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Saturday, March 9, 2013

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Race and Class, Our District and...Fundraising?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Race and Class, Our District and...Fundraising?:


Race and Class, Our District and...Fundraising?

When the issue about the race/social justics class at Center School came up, there was little notice about who attends the school.  Yet both the teacher, Jon Greenberg, and some Center students I talked with expressed frustration with the lack of diversity at the school AND that for some minority students who do enroll, they leave fairly quickly.  What the students told me is that the minority students don't feel they fit in but many enjoy Mr. Greenberg's class because they DO get to talk about something completely relevant to their lives.

(The students also said that the minority numbers are so low that many parents won't consider Center School.  This is very akin to what minority parents have expressed about APP.  They don't want their child to be the only minority child in the classroom.)

One question I do have is how this class continued on - for years and under different principals - and if there were problems in the past.  That hasn't been addressed and yet if there had been even a volume of complaints, you would have thought it would have been altered or even shut down by now.

But on the heels of this comes a fundraiser at Catherine Blaine K-8.  I sat on this story for 24 hours because I