I wish Hoover weren't an issue, but it is

School board candidate Jason Lewis recently posted a statement on his blog about what he means by “supporting neighborhood schools.”  An excerpt:

“What bothers me is this: We hold the concept of neighborhood schools dear in our hearts as a district.  And we should.  They are inextricably woven into the fabric of our communities and they serve us well.  But when some of our schools were falling behind, when the federal government gave us a ‘Get out of Your Neighborhood School Free’ card, was there a hue and cry?  Did we run to the aid of those SINA schools and put signs in our yards because Twain and Wood and other schools in the district were foundering in the eyes of No Child Left Behind.  Where was the organized effort to right that wrong?  I don’t recall such a movement.

“Again, I don’t begrudge the families who made the choice to leave their neighborhood school and enroll in another school, be it Hoover or any other.  But we can’t have it both ways.  If we really support neighborhood schools, if we really believe that every child deserves the best possible chance at the best possible education we can offer, then we can’t pick and choose when we support our neighborhood schools.  Those first SINA schools needed our organized advocacy and didn’t get it.  In 2014 ALL of our schools will be SINA schools.  We better start working together to make sure we support them all.”

Read the whole post.

I’m puzzled by Lewis’s argument.  Despite Lewis’s disclaimers, it’s hard not to read his post as criticizing the families who transferred out of SINA schools, as well as the people who are now protesting possible school closures.  Yet many of the people who are now concerned about school closings share Lewis’s concerns about equity and about the high concentration of low-income families into just a few of our district’s elementary schools.  For my part, I’ve spent a lot of time this summer opposing the Hoover closure, but I’ve also been blogging for four years about the disaster that is No Child Left Behind, including about its effects on kids in poverty and its imposition of harsh and anti-educational policies on communities against their will.  I believe that there is a lot of potential support in our community for addressing the issues that Lewis cares most about.  But as a strategy for cultivating that support, Lewis’s scolding seems counterproductive.

Lewis is clearly arguing that some people who are now concerned about school closures are inconsistent, or even hypocritical, because they did not sufficiently advocate for SINA schools or put up yard signs to “Save Twain” or “Save Wood” from the effects of No Child Left Behind.  This is a false opposition.  Yes, some people want to talk about issues other than those Lewis would most like to talk about; that doesn’t render those people inconsistent or hypocritical.  School board candidates have to address a wide range of issues, not just those of their own choosing.

(I should add that if Hoover families had protested the SINA transfer policy when Twain and Wood families became eligible to transfer into Hoover, it would not have sent a very welcoming message to the kids transferring into Hoover, to put it mildly, and would have been rightly condemned.)

A big part of me wishes that the school closure issue would just go away, so we could start addressing other issues that I think need to be addressed.  Lewis apparently feels the same way.  But wishing doesn’t make it so.  Like it or not, the potential closure of Hoover is an issue, and hundreds of people, very reasonably, want to know whether the board candidates favor or oppose it.  They are also tired of being given reasons why they are somehow disqualified from expressing their concerns.  (See posts here and here.)  Although Lewis concludes his post by saying “That’s what I mean when I say that I support neighborhood schools,” I still wish I had a clearer sense of whether he supports or opposes closing Hoover (and, for that matter, Hills, Lincoln, and our other older schools).

Chris Liebig blogs about local and national education issues at A Blog About School.  You can also follow him on Twitter.