The Newtonite reports on Black Culture Awareness Day, held at Newton North High School.
Here’s two excerpts from three different students who were on a panel..
“The METCO office is like a home and a safe-haven,” said freshman Roxanne Wint. Another student claimed, “I’m not just another black student; in METCO they know who I am.”
They also discussed the idea that all black students must be from Boston. One student said, “People assume I’m from Boston and that I always have to catch the bus, but I live across the street!”
I don’t think I’m different or unique, but I don’t assume any student I see walking the streets outside Newton North comes from anyplace other than Newton. I know some of them do, but I don’t pigeonhole them by what they look like.
@Bob: I assumed this student meant kids (and maybe adults) at school made that assumption.
@Greg. What you say makes sense
Bob’s comment is so knee jerk it’s ridiculous. The context of the article is about the student body. Bob’s white guilt (I’m assuming) just had him flying to his keyboard to declare his neutrality. That isn’t helpful at all. I’m not sure if anyone’s view outside of the walls of our schools even matters. What I do know is people whom have nothing to do with the situation covering their asses is useless.
Very interesting subject.
Come on here Kim, you’re not noticing that the forum was about black culture and some English teacher thinks up questions about what it’s like walking around black at school (do they feel hyper-sensitive…). If the teacher did something like that on Chinese culture day or Indian culture day (…what’s it like being non white in white Newton?) there would be a gasp in the room and the subject would quickly change to something like food or religion.
Good article. The dirty little secret is that this student’s experience rings all too true. Students too young to fend for themselves have been sent home on the METCO bus in participating communities when they live within walking distance of the schools, while well meaning staff or volunteers ignore their pleas based on their false assumptions that get made all the time in various contexts. And it is because of the color of their skin and not the content of their character.
@Kim. Sorry, but I don’t carry white guilt or any other kind of guilt at my age. If I did I would have supported Governor Patrick instead of Attorney General Tom Reilly in the last gubernatorial go around. I was also a big John Edwards fan when he was running against Obama back in 2008. On that count, you can hit me for being a poor judge of character, but that obviously had nothing to do with white guilt.
I simply made a personal observation that there are so many different racial and ethnic groups in the Boston area, that I no longer make a judgment about where people live, or necessarily what they think.
Not sure what “dirty little secret” Ted is referring to. All NPS elementary students are escorted to their buses by staff who are assigned to, and carry out, this responsibility. Each staff person who covers bus duty knows every student’s bus assignment, and all take the responsibility for getting students on their assigned buses very seriously.
I’ve never heard of volunteers being assigned to bus duty. It may happen in neighboring towns, but it doesn’t happen in Newton.
Well, Jane, who should I believe? You or the parents of African-American children in Newton and other METCO communities and the children themselves who have told me their stories?
Look, it does happen. Sometimes children of color from affluent suburbs are mistaken for METCO students and put on the bus to Boston.
And regardless of the best intentions of well meaning folks, the experience of black kids in the Newton Public Schools is different from what you and I would no doubt like it to be. On Sunday, I attended the METCO Scholarship Awards Ceremony at Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton. Mayor Setti Warren sat right next to me and we were both deeply moved by what these young people had to say. One of the keynote speakers, a 2009 graduate of NPS who was also a METCO student, spoke frankly about the hurt she felt when white students would be praised for saying something in class that she or one of her fellow METCO peers had already said without receiving any recognition at all. What she was talking about was the bigotry of low expectations.
But it isn’t all bad news. On May 2 I participated in Law Day at the Adams Courthouse in Boston. Students from one of Boston’s finest exam schools for science and math saw a play about the Little Rock Nine. All of the kids I met from this school were outstanding, and represented every race, color and ethnicity. On the whole, they felt that they had not experienced any of the racial discrimination that the nine black students who integrated the Little Rock, AK high school had endured. I asked each of them whether they thought anything like what happened in Little Rock could ever happen in Boston. Only a few of the kids had even heard about what happened in the 1970s in Boston, when Judge Garrity ordered the desegregation of the Boston Public Schools. The racial segregation of BPS is what led to the creation of the METCO program. The fact that we are a long way from where we were in the early 1960s and 1970s is a good thing, no lying. But we still have a ways to go until black students in our schools feel that they are treated as equals with their white peers.
