Seattlest: Madrona School Is Trying To Make Your Child Black

Jack P.

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:41:36 -0800

Very immature and unhelpful comments by Seth. Worse then the apparent e-mail sent out by the Vice Principal. Parents and administrators seem to have dropped the ball at Madrona. I'm sure the children are happy and race and these other issues don't mean a thing to them. The administrators should have found a way to be more communicative and appreciative of the efforts of the white parents. At the same time, isn't it common sense not to barge into someone's house and tell them how things would be so much better re-arranged with some new furniture and a maid. Isn't there a common ground here, where the white parents could be more careful and appreciative of the parents already happy at the school? Is my private education failing me, or does the math say there are about 106 white students (of the 432) and a total of 11 left (oh, it said 11 black and white students left, so we don't know how many were white)? So about 421 of 432 students didn't feel things were bad enough to leave. Doesn't sound like a crisis to me.

BobH

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 10:55:00 -0800

Seth, this is the cheapest excuse for a post I've seen from you. Cheap, in that it's easy to pull out selective passages and make smarmy comments about them, remove any semblance of the balance that the reporter clearly maintained in the story, and generally being a sarcastic shmuck. Stick to basketball. You don't know much about that either, but at least you can't do any harm there.

J Whitehorn

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:49:09 -0800

Seth, honestly. After age 17 or so, sarcasm no longer passes for profundity. White parents who fear "blackness" don't sent their kids to Madrona; they go private, or move to the burbs. While administrators balk at change (and will lie through their teeth to avoid it), ALL students benefit when parents get actively involved, not just those parents' kids. Look at the research. For an adult, intelligent response to the Times article, go to this blog post by Charlie Mas.

MvB

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:13:54 -0800

Man, that "wonderful educational experience aboard the Mayflower" line makes me laugh out loud no matter how many times I read it. I thought comedy was supposed to bring people together! What's gone wrong here?

Charles

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:05:08 -0800

how does this prove your point: "It admitted that the school intentionally misassessed a white student's reading skills to rid the school of his family and others critical of the administration..." That is a little different than quibbling over what book to read.

Seth

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:17:15 -0800

Doesn't that email sort of prove my point? That family probably wanted their child to read Pride and Prejudice instead of watching Sanford and Son, and the administrators told them to take a hike. Madrona parents have premium cable--they've seen The Wire, and they know what happens when your kids attend a school like Madrona. If your school doesn't have proper seating in its learning garden, you may as well just invite the Crips to teach 2nd grade!

Charles

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:50:51 -0800

I can selectively quote, too!The sense of rejection some were feeling was confirmed by an e-mail sent to a parent that appeared to come from vice principal Brad Brown. It admitted that the school intentionally misassessed a white student's reading skills to rid the school of his family and others critical of the administration, then bade them a "wonderful educational experience aboard the Mayflower." Brown and Andrews have vehemently denied sending the e-mail, saying those are not their sentiments and they're unsure just how the e-mail got sent. Andrews said the school also apologized to the family.Seriously, I wonder if we even read the same article. These parents aren't racist. They intentionally sought out MadronaAt informal gatherings, they talked about whether this school could work for their kids. They liked that their children could walk there, and that they would be learning alongside kids from different backgrounds. "I was happy as a clam that my son was going to school with others who didn't look like him," said Lenz, mother of a first-grader. "It's a great neighborhood and if [more neighborhood kids] went to the school, with all the volunteers we had, it would be the best in the city." There was enough interest among white parents that a waiting list sprouted for the first time three or four years ago — and grew.The article has a lot of sensationalism on both sides so it is easy to just pick one side. But way to ditch the nuance in favor of trite cliches.

Joe

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 10:32:35 -0800

Ugh. Seattlest Seth should stick to sports. (Which he's great at.) The reporter did enough to fan the flames of racial and class division without his help. All of the suggestions of racial issues in this article came from the reporter's parenthetical expressions and school administration officials. I know it's fun to hate on gentrification, but when PTSA money for smaller class sizes is turned down and parental involvement is not welcomed, that's a problem with the administration, not the parents. It's ridiculous to criticize parents for wanting art and music classes and smaller class sizes. Stories like this do precious little to help us understand the intense change going on in our communities. Seattlest should aim for higher ground with its attempts at humor or, if you can't get it right, stick to something less important. And, just think on the irony of these criticisms being made by a blog with a recent post on conflict in "the local independent baking industry." Wow.

David F.

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:41:57 -0800

"Madrona's principal, Kaaren Andrews, believes some left because, ultimately, they were uncomfortable with the school's racial balance." From what I read, that sounds like a cop-out. The parents knew going in that the school was overwhelmingly children of African American ancestry. The parents were demanding and, in some cases, not respectful of the teachers' professionalism. Sadly, many educated people (in my experience, especially those in high tech) assume that because they are competent in one area of knowledge and perhaps they've read Kozol or Piaget or the latest Gladwell article on education in The New Yorker that they know just as much about running a school as the teachers and administrators. This happens in many, many neighborhoods, towns, and cities. The so-called race issue sounds like a smokescreen to me. For instance, I'd love to know where the reporter got the idea that several parents "fretted" about the kids singing Lift Every Voice. Was that from the principal or did several of the parents really tell this to the reporter? Was it because it is sometimes considered the Black National Anthem, or was it because of the many, many religious references in what is essentially a hymnal? If it was directly from parents, and it was because of the connection to African American identity, somebody should tell them that it was written by James Weldon Johnson, a man of mixed African and European ancestry who could, and occasionally did, "pass for white" in the days of Jim Crow segregation. And then they should be deported to Issaquah. Dummies.

David

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:15:06 -0800

As a fellow alumni of Madrona I am outraged! All these nice white people have moved in to that neighborhood and brought with them coffee shops, ale houses, and golden retrievers-- all the while driving home prices down. This is the thanks they get? When I went there (1984-1989) there was nowhere to get a goat cheese salad after school, we had to settle for five cent Now and Laters at Joes (now a pleasant little deli). The least the school could do is screen the hottest independent films and maybe a weekend class on Puma shoe shopping. Today I am not proud to be a Panther.