Nothing about us without us by Jodi Rhoden April 3, 2016

Hall Fletcher families grapple with a lack of transparency and democracy in a city school restructuring that threatens to make issues of segregation even worse

Above: Hall Fletcher families, teachers and staff gather on Feb. 2 to offer proposals for restructuring their school. Photo by Laura Haire.

On Feb. 2 voices trembled and tears flowed as students, their families, teachers, support staff, and public officials, each in turn, took to the lectern at the Little Theater at Hall Fletcher Elementary School in West Asheville, to speak out in favor of their beloved school and against the proposal to fragment it. The speakers — met by the audience of over 300 concerned citizens with applause and shouts of approval — stood and spoke in near unanimous* opposition to the Asheville City Board of Education’s sudden proposal to dismantle Hall Fletcher’s current configuration and turn Hall Fletcher into a middle school. The proposal, known as Option 4, came as a shock to many of the families — most of whom live in poverty. For these families, Option 4 represents a fracture of a community that has become a lifeline of love and support.

To a packed house and a standing ovation, Latina parent Angelica Wind spoke out, stating: “Hall Fletcher has made immigrant families feel a sense of community. We need to move forward together.” Thomas Priester and Angel Howell, the two African-American co-presidents of Hall Fletcher’s Parent Teacher Organization, stated officially that the organization stands in opposition to the proposal. Speaking for the educators Virginia Duquet, veteran 3rd grade teacher, stated: “the staff of Hall Fletcher strongly opposes Option 4,” and Hall Fletcher parent Laura Haire said: “this is not a building full of workers. It is a home. These people have helped me raise my children.”

What does Option 4 mean? Why is the Hall Fletcher community so against it? Option 4 means the following: Vance, Dickson, Claxton, and Jones Elementary schools will continue as they have previously operated, while Asheville City Preschool, combined with Hall Fletcher Elementary, would become a two-campus “STEAM Academy” with Pre-K through 3rd grade housed in the current site of Asheville city Preschool, and 4th through 8th grade housed at Hall Fletcher. Asheville High and SILSA will continue as they have previously operated, and the Montford Campus (formerly Randolph Learning Center, currently the temporary site of Isaac Dickson while construction is completed on the new Isaac Dickson campus) will become a “non-traditional secondary program.”

It would seem that this unequivocal opposition to a proposal to restructure a community would be enough to change the proposal, but, so far, bewilderingly, it has not been. As Asheville City School Board members will be quick to point out, they have been studying restructuring for some time: three “Stakeholder Forums” were held in November of 2015 to garner feedback from the community about proposed restructuring of all of Asheville’s nine public schools.**

However, none of those earlier community forums included the possibility of eliminating preschool through third grade at Hall Fletcher and making it a middle school like Option 4 does. Instead, five brand new options being considered by the Board of Education were anonymously leaked to the members of the Hall Fletcher PTO in January, all but one of which made Hall Fletcher into a middle school rather than an elementary school (and all but Option 4 are now being labeled on the ACS website as “no longer an option.”) The Feb. 2 forum was planned in response to the outcry from families when they learned of the new proposals on the table.

The restructuring is intended to address massive population growth in Asheville City Schools, particularly at the middle school level. While it has been known for many years that Asheville City Schools has faced an increase in enrollment in elementary school, nothing has yet been done to accommodate the growth “bubble” as it approaches middle school, even as ACS broke ground on a $41 million new facility for Asheville Middle School last year. Now, faced with a population growth crisis and their own failure to properly fund it, the Asheville City Schools board is scrambling for solutions, and now, as in the past, the solutions seem to be most conveniently located on the backs of the city’s poorest residents.

Asheville’s particular history of structural racism is long and sordid, and includes a litany of heinous examples of redlining, urban renewal, integration riots, and ongoing gentrification and displacement. This multi-generational trauma, combined with the current North Carolina General Assembly’s defunding of public education, suppression of voters’ rights and workers’ fair wages, along with the affordable housing crisis, is creating a situation where poor families and families of color in North Carolina are fighting for their lives.

And yet, at Hall Fletcher Elementary, an against-the-odds example of a resilient and vibrant community consisting of children of color and families in poverty exists every day.

The garden program, first funded through Americorps and now through local non-profit FEAST, hosts multi-cultural potlucks where hundreds of community members share wood-fired pizza and family recipes using produce grown by the kids in the garden on-site. The free MusicWorks after-school program at Hall Fletcher is a partnership with Asheville Symphony that teaches kindergarteners classical music based on the El Sistema model from Venezuela. Hall Fletcher’s chess program, Pawnstorm, has brought together Warren Wilson College interns and chess masters on the sidewalks of Pritchard Park to challenge students in their strategic thinking. Funded by a Racial Equity grant from the Asheville City Schools Foundation parents, teachers, and staff have taken part in ongoing conversations and trainings regarding micro-aggressions, racial disparities in school discipline, and other issues of racial inequity in the school for the past two years. These sometimes-difficult conversations have opened up dialogue that has created the beginnings of a culture of healing and reconciliation around racism within the school community.

