S12E12 – Spatial Injustice: School Closures as a Form of Educational Redlining

S12E12 - Spatial Injustice: School Closures as a Form of Educational Redlining

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 Spatial Injustice: School Closures as a Form of Educational Redlining.

Dr. Val: Mmm! You just put it out there today.

Andrew: Yes. School closures, you know, it's a, a topic that I know a lot of folks around the country are grappling with. We see many cities where birth rates are declining, school age population is going down, and school districts are struggling to figure out what to do with it, and thought it was time to talk about it.

Dr. Val: Yeah, absolutely. And you found a wonderful person to share the space with us today. You wanna talk a little bit about our guest?

Andrew: Yes, Dr. Mara Tieken is a professor at Bates College in Maine. And I came across an op-ed she had written in the Hechinger Report called “Shuttering public schools is a strategy that rarely saves much money and often leads to test score declines.” I thought wow, like, here are so many places around the country who are dealing with this declining enrollment and the solution that is inevitably proposed is closing schools. And I've always felt some kind of way about it, recognizing the trauma that comes from school closures. And I was curious to talk to Dr. Tieken about what her research has shown around the benefits of school closure and the harms that come along with it.

Dr. Val: Until our conversation with Dr. Tieken, something I didn't realize is that when I think about school closures, I think about the noun that is the word school.You think about the building itself and not necessarily the ecosystem that surrounds it. And so I don't even know if “school closures” carries the weight that is present when we talk about closing a, a central element of a community.

Andrew: Yeah, I think about Dr. Eve Ewing's book Ghost in the Schoolyard that we've talked about a couple of times. One of the early Integrated Schools Book Club picks actually. And in that book, she does such a great job of capturing the central role that schools so often play in communities. Not just for the students who are in the building and the teachers who are teaching and the school leaders who are there, but also for the broader community, and the jobs that pop up around the school and the way that the school serves as an institution for a whole community.

And I think we often undersell the harm that comes to a whole community when we close schools.

Dr. Val: So, actually thinking about it, outside of the building itself, I think is a shift that I am asking every listener to make today. Although we use the word “school closure" throughout the episode, really think about the people and the communities that are impacted.

Andrew: Yeah. All right, should we take a listen to Dr. Tieken?

Dr. Val: I can't wait.

[THEME MUSIC]

Dr. Mara Tieken: My name is Mara Tieken. I'm a professor of education at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

Andrew: And your research and work has focused a lot on rural schools and also a lot on the role that place plays in affecting people and communities. What led you to that? Why did you find yourself in, in this as a focus for your career?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, so I, I went to college had absolutely no intention of ever being a teacher. I remember sitting in my high school English class looking at my teacher being like, “Oh my God, that looks like the worst job ever!” [Laughter] You know, to stand up in front of people and talk all day.

There just, like, couldn't, there couldn't be anything worse than that. Took a class in education during college, fell in love with it. And I ended up doing my student teaching in a small rural town in Vermont. And there I could see how much the community depended on and valued that school, even though the school was not well resourced. But it was just, it was the center of the community.

And of course, it was important for all the educational reasons, but it was also you know, it kept businesses afloat and employed people. It was the social center. And, yet back in my education classes, nobody was talking about rural education. And it seemed like so many policies were really designed for other contexts. Sometime without place in mind at all. Or it just kind of assumed an urban or suburban context.

So after that, I eventually ended up teaching in rural Tennessee. And it was the same thing. Teaching, you know, in a low income school that was beloved by the community. Yet no one, at least on the policy level or research researchers or even people doing kind of practice writing textbooks, things like that. No one seemed to be thinking about or talking about rural schools.

And so, I was just really interested in what this disconnect was. And so after teaching for a few years I went back to graduate school and that's what I've been studying ever since.

And even starting out in Tennessee, I began to realize how consequential school closure was. I was teaching at a school that was threatened with closure. It, it was not closed, and we eventually got the new school building we really needed. But many places are not so lucky.

And in every community that I have worked in or worked with since then, school closure has been an issue.

Andrew: Yeah . One of the concepts that I came across in reading your work, I had not heard sort of put in this frame before is the idea of spatial injustice. I wonder if you can tell us what spatial injustice is and “big picture” examples that we might be familiar with of spatial injustice.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. So it's this idea that resources are unevenly spread across geography. So it seems pretty simple. You know, you think about it in terms of food deserts. This is something I think people are probably pretty familiar with, that there are huge swaths of the country that have no access to grocery stores or no way to get to a grocery store.

And this is not just a rural problem. This happens both in rural and urban communities. But it exemplifies this, this notion of spatial injustice, that we have these resources that are unevenly spread. And so, some people, by virtue of where they live or where they're born, get lucky. And other people get unlucky.

We see it with hospitals right now, where hospitals are located. Rural hospital closures are a huge issue. We also see it in terms of where colleges are located. Huge areas of the country are education deserts. Again, this is not a rural versus urban issue. This happens in very rural areas, also in very urban areas.

And then more and more, I'm realizing that we also have spatial injustice when it comes to K-12 education. And so we can think about it in terms of who has access to guidance counselors. There are many, many children that don't have a guidance counselor. Or they have one, but that guidance counselor also has, you know–

Andrew: 600 other kids.

Dr. Mara Tieken: –900, yeah, exactly. And so is that really access and, or access to advanced placement classes. Again, that is spatially different depending on where you live.

And then, it seems now that just access to a K-12 public school is something that is unevenly distributed as well because of school closures.

Dr. Val: I was thinking about my own high school, and I'm really struck by the fact that all of all the school closures that you mentioned, every community wanted to keep their school! You know, it wasn't, it wasn't a situation where it was like, “Eh, this school can go.” You know, like, and that's how my own high school was treated. Right? It has not been closed, but it was one that was “low performing” among like, you know, traditional methods. But it was so much joy and so much beauty and it was really central, as you mentioned, to the community.

And I'm curious about just some of the voices that you've heard in your studies around people who love their schools even though they might be tagged as “insufficient” or “We can get rid of this one,” or “It's just, it's not important.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right. Absolutely. I mean, so I mean, you said it right there. I have not met a community that didn't want its, wanna keep its school open. These are schools that are, like you said, tagged as low performing or quote, unquote failing, right? By the state.

Whenever I talk about that, I think it's really important to recognize how we got to that situation, right? And so it usually is about state neglect, about–

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm

Dr. Mara Tieken: –underfunding. And so, this is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. This is something that's produced, it's been produced by lawmakers and all kind of other factors.

