because, not only are you more likely to actually make change in your school if, if there's a collective effort on behalf of a lot of parents, but it will feel much better.

You know, like, doing that work in community with other parents from your school, it's like such a great way to get to know other parents, through this thing that you're both passionate about, about “How do we actually advocate for our kids?” Deepens your ties to community, strengthens your bonds with community, that makes it easier to get through the points, because we certainly can't pretend that, that every public school is perfect. There are lots of challenges that our public education system has, and we need to work to fix them, but we need to work to fix them together.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And I wanna expand that community that you mentioned to include the educators in the community. So, as Lisa and Stephanie mentioned, if there's a problem in the school, the educators also know there’s a problem in the school.

Andrew: Right, right.

Dr. Val: And so, what are the ways that we cannot make it an “us versus them” in these conversations?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Because I believe everybody in that situation, in that scenario, educators, administrators, and caregivers all want the best for the young people in that school. I don't think anyone goes into the position in an education position saying, “I just want to make kids’ lives hell today,” and so,

Andrew: Right!

Dr. Val: “I'm gonna come here! And–

Andrew: Right,

Dr. Val: – get paid a little bit of money to do that!” [Laughter] Right?

Andrew: Get overworked and underpaid to make people miserable! Right.

Dr. Val: Exactly! No!

Andrew: Nobody's showing up for that. Yeah.

Dr. Val: Nobody is choosing that. And so, just making sure that it does not feel like an “us versus them” when we're trying to improve the school.

Andrew: Yeah,

Dr. Val: I think it is a really important step that we often miss.

Andrew: I think one of the ways that, that certainly I have found that to be more effective, put myself in more of a collaborative team spirit when talking to people in schools, school leaders or teachers, is recognizing where everybody has expertise.

You know, I know my kids, nobody knows my kids better than I know my kids. So that is an expertise that I bring to the table. Teachers are experts in teaching. School leaders are experts in running school buildings. And there's a way in which societally we discount the expertise that exists in teaching, that exists in being a principal, being a building leader, being an administrator.

And quite often what we are up against when we see something that isn't working in a school is a systemic, structural issue, right? The system is not working, and the teachers are frustrated by it. The teachers don't want their classrooms to feel out of control. The teachers want more mental health support. The building leaders would like to have, you know, two full-time mental health people rather than one part-time, intern mental health person.

Everybody would like for the system to be working better. And so, it's understandable to see your kids struggling, walk in and demand that the school do a better job. But I think if we take one step back and say, “Okay, like what might actually be going on here? The expertise I have is that I recognize that my kid is struggling. What expertise do you have in running this school? What expertise do you have in managing this classroom? And how collectively can we come together and say, ‘This is an issue. How do we solve this?’”

Dr. Val: Yeah. I, I appreciate the point around the system problem. We know that disability activists, racial justice activists, queer activists are the reason why we have the advances in public school.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: . And so that's, that's super hard work to do, in addition to teaching young people!

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: I wanna just applaud everyone doing the hard work of trying to change the system.

Andrew: Yeah. And the promise of truly well integrated schools is that the ability to change the system grows when we have cross-racial coalition building for justice.

And so, a school that is actually well integrated with families who are well integrated, who are working together for the benefits of the whole school, is gonna have so much more power to actually change the school for better than, you know, one parent walking in and demanding something.

And, we mentioned it in the conversation as well, but Dr. Asia Lyons from the last episode's experience, because there is also potential harm when the group of parents who gather are not actually representative of the whole community. Are not actually speaking on behalf of the whole community, but rather just their small, you know, one or two or 17 kids that can have real harm as well.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Shout out to Dr. Asia. Although I left that conversation with lots of questions about my own beliefs, I actually feel encouraged by the fact that they asked those questions of the people who left.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And, I do know some awesome private school families, and private school administrators and students. I see y'all! I felt encouraged to continue the conversation with parents who choose private school. Because people can teach us wherever they find themselves situated. Right?

And so, “What did you learn about your private school experience that could help us improve public schools?”

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Are there things that you would take back, and do differently?

Andrew: And and how in, in this moment, particularly when public education is under such direct attack from the federal government. From many states, from voucher movements, like, we need everybody who believes in public education, regardless of where their kids go to school, to stand up and fight for public education.

And so, all the ways that we can call people into that work, to the work of saying that public schools are an important institution, we need those people.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Thank you, Lisa and Stephanie, for coming by and expanding our minds. That's really why it's important to have these conversations that are filled with nuance. Um, we are

Andrew: Yes.

Dr. Val: We are still public school stands over here, and we're an awesome, nice community! So if you are thinking about leaving your private school, you come on over!

Andrew: Come to Integrated Schools. Find your local chapter. Find your local network contact. Get in touch with them. If there isn't somebody nearby, check out our Caregiver Connection program. We'll pair you up one-on-one with somebody who's been there and done that. We definitely have people who are part of the network who have thought about private school, and who've considered it, who can be there for a conversation at the right moment to help you think through the decisions that are facing you.

We believe that community is the best way through any of these sort of choices. And we encourage you to get closer to the integrated schools community.

Dr. Val: That's right. And we really wanna hear your thoughts on every episode, including this one. You can leave us a voice memo at https://www.speakpipe.com/integratedschools. S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E.com/integratedschools.

Or you can email your voice memo to podcasts@integratedschools.org.

Andrew: Yes, we would love to hear from you. We would also appreciate your support patreon.com/integratedschools. You can go throw us a cup of coffee every month to help us support this work.

Dr. Val: Yeah!

Andrew: We would be grateful for that or just go to the website integratedschools.org and click that donate button.

Dr. Val: It's a red button. You can't miss it. If just stopped paying private school dollars, you can send that money to us!

Andrew: We would gladly take that. Absolutely.

Dr. Val: And if you are super excited about the work of public schools, we have an opportunity for you to represent that on your chest.

Andrew: That's right! We have t-shirts available. “Public Schools Save Democracy” Integrated Schools t-shirts, sweatshirts, tank tops. We've got 'em all. There'll be a link in the show notes to our bonfire shop where you can buy your own “public schools save democracy” swag and wear your support for public schools proud on your chest.

Dr. Val: That's right.

Andrew: I'm very grateful to Lisa and Stephanie for pushing me out of my comfort zone a little bit, making me think more deeply about this, which is the same thing that happens every time I'm in conversation with you, Val. Which I am very grateful for every time we talk, as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.