Vote to Stand

Rev. Sharon Dittmar
March 5, 2000

In an attempt to understand the story of Cincinnati Public Schools I called Duane Holm, the Executive Director MARCC (Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati). Duane is a long-time veteran of the city school issue. He referred me to a recent MARCC mailing that diagrams the problem with funding schools with property tax revenues, as is done in Ohio. Property tax revenues cannot, by law, grow with the economy, so frequently, as expenses and the economy expand, public schools must continually ask the voters to pass new levies. It's a poor relative relationship that is not very endearing. So that's one problem. As I continued to ask around I heard about other issues as well, low test scores, poor teachers, a well-intentioned but ignorant organization known as the Cincinnati Business Committee, and three decades of white flight to the suburbs. My list of issues just kept growing.

Duane Holm also said something that piqued my interest, something getting to the heart of the issue. He said, "When it comes to our public city schools we have a hard time knowing whether to act as customers or citizens. Customers expect the best quality and excellent service. Citizens are not customers."

In my mind citizens have both privileges and responsibilities. As citizens we must consider our personal needs and those of the greater good, and we must consider them almost equally. I'm reminded of that old American motto taken from the Kentucky State Seal "United we stand, divided we fall". Citizens are united. Customers are divided. In my mind the issue of our Cincinnati public schools is one of civics.

What kind of citizens are we? What kind of citizens are we when we vote against Cincinnati Public School levies solely because they increase our taxes or because we disapprove of their test score results? Inner-city public schools face tremendous challenges. What kind of citizens are we when we expect schools to perform miracles without our money? As citizens we are free to choose, but we also have the responsibility to deliberate the consequences of our actions for ourselves and others.

Perhaps the deepest most painful under-deliberated issue driving the debate over Cincinnati Public Schools, is that of race and class. Our former Governor, Jack Gilligan, is the person who first pointed this out to me. I stopped him at a recent MARCC meeting, and asked him, as a new member of the Cincinnati School Board, what he would like us to know about Cincinnati Public Schools. He responded

Sometime after this conversation I realized how naive I had been, how naive many of us have been. This is not just about test scores or teachers, a new coat of paint or even white flight. City schools are ground zero for our most entrenched social problems of race and class, the ones we have carried with us since the founding of this country.

Last January, The New York Times Magazine, featured an article entitled "Schools Are Not the Answer". The byline reads "On the eve of the presidential primaries, education is being touted as the cure-all for poverty. Why it's not, and never will be." Author James Traub begins his article

It sounds so eerie to me. Just last week Cincinnati Public Schools were issued another report card noting their inadequate standards. Overall, the 12th grade scores are much higher than the 4th grade scores, which says to me that our Cincinnati public schools must be doing something right. Yet, as one Cincinnati school teacher said to me this past week with a grim combination of determination, frustration, and irony, "We always fail." The report card concludes that our district met 6 of the 27 standards which earns us the rating "academic emergency."

Absent from the report card are other statistics indicating that Walnut Hills, Clark Montessori, and SCPA (the schools considered a "success" by Superintendent Adamowski) have the highest proficiency scores. They also have the lowest percentage of children on free lunch (8% - 21%), and the lowest percentage of African-American students (33% - 45%). What was that sentence about predicting proficiency "merely by knowing the percentage of students in a given district who qualify for a free lunch?"

This week on the 5 o'clock news I saw an advocate for anti-tax initiatives bemoaning the poor scores, using them to support his notion that no reasonable person could support either Cincinnati public school levy on March 7th. Is it just me, or is anyone else getting the idea that something enormous and powerful is going on here, something that is not being named? I've seen the low scores, heard all about them from pseudo-sincere newscasters and read about them in indignant editorials. After all the hype, the anger, and the blame, could it really be that we just need to act like citizens and deliberate the larger issues of race and class as well as test scores, teacher performance and the aftermath of white flight?

Last month the speaker at the MARCC Annual Meeting was Dr. Estus Smith, Executive Vice President of the Kettering Foundation. Dr. Smith spoke with great eloquence about our national and local conversation on education. According to Smith, when it comes to education we discuss and debate (establishing the unhelpful precedent of winners and losers), occasionally we dialogue, and rarely do we do what is most helpful, deliberate, that is, take in and weigh all information before rushing to a position or judgment. Dr. Smith also had two interesting observations about the debate on education in Cincinnati. (And I use the word "debate" intentionally. He was very clear that debating never helps, but that deliberation can help, and what we do in Cincinnati is debate.) First, he observed that we talk about raising standards for children and teachers, but never for the community. And second, he observed that we will have the schools we desire, or we will get the schools we deserve.