But, yeah. When I talk to people you know, they, they talk about the students are often, they feel seen and heard in the school buildings. They've got teachers that pay attention to them. Often these schools are historically important. And so, it's not just that the children are being educated there, but their parents were and their grandparents were.

In many small communities (and this can be both rural and urban) the relationships are very overlapping.

So your teacher might also be your Sunday school teacher, or might also be your cousin's girlfriend or something.

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: And so, it's these really, like, tight networks and which, which can make for a very high-quality education, even if by some of the traditional measures the policy makers, or the administrators are saying otherwise.

And then, people talk about how important it's to the community. You know, it's, the schools that provide jobs, but they prop up other little businesses too. You know, we all know of that, like, little diner that the, the, you know, the 3:30 post, you know–

Dr. Val: Yes! [Val laughs]

Dr. Mara Tieken: –post school rush hour is just, you know, it's bananas in there. And so, when you lose a school like that, you're losing this really important educational institution, but also, like, social, and cultural institution.

We should just say right at the outset too, these closures, they're not racially neutral. Right? It disproportionately, it affects Black and Brown communities. It also disproportionately affects low income communities.

And so, especially in Black communities, many of these schools, they have been around a really, really long time. They've been a really important source of, like, empowerment/leadership culture. They've been a really important part of the community for decades. And so, when that gets closed , people mourn that.

I feel like there's this rhetoric and Eve Ewing's book, “Ghosts in the Schoolyard,” talks about this beautifully. The rhetoric between kind of what the policy makers or the administrators are saying, and then what you're hearing from folks on the ground. It's just like world's different and people experience the schools in really, really different ways.

So this question of “Does everyone always support or wanna keep their school open?” I have met some folks that occasionally don't, want to keep their, or are more, I would say, at least in my research, more on the fence about keeping their school open.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mara Tieken: More because of what their school has gotten to at this particular point in time, through underfunding, because they can't hire high-quality teachers anymore. Because the community has already been so gutted that they, they've got so few students.

And in those situations, first it's always with kind of mixed feelings. And it's more about like, because this is what has been done to the place that, you know, used to be “our school” that now there might be kind of more mixed emotions about it.

I don't think it's most of the time, it's that people don't want closure. But there are some cases where because of what's been done to their school there can be more, I think, kind of mixed emotions. And then sometimes they get communities that just like, they, especially in rural areas, they feel like it's just not sustainable anymore.

And so they have to make the hard decision. But they've got crappy choices, and they're making the least crappy.

And so, maybe the least crappy decision is “We're gonna close our school. And we're gonna bus our kids because we just don't feel like we can continue to give them a good education here, because the classes are so small because we can't hire good teachers. Not through any fault of our own, but because of all these external forces.”

Andrew: Yeah. I think the, the only, the only other place I can think of, of seeing people not really upset about school closures is this sort of, like, flash in the pan. Like charter school shows up for two years with some–

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yes.

Andrew: –creative, innovative idea that turns out to not actually be good for kids. And then people get out and realize that it was sort of a scam.

And then they're, like, pretty happy to see that school go. But,

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, yeah, Absolutely.

Andrew: I can't think of, like, a, a school that has been around for a while that has any sort of, like, institutional history to it that people aren't at least, at least conflicted about, if not outright opposed to.

Dr. Val: Why don't the administrators listen to the people? B ecause it obviously gives a, a “I'm just gonna disregard what you think about your community, what you need.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah.

Dr. Val: What, what, what?! What do people have to do?

Dr. Mara Tieken: No, I mean, and people, and people are going hunger strikes, right? To keep their schools open. I mean, there's so many reasons. I mean, first I think, to reverse a closure decision would mean admitting you're wrong.

Dr. Val: Mmm.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Again, closures don't just happen overnight, this is something that's produced. So it would also mean recognizing the decades of policies that got you here. And, you know, and it would mean fundamentally redoing how we do schools. It would mean funding schools better, and not relying, on property taxes.

So I think it's partly about all of that. I mean, like, school closures are only part of a much larger system that we'd also have to dismantle.

Andrew: It also feels there is some sort of paternalistic, like, “We know better.”

Dr. Val: Yup.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yes.

Andrew: “You think that you want this school, but really you don't want this school, 'cause you don't know what's actually good for you. So let us tell you what's good for you.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly.

Did y'all hear the, recent -I may get the details wrong, but the, the flap in New York City. Mamdani was proposing to close a school, a student was speaking out against that closure defending her school and saying she didn't want it close.

A p rofessor said the most like racist comment, basically this really, paternalistic, “You just don't know what's, you know, good for yourself.” So the professor gets blasted for, I mean, rightly so for making this really racist comment.

But, like, the media just kind of ignores the student's point, which was that the school should not be closed.

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: To me, it was just fascinating how the media also kind of completely missed the point. I'm like, yes, the, the, the professor was being called out and she is now suspended, I think, and like all that should have happened. But like, listen to the student too! I mean this you know, brave, courageous student is speaking out, and Everyone has just kind of totally missed the point.

Just, I felt like it was a really fascinating case study, and, like, how often the dialogue and the discussion around closure is just totally separate and apart from what the reality is on the ground, and the point that students are making and, you know, people who are experts in their own lives–

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: –we're just disregarding it, you know?

Andrew: Yeah. We start from the assumption that like, “Of course we're gonna have to close schools.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yes.

Dr. Val: That’s literally what I was thinking.

Andrew: The baseline is like, “Well, sure. Like, obviously schools have to close. Now it's just a question of like, how we go about it.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly.

Andrew: School closures are another place that kind of, sort of recreates spatial injustice because we know they disproportionately affect low income communities, disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities. In my mind, the image of a school that's gonna be closed is, like, largely Black and Brown kids, is urban, and is under-resourced.

But I think what I found fascinating in your research is that rural schools have been being closed forever. There was some stat that, you know, in the past 90 years, like some 150 or 200,000 rural schools have been closed. This has been going on for a long time. Tell us a little bit about, kind of, the rural school closure story and how that, you know, neatly ties into the urban school closure story.

Dr. Mara Tieken: So, you know, I'm sure everyone who's listening has had the experience, even if you're not rural you've had experience of driving through rural places, and, you know, you'll get to little town, after little town, after little town.

Well, at one point, all those little towns had schools, and they don't anymore. By and large, most of them do not.

Well, I mean, I think in some ways you can actually think of school closure as the first school reform.

In that there has been this move, kind of started in like the late 1800s to professionalize schools. And what this meant was collapsing small schools and small districts into larger schools and larger districts, and handing over control to professionals with, again, with some of that paternalism. This idea that “we know better.” And so, “It's not local folks that should control their schools, it should be in the hands of professionals.”

