Community summit says NO to racist school resegregation

About 200 parents, teachers, students and community activists participated in a spirited community summit at Roxbury Community College in Boston May 14. They said no to Mayor Thomas Menino and the Boston School Committee’s racist plan to return the city to segregated, “neighborhood” schools.

Miya Campbell of Boston FIST and the Women’s Fightback Network. WW photos: Liz Green

The event was chaired by Sandra McIntosh of Work for Quality, Fight for Equity (WQFE). Jose Lopez of the newly-formed Coalition for Equal Quality Education (CEQE) gave a graphic presentation of “before and after” maps showing how the new five-zone assignment plan would limit parents’ and students’ access to quality schools and programs. He cited figures showing that 58 percent of the schools in the zones including the African-American community were listed as underperforming, compared to only 16 percent of the schools in the majority-white Allston-Brighton neighborhood’s zone.

City Councilor Chuck Turner cited a community victory in a similar mobilization in 2004, when Menino last launched a “task force” to revise student assignment and transportation plans to return to neighborhood schools. At that time, parents packed a community meeting at a Roxbury church and made it completely clear to the City Council, School Committee and the mayor that the plan was unacceptable as long as there were no quality schools available in the communities of color. The mayor and School Committee agreed then that there would be no change in the student assignment plan until the issues of equity and of quality schools in all communities were addressed.

It is now five years later and nothing has been done.

Miriam Ortiz of the Boston Parents Organizing Network explained at the May 14 summit how the plan would deprive special education students of access to inclusion programs they need. The plan would also leave East Boston, the neighborhood with the largest Latina/o student population, without access to any two-way bilingual program.

Mary Jo Hetzel of WQFE accused the mayor of using the budget crisis as a pretext to push his racist political agenda of a return to “neighborhood schools.”

Nora Toney of Black Educators Alliance of Massachusetts (BEAM) spoke of the history of the struggle for access to quality educational programs for the Black community, going back to the founding of BEAM in 1966.

City Councilor Charles Yancey rallied the crowd, saying, “We can’t turn back. We won’t go back to racist resegregation of the Boston schools.” City Councilor Sam Yoon, a mayoral candidate, also spoke against the five-zone plan.

A wide array of parents, teachers and students participated in the open discussion, including parents and teachers from the Hernandez School. This is currently a citywide school with a very successful two-way bilingual program. Under the new plan—which would only allow students in the zone to access it—over 55 percent of those who access the school today would no longer be eligible for transportation to the school, and no new students outside the zone could apply.

Kervin Voyard, leader of Powerful Students at the Community Academy of Science and Health (CASH), described the students’ walkout and demonstration at school headquarters in early May to save teachers at their school from being laid off and to fight for equal, fair treatment for Haitian students.

Andre Francois of Boston School Bus Drivers, Steelworkers Local 8751, said this coalition was the beginning of the fightback against racism and bigotry in the city, and called on all to take it to the streets. The union had contributed to the struggle by printing thousands of May 14 flyers and distributing them to the students on buses to bring to their parents. The union, which includes a large number of Haitian drivers, provided translation for a sizeable group of Haitian parents who attended the May 14 summit.

The event was organized by the CEQE, including BEAM; Work 4 Quality, Fight for Equity; Boston Parents Organizing Network; Boston School Bus Drivers; Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey; Minister Don Muhammad, Nation of Islam; Bail Out the People Movement; Women’s Fightback Network; New England Human Rights for Haiti; Bishop Felipe Teixeira, OFSJC; Community Change; Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) youth; the Powerful Students of CASH; and Union of Minority Neighborhoods.

The coalition called on everyone to march with the Hernandez parents, teachers and students on May 18, and to demonstrate at the School Committee headquarters at 26 Court St. in Boston at 5:30 p.m. on June 3, when the superintendent will present the final recommendation on the five-zone plan.

Boston has been a battleground against racism in the schools since 1974, when

African-American parents demanded equal education 20 years after the Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional. It took a mass march of 25,000 against racism in Boston on Dec. 14, 1974, to turn the corner against the racist attacks on school buses transporting African-American students to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods. Activists see the need to take it to the streets again to prevent a return to the racist, bigoted past.