Today is lottery day.
It’s not the scratch-and-sniff power ball mega-millions kind of lottery. Today is the day in Nashville when hundreds of thousands of residents find out whether or not they won a spot at a “choice” school, based on a lottery for seats.
I’ve been avoiding writing this newsletter because the school situation — particularly in Nashville — is so rife with problems and charged with emotion. And I bring my own biases and concerns and first-hand experiences to the table. The whole situation makes me think back on the spring semester of my senior year in college.
In April, I sat on the couch in our on-campus apartment, waiting for the results that would change my life. At last, the screen flashed and the answer appeared.
“Nashville,” I said. The word came out like a gasp, and I glanced up at my roommate and back to my computer screen again, to check that the results hadn’t changed. “They’re sending me to Nashville.”
At the eleventh hour, I had submitted an application to Teach for America. I graduated in the middle of a recession, and to their credit, my parents are not the “come on, it’s fine, move back in with us” type. I needed a job. Anything that could help me earn money and not stumble into a world of economic trouble if I tripped and broke my arm. Teach for America started in the late 1990s, and continues to this day. The non-profit trains and sends “high-achieving college graduates” into failing schools and school systems to help close the achievement gap. They sent me to Nashville: a city that seemed sunny and friendly and hopeful, not exactly the set of Dangerous Minds 2.0.
I taught 7th-grade geography at a middle school near Opry Mills Mall in northeast Nashville, just before the city gives way to rural farmland. By all accounts, it was a “sweet” school, which meant that there were only occasional fights, and the teachers were kind and thoughtful to one another and the students. Still, for two years, I struggled to walk through those doors, terrified of the roller coaster that would inevitably begin when the bell rang.
Luckily, my classroom happened to be located next to two other first-year teachers, Barbara Griffin and Charity Vinson. Barbara is originally from Poland. She moved to the states to play basketball. She has had a long, fruitful, impactful career as a teacher. That year, she taught ESL to a group of middle schoolers who had recently immigrated, many from Egypt, Turkey, and other Arabic-speaking nations. Every day, I watched her exhibit love, patience, and kindness, creating projects and assignments to meet her students exactly where they were in their language learning. She never lost her temper. She always welcomed help.
Charity Vinson worked in a "behavior modification" classroom down the hall from mine. Daily, fights broke out and Charity had to barricade herself to protect herself from children who had become unregulated. She called for help from the administrative offices. Sometimes that help arrived. Still, she came to school each day with a smile on her face and hope that she could make a difference in those children's lives.
I had walked into that school overly confident in my own abilities. But Barbara and Charity (and a host of other teachers in that building) taught me that love and perseverance were far more important than any academic benchmarks I might help my students reach. To this day, these women stand as champions in my mind.
But those years also taught me what it meant to send your student to a large, public middle school. On average, I had 30 students in a class. One class surged to 36. I didn’t even have enough desks. I didn’t have central air conditioning, either. The window A/C unit was loud and disruptive and dripped condensation on the floor. I would teach for a few minutes, give the kids an assignment, then run over to turn on the unit while they worked, desperate for a bit of cool air. I didn’t have A/C. I did, however, have mice.
If you live within the city limits of Davidson County or another city school system you will understand. Metro Nashville Public Schools operates 155 public schools. The number of failing schools is hard to pinpoint, because last year, the department of education delayed grading schools again. While evaluating elementary schools, many parents in my neighborhood told me outright not to look at the ratings of schools on GreatSchools.com, because the information was so outdated. They encourage parents to give schools the benefit of the doubt — things are getting better over there.
But the reality is, shutting down schools during COVID has had rampant negative impacts on student learning and teacher retention. The schools that were struggling before have not miraculously improved in the last two years. If anything, the pandemic only put a magnifying glass to the elements of our school system that are failing.
There are succeeding public elementary schools —but unless you live in a certain zip code — the only way to get into those schools is to enter a lottery with everyone else in the city trying to get into those schools. If you’re lucky enough to win the lottery for elementary, your child will go to that school for a few years, and then when your child hits 4th or 5th grade, you start all over again, entering the lottery for middle school.
Sorry, is this newsletter a huge bummer?
Earlier this year, knowing this would be our situation, Patrick and I made the decision to apply to some private elementary schools. This was never something we had considered previously. In fact, if you had asked us, we would have said we would never do it. Ha! Well, here we go, pulling out the plates and the forks, prepared to eat our slices of humble pie.
And now, it’s lottery day. And here I go opening the “school choice” website to see if we got into the elementary school down the street, within walking distance, where we are in the “priority zone”. I click refresh. And there it is.
We didn’t get in.
To be honest, there is some sadness here — sadness that the dream of the neighborhood school has died.
And I am hopeful and thankful for what will come next. None of these schools are perfect. And I know that all across this city there are hardworking, dedicated, gifted teachers, administrators, and staff working in every single building so that more kids will have the opportunity to receive a great education.
In the meantime, no matter what happened during this week, no matter if the schools said “yes” or “no”, no matter if you’re #1 on the waitlist or #100: we will all keep parenting. And that means rising to the occasion and sacrificing where necessary, to give our kids the best education we can possibly find.
This world is a maze. The options — left or right? — can feel crazy-making. But God is with us all. And he is with our kids.
Recent Favorites
BOOK:
Horse by Geraldine Brooks. I have been really enjoying this novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, about the story of a winning racehorse from Lexington, Kentucky, an artist that painted its portrait, the enslaved young man who served as his trainer, and the Smithsonian scientist who unearthed the tale. Incredible!
Admittedly I have not been consuming as much media lately, because I’m making a concerted effort toward my novel. Stay tuned!
One Last Thing:
Really and truly — don’t feel sad for us about the school thing. Patrick and I are really excited about what comes next for our kids, and we know that these things have a way of shaking out in the end. Still, for those who don’t have children in a city district, I wanted to shed light on what it feels like right now for parents trying to make decisions about schools. So that was my intent. Not to garner pity, but to pull back the curtain on the reality of the situation.
Blessings to you — and as always, shoot me a line!