And so, this, this closure has been happening for you know, 150 years or so. And then we've had, like, more specific rounds of closure. Another big one was with desegregation.

And this of course disproportionately impacted Black students and Black families, and Black teachers, and Black communities because those were the schools that were closed. Right? So, against this backdrop, this long backdrop of closure, we've also had these sort of particular inflection points where the, the numbers seem to rise a bit.

And right now we seem to, I think, be kinda at the start of another one of these inflection points, because all of these, kind of, forces are coming, coming together.

Andrew: It seems like there's two big buckets for the reasons that are given for why we need to close schools. There's sort of, like, an economic, like, efficiency kind of bucket. “There's not enough kids so it doesn't make sense to keep the lights and the heat on in this old building that probably, you know, has a, has a boiler from the 1920s that you, you know, costs a fortune to heat or to cool for that matter.”

And then there's this, sort of, neoliberal market-based, like, school of competition. The school is failing and if we like threaten to close it, that will somehow make things better or something. But this sort of like - the accountability and the kind of financial one.

Walk us through, generally what the sell is to the community, the reason that we have this kind of inevitability with that, the media talks about school closures as like, “Well obviously schools are gonna have to close, feels like it's wrapped up in these kind of justifications.” What are they usually?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, I've kind of found three. So like, one is the cost-saving/economic/budgetary. And so, just “It doesn't make sense to keep the school open, you know, enrollment's dropping.” Or, you know, “We're in a moment of budget crisis.” Of course, close schools. And that just seems sort of, both inevitable and logical, right?

The second is the academic argument. And so, the school is quote, unquote failing by all of these “measures” (which usually just means test scores). And it's like this idea of, well, this like, the threat of punishment will somehow magically induce people to teach better, or harder, or something. But then, you know, to punish the failing schools, we'll close them.

And then the third rationale sometimes that we hear is like, equality. And this idea that kids in this place are not getting good education, we’ll be able to move them here, will they have more opportunities. And it's kind of cloaked in this equity argument, which for a whole host of reasons, does not usually hold a lot of water.

Andrew: Yeah. Pick those three apart. I mean, you mentioned that, that the efficiency, the sort of financial argument, we don't actually end up saving a ton of money when we do this.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right. Sometimes they don't save any money at all. Or the money that is saved is not what was projected. Or it's just a really small fraction of a district's bottom line.

So, you know, you've got millions of dollars worth of, of a deficit you close a school and it's like a drop in the bucket.

And there's a whole host of reasons for that. One is that closures don't often really affect personnel. You usually have to still keep most of your teachers because you, you know, you've still gotta educate the children. And that's the district's largest line item.

There's increased transportation costs. Sometimes you need to renovate the building that the kids are going to now. So that's added costs. And then the school building.

So I think there's often these assumptions, “Oh, we'll be able to sell the school! And there'll be this realtor that'll come in. Or, you know, there'll be this–

Andrew: “Look at real estate prices! We’ll make a fortune!

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly. You know? Exactly. Right. And that just usually tends not to be true.

Academically. First we're finding that the threat of closure doesn't just magically induce people to teach better. If they knew how to teach better (and “better,” you know, again, is about producing test scores), they would've been doing this all along. Right? And so that doesn't make any sense.

And then also we find that the students that are usually involved in a closure related to academic under performance, they don't usually end up in a better school. And so, to say that this is academically motivated again, seems, like a bunch of hogwash.

And then this sort of equality argument again, kids often don't end up in better schools. And even, you know, in rural areas where you sometimes hear this argument like, well, we're closing this tiny school, they don't have a football team, they don't have a band, they don't have an AP class. They'll be able to go to this other school that does, that has all these things.

Even that can sometimes have flaws in the argument because many of the extracurricular opportunities, you need transportation. In order to be able to access them. Or, yes there's a football team but it's mainly filled with kids already from, from the, that town. And they can't accommodate the, the new kids coming in.

Andrew: Or the new kid has to ride three hours on the bus and doesn't have time to do an extracurricular.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly. Exactly.

Or what I've also seen is, like, the receiving district is willing to run the buses to get the kids to and from academics or for, from the extracurriculars for the first year. And then, that just kinda goes away.

So, all three of those arguments often, they aren't as logical as they seem.

Andrew: Yeah. Talk a bit about how schools are usually picked for closures. We know it disproportionately impacts poor schools, schools with lots of students of color. Even when districts claim they're using “objective data,” which usually means test scores. We see, like you said, all, all those sort of systems that are at work here, you get to a place where, “Oh, look, by these quote, unquote objective metrics, it's all the Black and Brown schools or all the low income schools that are gonna get closed.”

What are the ways that schools usually get chosen for closure?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Part of the problem with school closures is oftentimes the criteria by which schools are chosen are not clear. Or it feels like kind of a moving sort of goal. And there could be a lot of discretion there.

Andrew: The schools get picked and then they create quote, unquote criteria to justify those particular schools.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right, right, exactly. Or I mean, a lot of times they just don't even need to.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Mara Tieken: You know. “This is who we're closing. This is a part of the plan.” Right.

I'm doing some work right now in Arkansas. And one thing we found there was that the kinds of closures where the state had some discretion. Like, meaning that they had some sort of role in kind of choosing who was deemed a failure, or who was in financial distress. Those were the ones that were particularly likely to show racial disproportionality.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Mara Tieken: So yeah, sometimes the criteria are clear. In those cases for all those systemic reasons you named, it still ends up having racialized and classed outcomes usually. Or there's quite a bit of discretion apart, you know, on the part of whatever decision maker we're talking about, and that still kind of, tends to get you to the same place.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: My thoughts are about, I think, values. And I'm wondering, like, how many of our district leaders, state leaders, like, what they believe the purpose of education is, Right? Because it feels like with school closures, the purpose is to make sure we're breaking even on the hard costs and, you know, that we have something to show for what was done in the 13 years that they were in the school. It feels like that in the way in which we're discussing school closures now.

And when I think about it from the community's perspective, there seems to be a value misalignment.

Dr. Mara Tieken: So I wanna say two things to that. First, is that there's this really interesting article that was written and maybe back in the eighties by two rural education scholars de Young and Halle. And they make a distinction between schooling.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Which is kinda like the business of schools. And like the, it's all about the bottom line or like the, what you can measure in test scores. And then schools. And schools is places where, like, the places. Where instruction happens and relationships are made. And they talk about how, like, the state really is interested in schooling. People (the students and the families, and often the teachers) are really interested in schools.