You’re talking apples and oranges. You implied that students were frequently placed on the wrong bus by volunteers (never happens) or well meaning (read: not too bright) staff members. That’s simply inaccurate information. When you have to search the archives of a local paper for an example, you don’t have a “dirty little secret”.
I have the deepest respect and regard for the effort, perseverance, and capabilities of our Metco students that stems from my experience teaching them close to 6 hours a day for 35 years. In addition, I had the privilege of spending many hours in honest conversation with their parents, listening to their concerns. Attending an awards dinner is an admirable action, but it doesn’t compare to the experience of the many NPS staff who know, care, and do their best by our Boston students.
Jane, when my kids were in elementary school and I was chairman of the School Council, I made sure we had some of our evening meetings in Boston to include METCO families and let Newton parents and staff see where the students from Boston live and play. My family and I were also very involved with the Newton METCO partnership to support and promote the families whose kids get up before dawn to ride the bus to Newton everyday. I have good friends from Myrtle Baptist Church, I was a member of the Newton Human Rights Commission and am still a member of the Fair Housing Committee, and I am just relaying the stories I have been told, which I have no reason to believe are fabricated. So this isn’t just a ceremonial, sometime thing I do.
You infer, but I did not imply, any of the derogatory characterizations about people who are, after all, human and make mistakes. To the contrary, I said these folks are well meaning and well intentioned. Racism today is different from Boston in the 1970s or Little Rock in the 1950s. Thank goodness for that. It is still there, though, far more subtle and just as insidious, and made all the more difficult to recognize because white privilege is invisible to the folks who benefit from it. But the children of color and their families who live and go to school here see it. And to pretend it doesn’t exist pretty much ensures that it will not go away.
Ted, METCO’s defenders ardently support the program because of the diversity benefits. If Mayor Menino sent Newton a $6.5M/year check for educating 404 Boston kids in Newton Public Schools, would Newton have any less diversity in its school system?
I’d actually like to see someone defend the status quo that Newton pays to educate 404 Boston kids (and 130 non-resident staff kids, EDCO kids and other approved to attend kids from other cities and towns in the Greater Boston area) while Boston uses its tax dollars to build a $1.4B portfolio of cash, bank deposits and other marketable investment securities (Page 17).
http://www.cityofboston.gov/Images_Documents/CityBoston-CAFR-612_tcm3-35324.pdf
Suburban districts help Boston save over $50M/year. Boston has never had to bother voting on an override while Newton has had three override packages on the ballot in the last 12 years plus it has the CPA surcharge. Boston has a 30% residential exemption while Newton can’t afford to have one (unless it raises the statutory tax rate significantly). Because we passed an override package in order to fund $5.7M/year in debt service for new space in the Newton Public Schools, we can see that the space-available thesis behind these programs no longer holds up.
Joshua – Boston has a residential exemption because they chose to – by setting a higher residential tax rate than Newton and a MUCH higher commercial tax rate than Newton. A residential exemption is a choice about allocation of the taxes not about the budget.
No matter what the city’s budget is, instituting a residential exemption, by definition, has to raise the base statutory tax rate significantly. To somehow tie METCO (or any other program or spending) to Newton’s lack of a residential exemption is misleading.
Joshua Norman — Cash on a municipal balance sheet is used for current needs (except for small amounts). Are you doing this intentionally?
Jerry, Boston’s effective residential tax rate is lower than Newton’s because of the residential exemption.
Boston has a classified tax system just like Newton. However Boston has a more diverse real estate tax base than Newton. Boston didn’t restrict developments to 2.5 stories like Newton did (at least Newton recently increased it to 5 stories). 19 years in which registered members of the Democrat Party have had complete control in Newton has turned this once vibrant city into a Stale, Sterile, Stepford bedroom community. People seem to forget that Newton is a city, not a school district.
Hoss, when an organization has $1.4B in liquidity assets, I can assure you that they are able to take advantage of sophisticated treasury management solutions rather than resort to 0% demand deposit accounts. I’ve worked with organizations with lower balances who are able to access sophisticated liquidity management solutions from leading corporate and institutional bankers.
When the City of Boston’s liquidity assets increase at a faster pace than its revenues and expenses over the last decade, it is safe to say that your thesis does not hold up.
When the City of Boston’s liquidity assets have increased at a steady rate while its long-term outstanding indebtedness decreases over the last decade, it is safe to say that your thesis is wrong beyond any reasonable doubt.