"If you send your kid to private school, you are a bad person"

[JustAnotherGen]

51. Wonderfully written

My father was President of the school board - and chose not to run again and my parents chose to send my brother to an inner city Magnet School (we were rural) and two years later I went to a Private Parochial School (brother was the last black kid allowed to 'slide into' the inner city via Urban Suburban Program).

Hip deep in the muck - he saw that the community was 'happy' with substandard education and were even willing to get rid of the extended studies program that his children were in. The school district also had a habit of graduating through the townies kids - who eventually flunked out of their ivy league schools.

They never voted against a budget that expands education - but they had to make the choice to give us a rigorous education if they could. So they did.

I started at University in 1991 with a friend from my hometown. She struggled miserably through basic English 101. They had never read Achebe, Oates, Salinger, Walker . . . She had never had to write a collegiate level Essay and had not taken any A.P. classes as they were not available in my home district.

My dad graduated from a still segregated school in Talladega Alabama in the 1950's and my mom graduated from Lake Tahoe high school in the 1960's. They knew first hand what a rural education provided - misery when you got to University.

They tried the best they could to change the district - but if you can't change the district - change the environment for your children. Sometimes you really can't fight an entrenched in failure Town(ie) Hall.