And I have found that a useful distinction. It also, I think, then helps explain why the conversations happening around school closures can be so different depending on who you are.

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: The other thing I will say, I'm doing this work in Arkansas and I'm looking at three communities, and these are predominantly Black communities in the Arkansas Delta. Very rural. Two communities that already lost their school, one where it's been a, a threat for a while. And when I talk to folks there, it's not just that the decision makers are a little oblivious or they're just more concerned with money than anything else, or they just don't get it. Many of them feel like this is a deliberate attempt to erase Black communities.

School closure is just one tool in this larger agenda to continue to oppress, destroy, eradicate, disappear Black folks.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Dr. Mara Tieken: And I, I think that's really important to be talking about as a part of these school closure conversations as well. Because when you look at it that way, in many respects, a lot more things make sense. You know, why, why policy makers go outta their way to close schools. You know? Maybe, maybe there's our answer.

Dr. Val: Yeah, here in Charlotte, there was a second ward high school that was the, the darling of the historic Black community here in Charlotte. And, and of it, the building no longer exists either. And there's still so much grief and pain around that for people who attended. 'Cause you can't even, like, show your grandkids, “Hey, this is where I went to school.” Like, it's…

And that remains just a point of sadness and grief and anger for many folks who attended the school and who were promised that there was gonna be something done, you know, like that they would get their school back.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Many of the people that I work with in the Delta, they are experiencing this round of school closures like the closures that came with desegregation,

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Mara Tieken: You know, “So we lost these institutions once,”

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Dr. Mara Tieken: “But we did what we were supposed to. We, you know, quote unquote, integrated the schools.” Slowly (or not so slowly) the demographics of the schools changed. Again, the schools, again became an institution of the Black community. And again, you shut it down.

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Andrew: How's your White supremacy headache,Val?

Dr. Val: I get one regularly, Dr. Tieken. Today, I'm just, I'm just sad about it. Because I'm thinking about the beauty and the power of schools as central pieces in the community, especially a rural community, right? That is where we're all going to meet. 'Cause we're not gonna go to all corners of the county to hang out. Like, we will meet at the school for these events, for the things that are happening. And so, yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's sad. It's sad.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. So many of the communities I work with, like, it feels like everyone is either at the school, or they're going to the school, or they just left the school.

Dr. Val: Right. Yeah. In reading your article, I found myself drawing it like a little circle, you know, because it felt like a chicken egg situation. Hey, you hear rumblings that we're gonna close. Or you see obviously that the community hasn't been invested in in decades, and people are moving out, families are moving out, right?

And so what came first, right? The fact that we have divested from this community, and now no one wants to live here or, you know. It's a no win situation. Especially for those communities who are counting on schools as their social and economic center.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. No, I'm really glad you brought that up 'cause it does feel a little bit like a “chicken and egg” sort of thing. Like, you know, which came first? And I mean, honestly, it's usually, it, it's a big kind of messy spiral.

And a lot of it is tied to other forms of spatial injustice as well. Right? So the factory closes, so people have to leave to find work, which decreases student enrollment. So then classes are small–

Andrew: And tax-base.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yup, there's less money for the schools. There's less kids, they're getting less money from the state. And then, you know, and so then it just continues to get smaller as people start to worry that their school's gonna close. The only thing keeping them in that community is the school itself.

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: And so where the actual closure happens in the particular spiral probably differs. But, like you said, it usually is this kind of spiraling thing.

And in, you know, in more urban communities it can be because of gentrification. Or rising housing prices. People are getting priced out, and so they can't live in the community anymore so enrollment is declining. A new charter school opens, that siphons off more kids.

You know, you've got, you're a parent, you're about to put your kid in kindergarten. Are you gonna do it in the school where you're not sure it's gonna be open for another two years, or are you going to, you know, do the surer choice?

Because I mean, you know, these closures are traumatic. This is not a small thing. So it's not like, you're just changing brands of cereal or something. These are big weighted decisions. And so it often forces parents to make really hard choices.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: You're not just changing brands of cereal. I feel like, like that's, that's it to me.

Dr. Val: It gave me goosebumps when you just said that.

Andrew: I mean, that is, that's the thing, right? Because we, we have this idea, I mean, I think this is the, like, the sort of like neoliberal lie about, like, market-based education improvement, is that if we, “It's just like cereal. And so, like, if you make a better cereal, then people will buy the better cereal, and that's how we'll know it's a better cereal.”

But, but it is traumatic. People don't have equal access to information. They don't have equal access to the ability to change schools. When a school closes, we know that it's not, like, you immediately get access to a quote, unquote better school. Even just by test score metrics, not to mention things that, like, also matter to people, like belonging and all these other things.

This idea of a failing school has always seemed backwards to me, 'cause I feel like a, a school is the kids, the administration, and the resources that are put into it, and the school itself doesn't control any of those things. The district controls that, or the state controls that, the city controls that, the community controls that. Like, we have schools that we have failed.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, exactly.

Andrew: We have schools that we have not failed, but schools themselves cannot fail.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, exactly and, like, where this idea of failure kind of fits in to closure, I mean, they're quite linked. Because again, schools don't close overnight usually. This is a situation that's produced. And so, this has been often decades of failure on the part of policy makers, leadership, whomever that gets us to the place where a school is closed.

And it's not just also about the school-based decisions too. So, economic policy really matters a lot here. You know, the situation where the factory closes, and so that depletes the local population. And so, we've got, you know, less kids in school, less of a tax base. You can't pay our teachers as much. And so sometimes this is an economic failure at a really large level.

Or you know, housing policy. So we look at issues of, like, redlining and how that's then linked to quote unquote school failure, or schools being failed more accurately. So school closure is also not just an educational issue. It's a matter of social policy and economic policy too.

Andrew: As with , so many things in education, right? It's like we, we think that the school is this sort of, like, isolated thing where teachers and administrators who care can fix all of society's ills, but all of society's problems seep in through the door.

Dr. Val: Yeah. In addition to losing that sense of community, you're also left as, as Dr. Ewing put it, like, with this actual ghost of a building.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah.

Dr. Val: RIght? Where they don't tear down the schools when they close them, most times they just sit there empty as reminders of, of what was.

Dr. Mara Tieken: `I think that's really important to recognize. I mean, there's a hard question of, well, do we upkeep the building. And so if we do, which is usually what's better for the community, you still gotta pay for all that. And then if you don't, it becomes just this reminder in the community. I mean, I have seen communities (usually of their own volition, oftentimes working against great odds) do really cool things with old buildings. Turning 'em into community centers, opening preschools, museums, libraries.

