Switching schools

OK folks, so it has now been two full weeks since my last post. That is the longest I have gone without blogging since I began this venture (other than when I was newly home from the hospital with Clair and not sure what time of day it was or if I was going to throw myself off the roof of my house.)

I'm leaving for Portland, Maine tonight with my two big bosses for client meetings, so I am really just waiting to head to the airport, which means I have a few minutes of "down" time and can actually blog! Now is as good a time as any, I suppose, to get out the post I've been trying to write about why we're switching the boys to a new school.

There are soooo many reasons, the two biggest ones being: Our family experiences, and racism in America.

 I'll just start with one reason here -- our family experiences -- and get to racism -- a huge and hairy post - another time.

Here goes.

Lester and I are both fans of and products of public schools. I covered public schools as an education reporter for years. My mother and sister are public school employees. I sit on the board of a public charter school. But in Baltimore, the public schools are CRAP. Crap with a capital horrible. There are a few schools that are OK, but you have to live in those zoned areas to go to them. And as you can tell from my many rantings about how much I want to get out of our neighborhood, we don't live in those zones. The charters are another option, but there's a lottery, so no guarantee, and also most are still fairly newish. So their track records are still gelling. Our options, then, are to move or go private.

Moving would make the most sense, honestly. We'd get out of our neighborhood into a better one, with a yard and neighbors our kids could grow up with. And, ostensibly, the schools in the neighborhood we moved to would be much better. But we're in no position to move right now, because of the darn housing market crash. Our house is a million thousand dollars under water. We couldn't sell this house without taking a huge loss. We don't expect that to change anytime soon, so when we do move, we'll be renting, I think. That's another story altogether.

But the biggest reason we chose private has to do with our family situations. Lester and I both come from families where we have witnessed firsthand the damage that can be done when kids are sucked into a peer group that is going nowhere fast. Of my four siblings, only one went to college. The others, to put it bluntly, are drains on my parents, even though all are adults with children of their own. With two educated, loving, present parents in their lives -- they still fell victim to the mediocre public school education in our going-downhill neighborhood. They were more concerned about being "cool" than preparing for the future. Our parents were (and are still) wonderful, but they have no network. So when the time came for my siblings to outgrow their immaturity and make up for lost time, their windows had closed and my parents had no friends in solid places to help them. I believe my parents will go to their graves taking care of my grown siblings. And my siblings' kids will repeat this cycle. It is a hard, hard thing to say this. I love my siblings dearly. I would do almost anything for them, and their kids especially. But the truth is, bad neighborhood + mediocre education equals not much of a life for any of them. (Aside from my baby sister, who is doing quite well.)

I don't want that for my kids.

In Lester's case, his family has even fewer examples of "success." But the one who stands out most is his cousin Joshua, who was like a brother to him. I remember how proud Lester was the day we dropped Joshua off at college in West Virginia (notice it was me and Lester), after spending hours and hundreds buying him a foot locker, a refrigerator, shower shoes and tons of packs of Ramen noodles.

Lester thought Joshua had beat the odds. With Lester's love and attention and sacrifice, Joshua had made it to college. But the pull of the old neighborhood -- and his old friends -- was too much for Joshua. Over a break in his freshman year, while hanging out in a city basketball park, Joshua was shot in the back of the head and died.

The neighborhood and the peer group were, quite literally, the death of that promising young man.

We have not really gotten over it. We likely never will.

Lester and I are not naive enough to believe that we can protect our children from making bad choices or being attracted to the wrong people. And we're certainly not naive enough to believe that private schools aren't FULL of some of the "wrong" people. But we hope that we can try to make a difference somehow by sending them to this very sweet Quaker school -- with its emphasis on peace, and community.

We hope we can protect them even just a little bit more than we could if we sent them to the city's public schools.

There's more -- but I have to run! Gotta go to the airport!