SPS, STEM and Fragility

Last week, two parts of my life as a parent collided at a school board meeting. On the night that many people were rightfully focused on what happened in Downtown Seattle, a couple of miles south, the Seattle School Board was taking action on a proposal 20 years in the making.

The board approved a partnership with the Seattle-based Technology Access Foundation (TAF) to place a project-based, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program at Washington Middle School in the Central District. The agreement is a power sharing partnership, and would give TAF some oversight on the development of the school curriculum and the hiring of staff.

This was not TAF’s first attempt at partnering with a Seattle school. Its first effort at the end of the last century left bruises that are still evident today. But TAF persevered and looked to school districts that were willing to partner with them, successfully implementing its program in the Federal Way School District and schools in Tacoma.

The issue that set off alarms for some is that Washington Middle School is also the home of students enrolled in the district’s Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). HCC is a program that Seattle Public School students test into and those students work at a level 2 to 3 grades above their peers. Students who become part of HCC usually stay together as a group from when they join the program until they graduate high school.

Placing TAF at Washington will essentially end HCC at the location, part of the school district’s never ending delicate dance of trying to balance the needs and nurture the talents of all students in the district, not just the “best and brightest,” who coincidentally happen to be overwhelming White and are the majority of the students in HCC.

So how did this decision collide with my life? Because I have been blessed with an incredibly gifted child.

At 2 years old, her day care provider was telling me and my wife she was ready for Kindergarten—if it wasn’t for that potty training thing. My daughter tested to enter Seattle schools at 4 years old, and after a few tears on her first attempt (which is a story that has to wait for another day) she started at Dunlap Elementary, a Kindergartner 2 years younger than some of her classmates.

Four years later, my family received notice from the school district informing us that our daughter qualified to enter the district’s Advanced Placement Program (APP), the predecessor of HCC. It was the district’s effort to expand the number of families of color entering APP to make the program “more inclusive.”

My wife and I were familiar with APP, and while excited about the opportunity, we were also familiar with the reports of APP being a very hostile atmosphere for non-Asian students of color, along with stories about the sense of entitlement surrounding the program.

After a sales pitch from the head of the program at that time that would make a car dealer blush, my wife and I were encouraged to speak to parents and given a list of parents whose African-American children were part of APP.

In hindsight, I should have been suspicious that it was such a short list.

Those parents acknowledged that while there were incidents of racism that were very much part of APP, the district and the school were aware and working hard to make a welcoming atmosphere for all children in the program.

Truthfully, the parent who said: “why would you want to turn down a private school education in a public school?” should have been a warning about what we were walking into, but we also agreed the challenges and opportunities it would provide our daughter were not available at her current school. So in the fall of 2008, my daughter skipped her way into Lowell Elementary School to start the 4^th Grade.

It’s a decision that I regret to this day.

The racism was expected, but still painful. 12 years later, my daughter speaks about her treatment by her fellow students with a hurt and anger that resonates even as she prepares to graduate from college.  

What wasn’t expected was the extreme sense of entitlement that many APP parents had. A sense of entitlement that appears to have lasted over the years and reared its head during the recent discussion of TAF coming to Washington.

You see, in the fall of 2008, as my daughter was being told to go back to her “stupid Black school,” and that she didn’t deserve to be “going to school with White people,” the school district was debating a proposal to split APP into schools in both north and south Seattle, to encourage more families to become part of the program. Until then, the school district had put all of their “smart eggs” into one basket—Lowell Elementary.

Fool that I am, I thought this was a great idea.

You would think that I supported students being placed into concentration camps.

During the public hearings about the proposal, the parents of Lowell students, White liberals, many of whom were patting themselves on the back for voting for the first Black President of the United States, voiced beliefs and opinions that would have made Bull Connors and Sean Hannity proud.

A sample of some of their comments:

“Our children shouldn’t have to engage with inferior people,”

“The school district is doing this to help boost scores of unteachable students at underperforming schools,”

“I don’t want my child to be attacked by jealous students who aren’t as bright as they are,”

And my favorite:

“While I like this idea, won’t this show the ‘normal’ students just how inadequate they are?”

When I pointed out the paradox of supporting a program but not wanting to open it to other kids in a Seattle Times OpEd, the Lowell parents turned their anger at me, and unfortunately at my daughter. When my daughter talked to KUOW radio about the potential split, I was accused of using my “media connections” to make the program “seem” racist and of coaching my daughter to “slander the school.”

It’s frightening and discouraging to hear similar sentiment voiced again as the school district seeks once again to expand opportunities for all students. The voices have changed; the condescending and elitist attitudes have not.

It all boils down to “Why is my White child being subjected to this?”

APP did split into north and south cohorts, with “south” students, including my daughter, going to Thurgood Marshall Elementary School for their last year of elementary school.

Guess what? The world didn’t come to an end. Students in the “blended” school for the most part got along, and a few of the privileged parents acknowledged their fears were a “little over the top.” 

But after two years, my family was exhausted from the fight both inside and outside the school, and decided that we didn’t want my daughter to continue as part of APP.

So instead of going to Washington Middle School, after a year in parochial school, my daughter transferred out of Seattle and went to a school in the Federal Way School District; the Technology Access Foundation Academy, better known as TAFA, operating in partnership with TAF and the Federal Way School District.

And while I had concerns (and quite frankly still do) about the focus of the school—even as the Academy added an A (arts) to the acronym (STEAM)—my daughter thrived. She was able to work at her own pace and level, and did things that made her confident enough to graduate high school a year early, which the school enthusiastically supported.

While my daughter had the standard high school angst, she doesn’t hesitate to expound the virtues of TAFA. As for my wife, she has John the Baptist level enthusiasm in trying to convince parents to consider sending their children to TAFA—even though her child has been out of the school for 4 years.

I joke about TAFA being the “Island of Misfit Toys,” because it has developed a program and curriculum that ensures that every student, regardless of skill level and ability, reaches their maximum potential.

This sounds like a program that schools and parents should be fighting to include in Seattle, not building barriers to prevent it from coming in and accusing the district of using their children “like pawns” .

It appears the biggest issue with TAF in Seattle schools is that it would subject children—and their overwhelmingly liberal parents—into having to interact with students that these parents will argue are “good kids,” but also sincerely believe aren’t as “capable” as their children.

It’s a reminder that for all of its vaunted liberalism, Seattle and its “enlightened” residents can be as racist and close-minded as any proud MAGA cap wearing zealot. Their liberalism only extends to other people’s kids, never their own.

Until Next Time…