So things where it can still be a community resource in all kinds of ways. That takes a lot of hard work, usually capital, to be able to make that happen

Andrew: It definitely feels like swimming upstream to do that. Like, all the forces are pushing against that. I think there's, there's a building in Denver now that they're trying to turn into housing for teachers. 'Cause housing costs are so extreme and they, “Okay, we've got this building.”

And that's, it's great. And if they pull it off, it would be amazing. I mean, it'd probably be, you know, 20 teachers or something.

Dr. Val: You could pay teachers more, too. You could pay teachers more!

Andrew: Right! [Laughter]

Dr. Val: That's also an option.

[laughter]

Dr. Val: Yeah. Okay. We're gonna get hopeful 'cause I try to do that., Or we're gonna get action oriented. Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Okay.

Dr. Val: And so, you've written about the ways in which resistance has happened for many of these communities. Can you talk a little bit about that resistance, including coalition building between all of the actors that are involved?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. So I have, seen, I mean, talk about fight, right? I have seen people fight closure in all kinds of ways. I mean, lawsuits, policy change, getting new people on the school board. If the school is still closed, fighting to keep that building. Leaders like rising from the ashes, right? People get politicized and so they run for office.

You know, I’ve been doing work in Hughes, Arkansas. And there is a gentleman there, who he saw what happened to his school. He ran for school board. He ran for mayor. He is now a state legislator. And, And he just helped get a policy passed that offers a pathway, for schools to be reopened in communities. And so people fight back in all kinds of ways. And, and so I think that is so important to see. And I think that's something that we can all take inspiration from.

And talk about coalition building. Like, so I think this is where, what frustrates me right now about how we talk about school closures is we talk about it so localized. And of course it matters locally, but we need to start connecting the dots. Realize that this is not just something that's happening in Charlotte, or not something that's just happening in the Arkansas Delta. It is happening everywhere. These, these, are connected.

So we need to start taking on the bigger forces that are, that are leading to that. And some of those are like the privatization policies that are happening right now. The underfunding of schools. This whole quote, unquote accountability movement. And so, if we can start building these coalitions, and they need to be racially diverse, they need to be geographically diverse, they need to be socioeconomically diverse.

If we can start building these coalitions, like, that's what will finally get us the power in order to be able to really do something about this at a more systemic level.

I'd really like to see something national. Because, a lot of times, the particular policy mechanisms that eventually will lead to a closure. They don't say “closure.” Right?

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: No one, no one, no one's advertising that this is actually a closure policy. But, like, that's where it will get to.

Andrew: “We’re just bringing in efficiency consultants.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly! Exactly `If you hear “efficiency consultant,” this is the time to get out the vote. [Laughter]

Dr. Val: Oh, wow. Okay!

Dr. Mara Tieken: And find out who school board, uh, members are. Because you know, like, you've, we've gotta start recognizing these downstream factors so then we can fight those so we don't get to a place where we are on the eve of a closure trying to save the school. Because honestly, like, that, that's a really hard place to be. We can be much more effective if we're working you know, five years out.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: I appreciate that. That's a note to myself, like, to pay attention early and often about the conversation that's happening around many of these schools.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yes. Like, he'd be very mindful of “efficiency,” “under-enrolled,” “right-sizing,” “academic failure.” All of those are code or at least the kind of seeds that could eventually grow into bigger closure.

Andrew: Because of the way the river flows, right? Like, I'm sure there are places where that's some sort of maybe, like, nefarious or nefarious-ish actor who is like, “Okay, I'm gonna like plant these seeds now and whatever.” But I think even really well-intentioned school board members just like, “Well, yeah, I mean, look at our budget. It's tough. How could we save some money?”

Okay, like, the river flows towards closure once these things start, get put on the table. It doesn't take bad actors to make it happen.

Dr. Mara Tieken: I think it's a really important point that, like, everything is aligned to make closure a very easy outcome. And so, even people that are well intentioned can find themselves soon in this kind of closure situation. And so, it's really about thinking about it much further upstream so you actually never get to that point.

Andrew: Yeah. We've highlighted all the ways that it is traumatic. You wrote: “Closure isn't a convenient solution. It's a nuclear option. It should be the last resort.” But, it should be the last resort and my guess is that your argument is not that as soon as a school gets built, it should be open for the rest of time. That there are in fact times that we do need to close a school.

What are things that policymakers ideally, but listeners who can then try to pressure policymakers, what does closing schools well actually look like?

And you've got a website called “Rural Schools Open” that has a whole section called “How to Close Well” and we'll link to that in the show notes. But broadly, what does it look like to actually do a good job of closing, when it does come to that sort of nuclear option when there really isn't another solution?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, first is you've gotta have a leadership that communicates well. You need to trust there has to be a lot of trust there. So you basically gotta have people at the helm that you feel like you can trust to make good decisions, 'cause there will be a lot of them coming.

Which brings me to my second point: planning. This should not be something that, like, we decide in May to close a school and that school will be closed over the summer and the kids are in a new place come August or September. This is something that takes many, many months. I would say years probably, if you're gonna plan it well.

You need to be thinking about what kind of traditions can you engage in to help honor the building that's being closed. And what are new traditions you can adopt the new school site.

Thinking of the new school as a new school or the receiving school, as a new school can be really helpful. So come up with a new mascot, come up with new colors, decide that together. All of those kinds of social and cultural things can, can really help. Preparing students so they know exactly where they're going.

Students that are on IEPs or 504s can often fare particularly badly in a closure. If those records are not really diligently kept and make sure they travel with the students. And so make sure that you've got all those, kind of, ducks in a row.

And maybe the thing I should have mentioned first is also like, if you're thinking about closure, you've gotta decide which schools to close. And you need to really think about how to do that equitably. 'Cause right now we more often close Black and Brown schools. Low income schools.

So how can you actually distribute the burden of closure so that it is not disproportionately impacted. And I would say, you know, if you think about historic neglect on the part of states towards Black and Brown and low income communities, I think those to be the schools that be more likely to stay open. And and maybe we should think about how to close the schools that are serving higher income students.

Andrew: Both in an effort to sort of redress historic wrongs and, like, historic disinvestment, but also like those students are the most likely to fare well when schools get closed. Right? Like the, the students who already come in with a cushion of privilege are most likely to be able to handle a school closure. To, to have it not impact them as negatively as other students.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right. They, they might have a little bit more of that like cushion, absolutely. And also they might, like, be most likely to have parents that are able to, you know, drive a little farther. Right. And so then the burden of closure you know, won't come down as hard on low income parents that don't have transportation.