So fellow citizens, our Cincinnati public school children have been rated as failures, in a state of academic emergency. How well do you and I rate? As a community, what are the standard we are accountable for achieving? What have we done to help? Bev speaks of children who witness murders, parents who have no cars and can't get to parent-teacher conferences. As customers it's none of our business. As citizens, we are in a state of civic emergency, and whether we live in the city or suburbs, finding ways to resolve this problem is our responsibility. Our schools and cities are segregated, sometimes by choice, mostly by economic circumstances, and history, and oh, do we need one another.

The future of public education in the city of Cincinnati is of concern to all of us, no matter where we live or work. This is our shared land, our children, and our future. United we stand, divided we fall. I asked Mimi Gingold, another member who has worked in Cincinnati Public Schools for several years, for some of her thoughts. She wrote

I applaud Mimi's thoughts, not only for their civic mindedness, but also for being visionary enough to see that we are one people, and that those of us who do not live in the city are still responsible, and can still find ways to serve and help.

Last week I visited Woodward High School at the other end of the Reading Road corridor, and had the pleasure of attending Mrs. Baker's freshman English class. When I entered the building, a police officer stationed at the entrance, directed me to the main office. Inside the office I studied the grandfather clock that had stopped at 6:10. I couldn't help but ask myself "Would it function if it were in the new addition to the Wyoming High School?" I wondered about the huge folder behind the desk labeled "ASBESTOS". One of Bev's students, Ivory, came to get me. Ivory was a real gentleman. He held the door open for me at the hallway entrances.

Inside Bev's classroom there were fourteen freshmen finishing an exam. Half the window shades had fallen down, but the room was neat and welcoming. Later, Bev told me that she and Bill had painted it. Towards the end of the class I talked to students and asked them their thoughts about Woodward. Here's a sampling of what they said.

"It leaks." (which is true. Later Bev showed me an adjoining classroom with corroded tiles and a large water stain on the ceiling) "There are rats." (Now this is not true. Bev told me there weren't rats, only mice, but she also told me something just as bad. They have lots of cockroaches). And then there was my favorite comment, "It's raggedy."

It is raggedy. There were four brand new Compaq Presario computers in Bev's classroom, but Woodward is undeniably old and raggedy. It feels very institutional, worn and plain. It's hard to find a frill anywhere, let alone a window covering. In this way it almost seemed abandoned

Then there were the kids themselves. I found them absolutely and completely charming, in all of their wiggly, head down and sleeping, shy and thoughtful, "Whas up?" demeanors. I looked into face after face, almost all of them black (and it sounds funny to say that now, but I've realized you can't honestly talk about Cincinnati Public Schools without talking about race), and I just saw kids, big kids, little kids, kids, wonderful, lovable, deserve much from us, kids.

And then there are the teachers. I spoke to five teachers, three of whom went to Woodward when they were in high school. I was so impressed by the teachers. They hear their kid's scores are bad, and that they aren't very good themselves (and there are problems with Cincinnati Public School teachers, the "Parking Lot to Paycheck" teachers Bev talked about). But I talked to these teachers, one who had been there twenty-six year, and remembers when the school was 35% black and the teachers actually had their own lunch line, and I saw the face of love and the face of God. These teachers keep showing up. It's raggedy for them too, and they keep showing up.

Last month I spoke to a First Church member who has considerable doubts about her decision to send her children to city schools. She said to me "There are times when I think, why didn't we go to Sycamore? My kids go to schools that are worn down. They don't have computers. They don't have guidance counselors when they need them."

I don't know what to say to this except "Maybe you stayed because you believe in being a citizen, and because you know that issues of race, class, and even crime, follow us no matter where we go. Maybe you stayed because you know that good schools aren't that good and bad schools don't do that much harm. Strong parents, families, churches, communities, and the first five years of life make all the difference, and you have been that difference." In his New York Times Magazine article, James Traub quoted a study that found that schools only affected 5% - 35% of children's academic performance. The other force, the greater force has always come from families, neighborhoods, communities, and the first five years of life.

Now some people would say, "That's it then. I don't have to vote for a levy." Not so fast. Traub closes his article by writing

The money from these levies will not fix everything. But the money will stop us from punishing our children because they and their families are poor. The last thing Duane Holm said to me at the MARCC Annual Meeting was this "If you've got an issue with the schools, go and vote for the children. Then come back and deliberate the problems. Otherwise the money will never be there to change anything."

I encourage all of you who have the privilege of voting on Cincinnati School issues, to go to the polls on Tuesday, and to vote "Yes" on issues 15 and 16, "Yes" for our children and our future.