Most importantly, as anyone who has experienced it will say, when one walks the corridors of Hall Fletcher Elementary, one cannot help but to sense the joy, and ease, and comfort of the children and adults in the concerted energy of a beloved community, created by the many caring, competent, and dedicated teachers who create an environment of academic rigor, as well as love. It is hard to imagine how a policymaker, acting in the interest of children, could decide that this successful community should be dismantled, but that is exactly what Option 4 does.

Hall Fletcher has also been the site of many pilot programs for the community, being the only school in the district to launch a “balanced calendar” schedule, as well as an ambitious Outdoor Learning Center project. The families of Hall Fletcher have experienced and weathered change in the name of the greater good, while gaining a reputation of being a “guinea pig” school.

Despite the call for input, it is clear that the school board intends to move forward with this option regardless of the community’s clear opposition. In a March 4 guest column in the Asheville Citizen-Times, Pamela Baldwin, Superintendent of Asheville City Schools, took a line that seems to communicate a done deal: “our planning process is not over, but we’re close…. We welcome our community’s input. We also have a request: that you understand that if we are to get better instead of just bigger, we must change. Deciding on the right path is a complex undertaking, and once our path is determined, we will need your continued engagement to see it through successfully. We pledge to keep you informed at every turn.”

Here’s the rub for Hall Fletcher parents and teachers: we may not like Option 4, but it seems abundantly clear that the school board has long ago made their decision. Their community forums and surveys and focus groups seem to be simply an apparatus to make our community feel that we have been included, while the bureaucracy blunders along unchanged. Information seems to be the most that ACS can promise, even though they have failed gloriously to deliver even that in any timely or respectful way. While we oppose the restructuring, we oppose the process by which the restructuring is taking place even more.

Without a doubt, the Asheville City Board of Education in this endeavor has failed to operate with transparency, democracy, or good faith. As a result, they have lost the trust and goodwill of the people.

What happens now? As of early March, the school board postponed its decision on Option 4, instead passing a set of decisions called “Phase 1 Restructure Planning.” This included some key decisions affecting Hall Fletcher and Asheville City Preschool for the upcoming 2016-2017 school year. As for this upcoming year, Hall Fletcher will remain a pre-k through 6th grade school, while adding a 7th grade, provided that there is enough interest.

Unfortunately, due to the uncertainty thrown into the midst of the planning year by the restructuring conversation, enrollment has been down at Hall Fletcher and some parents wonder if the damage has already been done, not knowing if HFE’s classroom enrollment will meet requirements for next school year. On April 4, the board will hear from each school’s advisory teams to determine further action. It is unclear as to when the board will vote on a restructuring plan.

During the Feb. 2 forum at Hall Fletcher, families heard from many of the school board members, all of whom were taken aback by the passion that HFE parents and teachers expressed. Some of the board members offered a mild mea culpa: “we didn’t know you would feel this way. we didn’t mean to leave you out.”

But what they don’t understand is that we know that it is not personal — the families that oppose Option 4 do not assume that anyone on the school board is acting from malice or ill will. We know you didn’t mean to be racist or classist. Institutional racism is much more banal than that. We assume that you are doing what you think is best: balancing the fiscal needs of the district with your perspective of what would be best for the children, coupled with a careful calculation of just which population of families will be the least likely to push back against your decision.

But here’s the fact: institutional racism, classism, and sexism are predicated on such calculations. It’s the death by a thousand cuts- it’s the likelihood that you will choose, in this little instance, to take the easy way out, and in doing so, disproportionately disrupt the lives of the next generation of our city’s most vulnerable citizens.

*There was one speaker from Asheville City Preschool who expressed neutrality on the issue and support of any positive changes.

**The City of Asheville’s school system operates nine schools. The five public magnet elementary schools are Isaac Dickson, Hall Fletcher, Vance, Ira B. Jones, and Claxton; in addition ACS operates Asheville City Schools Preschool, Asheville Middle School, Asheville High School, and SILSA, a “school within a school” at Asheville High.

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Jodi Rhoden is an Asheville-based author, activist and entrepreneur. She has been a Hall Fletcher Elementary parent for five years, now serves as a co-vice-president of Hall Fletcher’s Parent Teacher Organization and has been active in organizing against Option 4. The views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Hall Fletcher Elementary PTO or staff.

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