Dr. Val: I’m smiling because those parents are not driving further. They're starting their own school. [Andrew laughs] But, whatever. [Val laughs]

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is pie in the sky. This is how things should go. Right.

Dr. Val: This is how it should go.

Andrew: But this is, this is where this idea of, of spatial injustice feels powerful. 'Cause you know, like, if, if we take a “race neutral” approach to this, then we say, this is where the, like, low, lowest performing school is, so we're gonna close it, whatever.

But we actually have to be race conscious. We have to be–

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yep.

Andrew: –you know, spacial injustice conscious in our approach to school closures to say,

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: “How are we gonna both, like, redress these past wrongs and then, minimize the impact on the students who can least afford impact.”

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly. And so basically not create more “deserts,” whether that's education deserts or healthcare deserts or whatever it is. And so maybe it's more expensive, but this is I think where you need to, like, marry or coordinate economic policy and education policy, so that you're leaving the schools and the communities that probably depend on them the most. And of course, it's, like, also the right thing to do when you think about sort of that “long arc of history.”

Andrew: Yeah. What should parents or caregivers, you know, if they start to hear rumblings of “efficiency” or “under enrollment” or “rightsizing the district” or whatever, what are some steps that parents or caregivers can take to both get involved? Because I think one of the, one of the challenges that I've seen, certainly in Denver, we've had some, some closures recently is, like, if your school is not up for closure, you probably don't care that much.

And if your school is up for closure, you're adamantly opposed to it. And there are times where we, we need to close schools. I mean, I think that, you know, declining enrollment is a real thing. We probably have too many schools. Like, there, there are times where it is appropriate. Community engagement is really important in this. We wanna do school closures with, and not to communities. But to, to get the people at the table who are not either gonna be, you know, “I don't care about it 'cause it's not my school,” or “I'm adamantly opposed 'cause it is my school.” How do we engage in those conversations in more helpful ways?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Well, so first I think this is where it's actually helpful to think about school closure as a systemic issue. And the closure itself is probably just a symptom of a larger problem. Right? And so even if it's not your kids specifically being impacted, there's probably gonna be other issues that are gonna come up that will impact your kid.

That's where it's helpful for the entire community to be able to turn out and think about this closure itself, and then also all of those surrounding factors that are getting us to the place of closure. 'Cause there's something in there, right? that's gonna impact you.

In terms of other things, there’s coalition building, turning out, you know, getting out the vote. I mean, again, school board members are elected. So they can lose their job. Right? And so, that's I think one of the biggest incentives here is helping remind school board members who they are actually accountable to. And this is, I think, where that diverse coalition is so important.

I think also just questioning so many of the narratives. So, you know, you say it's more efficient like how much money is actually gonna be saved? Show me that.

Andrew: And what are you gonna do with it?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right. And I have seen cases in which the, the community actually knows more than the people making the decisions, and they've had to reverse decisions because it was based on faulty data. They didn't take into account all of the various costs. And so, communities, I mean, it's hard, but communities sometimes can win this just by you know, they insist on seeing the numbers, the numbers don't add up. And you point that out.

To really kinda get, like, brass tacks of organizing. I think if the, the conversations are all about efficiency and like that's all the arguments for it, you need to come back with them about efficiency arguments. Making the emotional plea is probably not gonna work.

And I hear you. Like, I mean the emotional plea is like, that's what gets me, that's probably not gonna move the people who are making the efficiency arguments. So come back at them, with their own logic and that can sometimes be what persuades the folks that wouldn't have gotten on board otherwise.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I think that that emphasizes to me how we need different people with different strengths at every part of this fight, right?

So we have folks upstream who are talking about in general the importance of this school and the historic value and why it matters to community, just for people who don't have kids in school anymore. Won't ever have kids in school. Like, for that to be a common conversation all the way to people who are like, “Hey, no, we're gonna use your efficiency argument.”

So I have some accountant friends too! You know?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly. [Val laughs]

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yep. Yeah. The, the accountants and the lawyers are super helpful when it comes to this fight.

Dr. Val: I'm gonna call my accountant friend!

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right. The other people that are really important in this fight are, like, the kind of born organizers, born leaders who, you know, might be the grandma that, you know, kind of seems to run the world from her little kitchen chair. Who can get people out. Who can do the, “Okay, you're telling us gonna close the school, I am gonna marshal 300 third graders to your school board meeting and let you tell them to their face that they're gonna close the school.” Right?

So you need all of those various strengths. So you can come at them from every way. And sometimes a little public humiliation it can get you somewhere.

Andrew: Sometimes…

Does there come a point where it becomes clear that kind of fighting the closure is no longer a worthwhile fight. I'm, I'm thinking specifically about Denver, just had a couple of schools closed and there was one very small, largely White and wealthy school that the district decided to close. Which I was actually somewhat surprised by, because that doesn't usually happen.

But, you know, I was talking to a, a mom who was organizing at that school and they were really, really fighting the closure. And I was sort of like, “Look, I, I think this is inevitable. You're gonna get closed.” Shift your energy to demanding that, of that savings the district has is getting invested back into your community.

That, like, what comes after the closure. Either what happens with the building or, you know, you're saving $6 million. Like, I, we need more bus service so that our kids can get to this other thing.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Exactly.

Andrew: We need some, you know, partnering with the city to make infrastructure improvements so that it's safer to walk to the new school or, you know, whatever it is.

Like, is there, is there some point in which, like, the organizing, and I guess maybe this goes back to your point that we need to be thinking, you know, three or five years out, not three or four months out. But …

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I'm glad you brought this up because I am not like a, you know, “never close a school” person. You know, I think there's certain situations in which closure becomes the inevitable option. Sometimes it's the academically better option. Sometimes, like, the one time right can save money is if it's avoiding other costs. And usually this is state created. But if, like, the building desperately needs renovation, if you close it, you're, you're gonna, and this is something that's happening here in Maine. And I wanna be really clear, that's again, usually a state created situation. But,

Andrew: It could have been maintaining the buildings. That was a choice to not maintain the buildings.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Right, exactly. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew: For 50 years and now, yeah.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yep. And then there are also, I have seen White or wealthy communities fight closure. It's always not always clear why, but sometimes it does seem like because they don't want their kids to go to school with Black or Browner children.

And in that case, like, you know, I think you've gotta look at why are you fighting the closure, and, like, be really, really honest with yourself and think about is this an equity move? And so there might be cases in which actually closing this school is the more equitable thing to do. And, and, like, you said, like so how can this money get back into the district to ensure that all kids have access to an excellent education.

