Weingarten: Down The Road

When I received the inside Tweet that teacher tenure was on Melissa Harris-Perry's "syllabus" this week, I had to watch.  10:00 AM Sunday I poured myself a bowl of Frosted Flakes and tuned in.  

Due process, blah blah blah

Teachers are most important factor, etc, etc.

Corporate greed will destroy public education, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Fifteen minutes of chatter, so far nothing new.

Then, as if she was looking through the TV directly at me, the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten pronounced,

"The bigger point is this...How do we attract and retain well prepared great teachers for our most needy kids? Because what's happening is just a few miles down the road in Westchester we're not talking about these issues, but in Rochester we are, and we are in the places where there are intense real social economic issues.  So why are we not having that conversation?"

Well, I am from Westchester.  I grew up here, live here, served on a school board here, founded a charter school here, I'm raising kids here.  She can't be talking about my Westchester, she's must be talking about the Westchester of Mad Men or maybe West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Though I may disagree with the dear leader of the AFT about teacher tenure, my issue is not along the spectrum of reformer versus union boss.  It's that Ms. Weingarten seems to have a blind spot with respect to Westchester County, New York.

Westchester has forty school districts and two charter schools.  These include public schools in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Port Chester, Peekskill and Greenburgh.  These are places where there are "intense real social issues."

When we talk about race equity in education, I think plenty of people visualize what Randi Weingarten articulates, that "down the road" are places free of the exhausting social problems that plague inner cities.  It's convenient to imagine that the pathologies of the ghetto stop at the bridges and tunnels that supply the pulsing hearts of the big cities.  

The Mount Vernon City School District has about 8,000 students, and 90% are free and reduced lunch eligible.  When I was on the school board there, 80% of the kids in the eighth grade were failing three or more classes.  There's a high density of poverty.  Every social problem, health problem, money problem, job problem you can read about or experience is here in Westchester.

On a lighter note, as a New Yorker, Weingarten should know that Westchester is north of the Bronx, and is generally considered, "up the road," some would even say, "upstate," but not "down the road."    

In the shadow of New York City, Westchester's poverty zip code school systems get shoved into a blind spot.  The most needy kids are here, too.