How I Redistricted Myself

This is a true story.

In the summer just after my 16th birthday, my mom and me (and my five younger siblings) found ourselves, through a series of bad decisions on her part, in a housing project in east San Jose, Ca.

(My mom was getting child support from three ex-husbands, plus welfare, plus charity from her church, but she was never any good at managing money, so when she managed to gather her children together (we spent most of our childhood with grandparents and relatives), we were always dirt poor).

From the second-story window of the dilapidated bedroom I shared with my brothers, I could see the high school I'd be attending in the fall, William C. Overfelt High.

I wanted to see what I was getting into, so I scouted things out during summer school. I had been living with my grandmother for the previous couple of years, and attending an excellent public school, so I knew at once that Overfelt was not going to work out for me. The kids were hostile toward me (literally the only white kid there), hostile toward school and hostile toward their teachers. (This phenomenon--a rejection of all things educational by poverty-stricken inner-city families--is, in other words, not new).

I wanted none of it. To the southeast, about 3 miles away, was Silver Creek High, which (I learned through playing sandlot baseball and pickup basketball) had a much more diverse student population and a better academic reputation. But it was 3 miles away, I had no car, and I had no paperwork to show I was eligible to attend. If I tried to register at Silver Creek, certainly they would send me straight back to Overfelt, right?

I decided to give it a try--there was no way I was going to Overfelt. Without telling my mother (she would not learn about this until much later), I set off on foot for the first day of my junior year in high school, got a couple blocks from home, took a sharp right turn and walked to Silver Creek.

On the way there, I took note of a picturesque street (Nickel Ave) in a much, MUCH better neighborhood. I walked down the street and took a long look at a couple of the street numbers (I was looking for a gap). I then walked the remaining distance to Silver Creek, and into the Registrar's office.

I told the Registrar that my mother couldn't register me because she was working, and I gave her a home address on Nickel Ave.--an address I had invented for a house that didn't exist. (I knew this was a risky strategy, but I bet that a municipal school system would take an entire year to figure out my fraud, and I was right).

It worked. I spent the whole year in Silver Creek, and was a standout student, a good volleyball player and had major roles in both of the school's plays.

I had redistricted myself to a better school because, even at 16, I knew the difference between a school where I could succeed, and which was worth my efforts, and a school where I would be ridiculed for trying hard.

Throughout the school year, I lied to everyone about where I lived. When parents of friends (or friend with cars) drove me somewhere, I always had them drop me off at the corner of Nickel Ave. and S. King Road, telling them that I would be fine walking home from there. (In fact, I would have to walk a mile and a half from that point to get to our drab apartment).

I never once told anyone--even my closest friends--where I really lived, because I was terrified that if I did, I'd be found out and sent to the bad school near my home.

So when I say I think parents who cheat the system to get their kids into Inman or Grady should be given amnesty, you can see where I'm coming from. I did what they're doing, and for the same reasons.

If, 30-some years ago, the San Jose Municipal School District could not fix Overfelt High School because the households sending their children to Overfelt were uninterested in embracing education as a value, how likely is APS to be able to fix its wretched south side schools today?

Or tomorrow?

Those of you who are taking great risks and breaking laws to free your children from APS schools where too little learning takes place, you are my friends, and I am your friend.

The Grady-Inman Railroad

The Underground Railroad is alive and well at Inman and Grady. And I think we should legalize it and reward the lawbreaking parents and law-breaking school administrators who built it.

Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that the existence of this massive underground railroad is a scathing indictment of APS's crappy southside schools.

To get your kid into Inman or Grady when you're out-of-zone takes a combination of paperwork fraud and (more likely) insider assistance that is only something a truly desperate, truly determined parent would try to pull off.

Then, once they're in, they have to always worry about being found out, even as they struggle to provide transportation to a school far from home.

That kind of initiative--that level of willingness to do what has to be done for your child because APS can't and won't--should be rewarded, not penalized.

So let's have amnesty for every single child and every single family now at Grady and Inman against the rules.

I like to believe that if I were alive in 1850s Iowa, I would want to work on the Underground Railroad.

If you helped slaves escape, you were considered an Abductor. What would you call someone who helped children escape a terrible future? Whatever the word is, you would have to be proud to be called that word, right?

POSTSCRIPT: After writing this post, I decided it was time to tell the story of how I set up my own, one-person underground railroad in San Jose when I was 16 years old. You'll find that true story just above.

Plantations, Circa 2012

We watched the movie "The Help" on Christmas afternoon, and boy, did those white people suck. If we are ever able to resurrect the dead, they'll have some serious explaining to do.

On the other hand, let 'em rot.

I was trying to wriggle out of my uncomfortableness by rationalizing that Iowa, where I'm from, was a Free State, and was part of the Underground Railroad. But Iowans were no saints. They ravaged the Indians who preceded them onto that fertile rectangle of land and then joined all the other so-called "Free States" in looking the other way while slavery ruled the South. Only when a law was passed allowing bounty hunters to cross state lines in pursuit of escaped slaves did the Free States decide slavery was worth fighting over.

I don't believe we acquire our fathers' debts, or that we are somehow liable for our forbears' acts of immorality. Because looking the other way as a crime occurs when you have the capacity to try to stop it is on the same octave of evil as owning slaves. Like about a C-sharp.

The other thing I realized is that there are many forms of slavery. When the Civil War finally ended Slavery 1.0, the Slavery 2.0 of the Jim Crow era popped up to take its place.

And now we have slavery 3.0, which is the inner-city government schools. Here are the similarities, if you are unlucky enough to be born into a poverty-stricken inner-city black family:

1. You are compelled to go.

2. Your family has no real options other than forcing you to go; they have no way to buy your freedom.

3. The plantation owner (the school system) gives you just enough sustenance to live, but not enough to prosper, and, when pressured by outsiders, maliciously cheats you out of whatever future you might have had.

4. An underground railroad springs up to deliver the children of a few desperate, clever parents to better schools.

Would white and black parents alike go to extraordinary expense and inconvenience to sneak their kids into Inman and Grady (Grady is not exactly Andover, unless you live in East/South/West Atlanta, in which case it is) if the schools there were not plantations?