Today is the holiday set aside for reflection on the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Peter Greene’s new history of the ruination of Pennsylvania’s Chester Upland Public Schools, published last week in Forbes, ought to be required reading on this holiday to remind us how badly our society has stumbled along the journey for justice for America’s poorest African American children.
On Wednesday, Joseph R. Biden will be inaugurated as U.S. President. Look for a new post on Friday, January 22.
Greene explains: “As the new year begins, one Pennsylvania public school district faces the prospect of being completely dismantled and handed over to charter operators. Chester Upland School District is poised to become an example of what can happen to a public school district that needs assistance, and gets nothing but trouble instead. CUSD has weathered every sort of challenge a district can face, but may now be on its last legs, about to make history as the first Pennsylvania district to be completely privatized.”
I have known about the tragedy in Chester Upland since the mid-1990s, but Greene explains how its segregated history goes back to the years before Brown, when the district educated Black and white children separately as a matter of policy. Greene reports that only after 1964 was Chester Upland ordered to desegregate, but middle class white flight followed, and “the 1960s saw an exodus of major employers like Ford Motor and Baldwin Locomotive. People CONTINUE READING: On This Holiday Honoring Dr. King, Consider the Plight of Children Today in Pennsylvania’s Chester Upland School District | janresseger
