Those who can't…

“Praise the lord for mobile units!” -Parent at JCPS School Board Meeting

This is a pause in my multi-part blog series about my school, and the unique needs and challenges we have faced. In particular, what happens when a study determines your school building is only at 65% capacity, but you are a high needs school. 

To my four subscribers and that one person from China who viewed my blog, you might be asking where I’ve been. There are a combination of reasons for my blogging pause. It started because I was in Washington, D.C. the week before Thanksgiving to study with NCCAT at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. I came back with so many takeaways about best practices and resources for teaching the Holocaust, but the big moving moment I expected to inspire my next steps wasn’t the one I thought it would be. It hit me from left field and I saw something I could not unsee or stop thinking about. I’ll be writing about it soon, but I want to do it properly. I then spent a lot of time concentrating on the holiday season. It’s an important time for me and I like making it special for my family and friends. I also finally finished writing part one of a Christmas short story I started during the summer.

However, it was more than just life keeping me from publishing on “Those Who Can’t”. There was the anger I couldn’t keep out of my words when trying to write about the next part of this blog series which is addressing the public comments portion of the October 8, 2024 meeting of the JCPS school board. This is when parents from Archer Lodge Middle School let the school board know their thoughts on rezoning their children to Selma Middle School. I watched the video multiple times. You may be thinking, “Just stop watching it if it makes you mad.” That’s what I would tell myself. However, I’m a stickler for making counter-arguments that accurately address what is said. There is no transcript of the meeting, so I kept going back to make sure I heard people correctly and not misremembering their comments.

Some speeches were delivered with more tact and humility than others, or at least attempted to do so. However, hearing things like, “Praise the lord for mobile units!” because learning in trailers would be better than coming to our school, I kept finding myself with a mouthful of adjectives and sarcastic commentary. And because of this, I knew I needed to find a better way to address what was said. This blog is to support the voices within education that get drowned out by fighting and misinformation. I’m not helping myself, my school, my community and especially my students if I go all “Petty Monday” (I learned that phrase from one of my students!). To put this in 90’s terms, I don’t want to be that guest on the Jerry Springer Show that talks ‘ish and starts a fight where security is having to step in to separate everyone. I need this to be more of a Jerry’s Final Thought, where Jerry gives surprisingly insightful commentary that leads to self-reflection.

I also know that every parent there was sincerely advocating for their child(ren) and going off the data that was available to them, even though I disagreed with parts of what they said and how some of them chose to say it. So how should I go forward? My next step will be pulling several key arguments that I heard repeated from different parents or statements that stood out to me at that meeting that need to be cleared up. What will I do after that? Well, just like a good parent stands up for their child, I’m going to be a good teacher and stand up for all of my children at Selma Middle School and tell you why they deserve more than the consideration they’ve been shown throughout this process of determining what to do with the “extra” space in their school building. I’m also going to tell you why people should stop thinking about what their children could do for my children, and instead start thinking about what my children could do for theirs.