Failed deal between KC schools, Academie Lafayette reveals city’s issues with race and education
Unraveling Kansas City Public Schools’ broken bid to partner with its charter school rival, Academie Lafayette, will be hard. Very hard.
The city’s longstanding divisions over race, economics and the ownership of public education lace the autopsy lying before city leaders and communities.
When the district and the charter last week called off their dramatic plans to roll out a charter-run high school for charter and district students at the former Southwest High School, opposing forces on school and community board rooms could stand down.
But the pressures that prompted the surprising partnership are only mounting.
Families are still leaving Kansas City’s public school system — both district and charter schools — sucking away much of the city’s vitality.
The school district is plagued with gaping spaces in many of its high schools, and the charter system overall continues to lack either the resources or the capacity to turn the tide.
“We need some strong people,” Kansas City Mayor Sly James said, “to step up and fight through their problems and get past uncomfortable feelings with race and with concepts of change.
“If we let our discomfort stop us now, we’ll never solve those problems.”
More “tough dialogue” will come, said Kansas City school board president Jon Hile.
The proposal, though now defeated, “was proof that the district and charters can work together creatively,” Hile said. “But as a community, we’re not quite there yet.”
Support for the school was strong throughout the city, Hile said, and many are “deeply disappointed.”
But opposition also was strong.
At a news conference by multiple community and ministerial groups, the Rev. Rodney Williams of Swope Parkway United Christian Church warned that a partnership with a majority-white, more economically affluent charter school population would be an “insidious” step toward “resegregation.”
The Metropolitan Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE2) and the NAACP stood against the partnership for ceding control of the school from Kansas City’s elected school board to the charter school’s unelected, appointed board.
They worried about the health of the district’s selective school, Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, if Southwest opened as a selective school across town.
Divisions within the Kansas City school board also were threatening the plan. Some board members who opposed the plan argued that handing the building to the charter would involve a sale or lease of the school, which requires six of nine votes to pass. Supporters argued it would be a use agreement that needed only a simple majority of five votes.
Ultimately, district and charter leaders said, they could not devise a palatable solution for serving the roughly 400 current students at Southwest who would be displaced by a fresh-starting high school.
James is leading a call to get the deal back in play. “I ask people to go back to the table,” he said. “Work together. Get past the discomfort. …We have a chance to raise the vision and whole concept of high school in this city.”
Wide gaps
Opposition is complicated, said MORE2 executive director Lora McDonald, and often strikes personal chords.
She knows how some parents bend toward choices outside the Kansas City school district. She made such a choice when she enrolled her son in a small private school.
But she has since come to believe that engaged parents can help secure a high-quality education in their neighborhood public school. Charters, she thinks, dilute resources and attention from children in schools that need them most.
“Academie Lafayette was not the target (of the opposition),” she said. “We want everyone to focus on the students who are in the district.”
More diversity and more parents with resources would bring vital strength, and she wants investments in schools that might help revive confidence and support in neighborhood Kansas City schools.
“But that’s hard,” she said, “because a lot of people are carrying around baggage (of harsh impressions of KC schools) like I was.”
Academie Lafayette, as the lone charter school with a majority white enrollment, arouses complaints that it is resegregating education. But most other charters and most of the area public school systems show broaderFailed deal between KC schools, Academie Lafayette reveals city’s issues with race and education | The Kansas City Star The Kansas City Star:
.jpg)
