I am a Chattanooga dentist. I grew up in Chattanooga. I attended our public schools. I became a successful professional woman as a direct result of the integration of our public schools during the civil rights era. I am African-American and my family at the time was poor.
James Mapp is my hero. On behalf of his children Mr. Mapp brought the suit that enabled me and hundreds of other Chattanooga area children to attend mixed-race public schools. When I became president of the Hamilton County NAACP Chapter in 2015, he was burdened by sadness. He saw thousands of children attending failing schools still effectively segregated by poverty and race. Before he died, he made me promise as NAACP president to do all I could for those children.
In 1963, three years after Mr. Mapp filed his suit, Alabama Gov. George Wallace made a speech on school desegregation. Gov. Wallace blamed "pseudo-liberal spokesmen ... so-called progressives ... Harvard advocates ... and communist front organizations [presumably including the NAACP], ... " for spreading "the false doctrine of [racial] amalgamation" in public schools. He famously declared, "segregation today ... segregation tomorrow ... segregation forever."
Only the tone-deaf or ignorant of history could fail to hear echoes from 1963 in statements recently injected into the ongoing debate over how to improve our failing schools. We hear opposition to further "integration." We hear that we have in our midst "liberals from out of town" who are "pushing to change our way of life" with the "most far left liberal document ever read" telling us what we "must" do.
I personally know, I have worked alongside and I have respected some of those using this rhetoric. It is as if their voices have been disembodied from them and hijacked by professional political handlers who are trying to make efforts to improve our failing schools about so-called "forced busing."
We see at higher levels of government from all political sides the paid-for polarization of our civic life. We must resist this in Hamilton County. About our children's education, demonization by name-calling and by distortion of fact has no place.
With this in mind, let's examine the facts of the Hamilton County Board of Education's recent decision to engage experts to help it reshape policies affecting our failing schools.
The Howard Group, recently hired by the Hamilton County Board of Education, proposes solely to equip teachers in our failed schools with day-to-day classroom teaching methods proven to raise academic achievement of students living in poverty. Here in Chattanooga those students are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, so the proposal naturally includes teaching methods proven to reach students from those backgrounds as well as white students.
The Howard Group is composed of professional K-12 educators. They are from the Los Angeles area, surely one of the nation's most ethnically diverse. If you want the most experienced teachers/trainers to get the best results, you have to get them from where they are.
Many of our members attended or taught in our local schools. A May 26 Free Press editorial takes issue with our Fact Sheet claim that 12 failing schools are segregated by race and poverty. It is true the law no longer directly mandates 100 percent segregation, but over 90 percent poor and minority over many years in each of those schools is close enough for us.
The Free Press editorial asserts "the superintendent's Future Ready Institutes, more open enrollment and more magnet schools will allow more opportunities for students in the so-called '"segregated schools."' We agree.
In fact, the Free Press editorial statement is the very essence of "socio-economic desegregation." The experts the board seeks to engage bring to our community the benefit of working many years in many communities to assist with common-sense, affordable planning to increase academic performance in failing schools by methods the Free Press editorial endorses.
We share the Free Press editorial concern for transportation costs and parent buy-in. We have never advocated, nor does any consultant the school board engages, advocate busing any child against parents' will. Instead, in any open enrollment system we envision, every child has the right to remain in his or her school. Additional busing is only for children whose parents want to change schools, and only under a transportation plan approved by the board as affordable. We believe every school board member has constituents she or he will want to satisfy by making transportation to preferred schools or Future Ready Institutes available.
Now is the time to move beyond false rhetoric about busing, which is not going to happen here. Also, "socio-economic desegregation" is the natural and desirable by-product of fundamental principles most of us agree upon. The words "socio-economic desegregation" should not be deployed as bogey-words that obscure the truth.
If, as we believe our school board now intends, we provide real help to our teachers in failing schools and if we adopt common-sense, affordable policies creating socio-economic desegregation, then white middle-class migration to private schools will decrease. There are reasons we respect for parents to prefer a private school. However, we believe most parents would prefer a public school if it offered their child an equal or better education at a better price.
Dr. Elenora Woods is president of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County NAACP chapter. Her co-author is James M. Johnson, local NAACP member and attorney.