Usually it's bound up in all, all kinds of things, right? Like, you know, the mom you were just talking to, you know, that's a hard conversation. But I think you do have to think about, like, the entire, like the equity implications, you know, writ large, when you think about some of these, these closures.

Andrew: Yeah. If we were to do it better, if we were to close schools less often when we did do it with more community involvement, more community investment, with a more, like, deeper rooted belief in community's knowledge of what they actually need, and less paternalism, what does the school system look like?

And then more broadly, kind of, what does society look like? What's the hope? All this, all this work and time that you've put into this topic, what does the world look like if people would listen to you?

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, I think more schools where we need the most, and more good schools where we need the most. And “good,” I do not mean test scores. I am talking about, like, schools that are responsive to the local community, where kids feel seen and hard, but also like those larger social and cultural and economic roles are celebrated and supported. You know, for such important institutions, we really don't give them the kind of, like, policy attention and economic attention they deserve. So all of that.

Certainly schools that are more integrated and not just desegregated, but, like, actually integrated. And where we make policy decisions that honor the important role the schools play, rather than trying to erase that role or downplay that role or just kind of forget about it.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Thank you.

Dr. Val: This was great.

Andrew: Really appreciate it. We will share links to your work, uh, in the show notes and encourage folks to be on the lookout for any of this talk, and then start building coalitions, find community, and start organizing. Because sometimes you can't avoid it, but even if you can't avoid the closure, you can certainly build relationships that then you can rely on to organize in the future, so.

Dr. Val: That's right. Every one of these episodes I'm like, “I got so much work to do!” [Laughter]

Dr. Mara Tieken: Well, and I, so, yeah. And I so appreciate, like, how you really take a much more holistic way of, like, view towards thinking about schools. That was really evident in your questions and the kind of care you bring to this. So I really, I really appreciated it.

Andrew: Thank you. Thanks for coming on.

Dr. Val: Oh, thank you.

Andrew: Thanks for coming on.

Dr. Mara Tieken: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me.

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: So Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: So now I think about schools, as, like, the central organ. And I, first I wanted to make it the heart.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: Right, because you imagine these schools as places where young people feel loved, and belonging, and care, and support. And they can follow their dreams 'cause there's gonna be some teacher there that helps them do that. And then I wanted to make it the brain because it's a place where you can grow intellectually, and think critically, and have these really meaningful conversations. And so I don't know that there is one organ, you know, in my mind that fits for what a school is and should be in the community. Right?

And I found myself going down this rabbit hole of looking at my old high school, middle school, and elementary school pictures. Um, you may not know this, but I was a muralist at one point in my life.

Andrew: I did not know this.

Dr. Val: That's right. [Val chuckles]

Andrew: At what point in your life were you a muralist? This feels like big news.

Dr. Val: Yes, yes. In the sixth grade.

Andrew: Okay.

Dr. Val: There was just a handful of us who were identified as muralists to paint a mural on the school wall.

And I remember doing the painting for several days. I was able to get outta class, go do the painting, and um, even after I left, I would visit the mural pretty regularly and point it out.

And I assumed it would be there forever.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Val: Because why would it not be there forever? Why would my school not be there forever? Why would they paint over this mural by young people? Um, and it's not there anymore, right? The building is still there, but it doesn't say, serve the same purpose.

And, there is loss that's associated with losing that organ. Right? I think everyone would like to visit their foundation, even if it didn't have all of the wonderful memories that you wanted to have. You wanna be able to go and take note of where you've come from. Right? And I think that's true for schools too.

Andrew: Yeah, I was struck by, and she said like, with very few exceptions. No one was ever, like, “Please close my school.”

Dr. Val: Right.

Andrew: And people don't feel that way about the store down the street or, you know, there are institutions in communities that people love and people feel some attachment to, but the attachment that people feel to schools feels different to me in some way.

And I think that particularly, you know, maybe the past 20 years or something, there's been this push to close schools, reopen schools, move schools, you know, put a new school in a building, whatever, that has just really downplayed the importance that schools play for individuals, for communities, for generations of families, you know?

Not only does that harm the kids who are in the schools when they get closed. You know, we see the research that often, they don't get all these benefits that they're promised and whatnot. But it, it harms the community and it harms the parents, the grandparents, the other people who have had some tie to that thing. It harm, harms you, decades down the road to just know that your mural is not there anymore. There's, like, harm that is caused by all that.

But I think it also, like it, it harms our connection to the institution of public education. And I think particularly in this moment where it feels like the institution is under such attack when we disregard the importance that these buildings that are more than just buildings that these institutions can play in our communities, I think it also starts to erode our belief in, and love for the institution of public education.

Dr. Val: Yeah, we make the assumption that the institution is always going to be there

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: Because why wouldn't we? Right? Like things that we are losing now as a country. I think we made the assumption that they were gonna be there, that they were gonna be safe, that we did not have to continue to fight for their survival. And we're learning that we must be persistent. Like diligence is the price for it.

I wanna thank Dr. Tieken for introducing a term that I felt, and we've talked about and around: spatial injustice. Right? Of course hadn't thought of it that way until I learned about the term in the interview, and it's something that is visible. It's persistent. It's common. And it feels like something that we can certainly galvanize folks around because we can see it in our communities. And honestly, if we had spatial justice in all of our communities, it would be places where everyone would want to live and go to school and, and enjoy and spend money. Right?

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Gosh, this could be so easy, Andrew! [Andrew chuckles] Like literally, every time I think about how easy this could be! Uhhh!

Andrew: Yeah. I, I do appreciate Dr. Tieken's nuance on the topic as well because I think, you know, sometimes I have heard the conversation around school closures get reduced to this very sort of simplistic, like, “Schools should never close.” And, you know, I certainly don't believe that once you open a school building, it should be there for the rest of time. And there are definitely times where it makes sense to close down schools. And there are certainly schools that are not living up to this vision that you so beautifully described valve of a place that is the organ at the center of a community.

There are schools that are not serving that mission, but I think the idea that we just close those schools and then magically some other school will serve that function, we should have by now learned that that is not actually the way things play out.

And so, I appreciated Dr. Tieken, acknowledging that there are times where you do need to potentially close schools. And it should be, you know, she calls it the nuclear option. It should be the last resort. That you should have tried every other way you can to achieve spatial justice before, before resorting to closing a school.

Dr. Val: Recognizing that, rural, under-resourced, and Black and Brown communities are often the main victims of these choices, and there's not a clear, fast, hard fast rule about why we are closing a school. Maybe if there was more transparency around that, maybe if it felt like it was a more equitable decision, at the end of the day. But unfortunately districts, states aren't doing a good job of being upfront about that.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And honestly, sometimes the transparent real reason is “We can probably get away with doing this here instead of other places in the community.”

