Seattlest Pix 09Nov21
Friendly Folk-Pop for the Kids: Hey Marseilles at Vera This Saturday
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Rainy Dawg Radio gets a local
Touch Me, I'm Sick
We wouldn't think that failing to get your daughter into Ballard High School would be so disappointing that you'd take it all the way to the Supreme Court. After all, who wants their daughter to be a Beaver for life?
But there's no accounting for some people, like Kathleen Brose, president of Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS). She--well, her lawyers--argue that a racial tiebreaker kept her daughter out of Ballard High, a historic and effective institution of learning that's produced such intellectual luminaries as this one guy my mom worked with at Group Health.
Gina Holland of Associated Press explains the system so we don't have to:
Under the district's plan, the first tiebreaker was whether an applicant has a sibling already at the school. The second tiebreaker was race: which applicant would bring the high school closer to the districtwide ratio of whites to nonwhites, roughly 40 percent to 60 percent. The third tiebreaker was distance, with closer students getting preference.
Brose--well, her lawyers--have pushed the case all the way up to the Supreme Court, which announced today that it will hear it, along with a similar case from Kentucky.
Probably the court will rule in favor of affirmative action. After all, they upheld it just three years ago, in 5-4 decision written by Sandra Day O'Connor. Surely Justice O'Connor will write another balanced decision ... oh wait.
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this woman needs to chill out. her daughter's going to be socially scarred by her actions wherever she goes, and ballard isn't even that good of a school. i mean, sure there are lots of white kids, but there are some pretty extraordinary rifts among the students there. and i guess their athletics are mediocre enough, but come on. get a life, mom.
Imagine that you have a child that is entering high school and the School District says that your child cannot attend their neighborhood school or two other schools because they have the wrong color of skin. Imagine your child being bused to a school across the city that they don't want to go to. Imagine your child spending almost 2 hours on a public bus trying to get home from school because they participated in an after school activity. Imagine spending 30 minutes in the car each way to get to a parent/teacher conference or a PTA meeting. Imagine that you are a parent who does not have a car. Imagine walking in the shoes of a parent who is forced to go through this before you criticize them.