In 2009, there were 2 million California school children attending failing public schools, including 13 elementary, middle and high schools in the San Diego Unified School District. Since 1999, we have provided extra money – $2.4 billion – to 2,240 of those schools.
Still, 924 of those schools failed for seven years or more. And, over the last decade, only eight of them have turned around.
These schools banish generations of students into lives of poverty, silencing their dreams.
Among these failing schools in California are six named after Martin Luther King, Jr., three named after Rosa Parks and five named after Cesar Chavez. Those revered leaders would not stand for their names affixed to schools that send more kids to prison than to college. I will not stand for it either.
Our goal should not be to take their names off those schools, but to transform the schools into opportunities for success. Dr. King’s fateful speech, as we all know, painted a picture of equality, a dream. His dream, and ours, was to abolish classrooms made up of children who are held hostage in failing schools simply because of their ZIP codes, or because of the mortgage or rent payment their parents can afford.