Andrew: Right. The idea that we need community engagement around school closure sounds nice, and unless it's your school that's getting closed, it's very hard to get people engaged in the topic of school closures.

And we know that no one, with very few exceptions, is going to say, “Please close my school.” And so, in order to actually have meaningful community engagement, districts and school leaders have to rethink what they're thinking about in terms of how they're communicating about it in terms of what information they are providing to the community. What are the criteria they're using to close schools, and then what are the benefits and how are they sure that those benefits are actually going to exist?

'Cause the other thing I really appreciated that Dr. Tieken brought up was the. There is a sense of inevitability that the way the story gets told is like, “Well, of course we have to close schools. Now let's just talk about which schools and how we're going to close them.”

But start stepping back and saying like, “Do we actually need to close schools? Is there actually a compelling reason that we need to close schools because we could choose to continue to fund schools that are small.”

We talk about, like, having a number of different school options for folks. One of those options could be small schools. If we believe in that, we know that there, there are kids who thrive in small communities. We know that small class sizes make a difference for kids. And so, there could be a way to. Continue to be responsible stewards of the resources that are available for education and keep schools open. And so, encouraging school leaders and district leaders to step back and really make the compelling case for why school closure is necessary in the first place.

Then what criteria they're going to use and maintaining transparency through all that, I think certainly feels like a, a good first step, at least.

Dr. Val: Yeah, absolutely. I was at a school board meeting with my daughter recently. She had to go do a civic engagement thing, and on the ride home I told her, I was like, man, you know. What stinks about reality for many caregivers and parents, is that you are so overwhelmed with the work of parenting that also remaining laser focused on the policies that are impacting your kids' school. It's just hard to do. It is hard to do.

And, and I told her, you know, after you all graduate, I'm gonna have so much more time to advocate for the schools that you all went to. Right? You know, and um, and I don't know how we, I don't know how we make that better, but certainly I think that is something that we do in community because hopefully I am not only showing up if my school's impacted. Hopefully I am aware of what is happening. Hopefully I'm listening for the words that give me clues that there's a big shift and a community will be impacted. And I have the energy and the capacity to care enough to get involved before it's too late.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And that's hard to do. That's why we need each other. You know?

Andrew: Right. We need to do that in community. We need to do that with other people who care and, and yeah, spread that burden around a little bit. So it is not just the 12 engaged parents from the school that's going to get closed that are showing up, but that we are all showing up for each other and saying like, “How do we actually honor this community? And how do we actually serve this community.” And, and how do we serve this school that is in our community, whether we have kids, whether our kids go to that school or not? Like, these institutions that, that have the potential to be the organ in the body of our community, you know, it, it is all of our responsibility to show up and support those.

And that's where I think this, you know, shift in kind of mindset from, you know, a, a “failing school” to a school that we are failing if. If we are not giving those school the resources and the support and the buy-in that it needs, that's on us. That's not on the school, that's not on the teachers, that's not on the leaders, that's not on the, certainly not on the students who are in the building that is on us as a community because these, these are institutions that, that not only belong to us, but they're like crucial for our survival, you know?

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah, I would, I'd be curious if listeners out there have good examples of ways that people who are no longer, you know, directly connected to the school with their own students are getting involved and helping and supporting schools. Because I think that's an important story to tell and important thing to model. And I'm definitely curious about learning ways to do that as I, I'm not nearly as close to being done as you are Val, but, um, you know–

Dr. Val: I'm not bragging, but you know! [Val chuckles]

Andrew: In a few short years, we'll also be out of the school system and how do I stay involved and stay engaged and, and keep caring about it and keep giving back to this important institution?

Dr. Val: I would love to hear from our community on that as well because based on all of the interviews that we've done in the past couple years, I got so much work to do. I gotta work on school lunches. I gotta work on PTA. I gotta like I got stuff to do.

Andrew: So, listeners, as you were grappling with school closures in your communities where I, I guess a lot of our listeners are grappling with this. You know, Dr. Tieken had some great advice around being on the lookout for people talking about things like consolidation, things like efficiency, and really showing up.

Whether you think your school or where your kid is, is potentially impacted or not showing up for the conversations and really demanding some greater transparency, some real clarity around what the needs are that are leading to the closure, what the plans are for, how the closure is going to help, and then really questioning that sort of assumption that school closures are inevitable and the only way to address some of these problems.

Dr. Val: Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Tieken gave us a lot that we can do. And another thing that you can do is listen and share this episode and have this conversation with your community.

Get to know which schools are closing, what areas they are in. I mean, that is downstream, right? As we know.

But there are ways that you can support people who are going through this right now, and then we can work our way upstream to try to get ahead of some of this.

One thing that I, I left that conversation with was really thinking like, what type of education do we need all community members, parents, caregivers, to have–

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: –in advance of this happening? Right? Is this a conversation that we have at PTA? Right? How do we start to educate people early and often so that they're aware of the conversation that is happening around them and can, can activate a little bit sooner.

Andrew: Yeah. And you know, as Dr. Tieken said, in community, building multiracial, cross-class coalitions of people who are showing up to demand accountability, demand that if there are gonna be school closures, that are done with community and not to community.

That these are the places where we can all show up and band together, because that's the only way we win.

Dr. Val: That's it. Together.

That is the only way. Mm-hmm.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And so in order to keep doing this work together, we would love for you to donate to our cause. All of your donations go to Integrated Schools to support the work of the podcast, to find ways to bring people together and connect them, and that we feel like it's a meaningful use of your dollars.

All right? Um, and so you can do that by going to integratedschools.org and hitting the big red “donate” button

Andrew: And then let us know what you think. Are you facing school closures? We would love to hear your stories of how community is or is not being involved in those conversations. What's happening in your neck of the woods? Send us a voice memo. Speakpipe.com/integrated schools. S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E.com/integratedschools, or just record a voice memo on your phone and email it to us podcast@integratedschools.org. We would love to know what you're thinking.

Dr. Val: You can also check us out on our Patreon where we have bonus material that's patreon.com/integrated schools.

Andrew: Absolutely. Very glad we've got to dig into school closures today with Dr. Tieken. It's been certainly a topic that's been on my mind that I know a lot of our listeners and Integrated Schools community folks are dealing with. So I feel like I got a lot outta the conversation. Hopefully listeners, you did too.

And Val, as always. It is an honor to be in this with you, so I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.