jennifer-roberts Important Note: I am not anti-public school; I am pro homeschool. It is not my intention to paint all public-school educators with a broad brush. I fully understand that there are public school educators who are actively working to equitably educate Black students.
Have you ever been in an abusive long-term relationship? For years, you invested time, energy and hope only to find yourself hurt and disappointed at every turn. Have you ever thought, “I’m a good partner, why isn’t my partner reciprocating?” Have you ever felt like you were heavily investing in the relationship with little or no return or that you were being strung along? Did you ever feel that the relationship was improving only to find yourself disappointed again and again? Has your heart ever hurt so deeply that you wept uncontrollably wondering how your partner could be so cruel? I have but it wasn’t at the hands of a family member or a love interest, it was at the hands of Prince William County Public Schools and more specifically, the educators that it employs.
I have two children who have matriculated through PWCS. One graduated and the other my husband and I withdrew. I spent more than a decade hoping, partnering, volunteering and advocating to help my children and others maximize their educational experiences but failed at making any systemic progress. To describe my feelings as disappointment would be an understatement; what I feel and have felt for a long time is heartbreak. Not because I believed in the educational system but because I believed in the power of individual educators to disrupt the system and create conditions that benefitted Black children.
As a community educator, researcher and the daughter and daughter-in-love of two excellent educators, I understand the tremendous power that principals, assistant principals, teachers, guidance counselors and support staff have to help or hinder a student’s personal development even in dysfunctional systems. I understand how educators can lead in a way that prioritizes the needs of Black students. This approach to education requires love, courage, will and sacrifice that I have yet to experience or witness in PWCS.
Educator extraordinaire, Rita Pierson said, “Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” I agree with Ms. Pierson and believe that she is one of the few educators who put this belief into practice.
Education is a powerful tool. Done well, it is one of the highest expressions of love. When Black children are educated in environments that are loving and affirming, they can grow healthily into the people they were created to be not just survive from year to year. By contrast, educational environments that are traumatic and abusive for Black children can inflict long-term damage that reaches far into adulthood. It hurts me deeply that an overwhelming number of educators in Prince William County Schools are executing educational malpractice on our children daily with no accountability.
Breaking up with public school has been a long and emotional process. The hardest part has been surrendering the hope that the relationship can be salvaged and that dedicated participation in its processes yield equitable results for Black students.
Over the last few years, I have had to recalibrate my thinking more times than I can count, repeatedly resist trying to improve the situation for my children and for other children and accept the reality that public school was not designed or redesigned to equitably educate Black children. I have also had to let go of the hope that if I was a good partner for public school educators, that public school educators would be good partner for me. Ouch!
It has been gut wrenching and emotionally draining to reflect on the years that I spent sharing concerns accompanied by solutions with administrators and guidance counselors who I erroneously believed would work with me to solve the issues for our families. I firmly believed that if I built relationships with educators, developed programs that benefitted students, did the leg work, even paid for it, that certainly they would be catalysts for cultural change within the school. Surely if I provided testimonies of how Black students were being emotionally abused at school the administrators would be just as outraged as me and that we would work together to make systemic changes. I could not have been more wrong and my hope could not have been more shattered.
There are only a handful of relationships to which I am steadfastly loyal. One of these is my relationship to education. There is not a day that passes that I am not thinking about, discussing and researching how to lovingly educate Black children. It’s my passion and is as natural to me as breathing which is one of the reasons why this break up has taken such a toll on me. My love for educating Black children runs deep and my expectations of its power are high. I have experienced education’s transformative power firsthand so when I see it being prostituted and our children used as pawns, it hurts me deeply.
When I witness the inherent brilliance of Black girls being ignored or labeled as “talkative” or “sassy,” and joyful Black boys being accused of behaving badly, I am agitated. I become even more agitated when I see that nothing is being done to create conditions for them to be successful and that ideas that would promote equity are rejected. Likewise, when I clearly see that Black students emotional safety is being dismissed and I attempt to partner with the administration to solve the problem but am met with indifference and opposition, it is a blow to my heart. When I hear Black students sharing firsthand accounts of racism that they have personally experienced or witnessed at the hands of staff members and nothing is systemically done to correct this, it is a punch to my gut. When I have advocated on behalf of my own children and other children for school sponsored initiatives that would directly benefit Black children and nothing is done, it is crushing. I am exhausted. I am not tired of fighting on behalf of Black children but I am tired of this fight with PWCS. I am tired of being a punching bag.
It is reasonable for students to experience inequity in education. Like every other system, the education system is flawed and humans make mistakes. However, there is a colossal difference between making a mistake and knowingly repeating patterns that harm Black children. It is a flashing sign of dysfunction to have schools that practice inequity, schools in which leaders lack the interest, capacity, courage and will to disrupt the lethal pattern especially after they have been made aware of it. If educators in Prince William County Schools were genuinely dedicated to achieving equity at every level for Black students, parents and guardians would not have to fight with school leadership to secure it. I have learned the hard way that it is a losing battle and that my time and energy are better spent helping parents exit PWCS altogether.
Letting go of the hope that public education can equitably educate Black students is difficult heart work. Not only does it require surrender; it requires a new way of thinking about education and its limitless possibilities. This break up demands self-reflection that asks the questions, “Where do I go from here? Who am I apart from public school educators? How do I get my child the education he/she deserves?” It requires stiff resolve and an unshakeable belief that there are better ways to educate our children even though the path forward is unclear. This shift requires a decision to rest, recover and to move forward. It requires giving ourselves grace to feel jilted, confused, bamboozled and manipulated.
I liken the breakup with PWCS to how I imagine my enslaved ancestors must have felt when they decided to leave the plantation in search of freedom. I believe that these courageous trailblazers knew that they were not created to endure bondage even though it was all they had experienced. It had to be terrifying to follow through on the decision to leave the familiarity of abuse in pursuit of unfamiliar and unknown freedom. And yet they went anyway. We must do the same.
Freedom is never free; there is always a cost. Breaking up with public school is one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever made and the emotional toll has been high. It is also one of the best decisions because the long-term benefits for my children and other children will be incalculable.
