Annemarie Ralph talks about disparities in school funds, racial inequality, and the importance of students feeling self-worth.
Los Angeles, California. 2001. I stand in the doorway of my classroom, saying hello to my students as they enter my science class. When two of my male students enter, one looks up at me and asks, “Miss, why do the kids across the hall get to go on another field trip, and we don’t?”
I don’t know what to say (though I know the answer), so I say nothing and look away, pretending I haven’t heard. Instead, his friend answers for me: “Because they’re white.”
What should I have said? Did seventh-grade Michael need to know that a “magnet” school was created inside our school building that year, and the reason for magnets was to attract white students to his school, which was 98% Hispanic? This magnet was an Arts and Technology (A/T) magnet with about 300 students in grades six through eight, while the remaining 2,700 students stayed in the “regular” school.
Did I need to tell Michael that those magnet students got special treatment, like: new laptops, a parent/teacher organization (PTO) of their own, supply budgets, field trips, special elective classes, smaller class sizes, their own magnet coordinator and assistant, color printers and copy machines in their classrooms, barely any disruptive students, and no special-education students in their classes … the list goes on and on?
It’s been 22 years since Michael asked that question in the hallway. He was not the first, nor the last, to ask. But 22 years later, it is Michael’s image that comes to mind when I remember those days. Michael was a goofy, happy Mexican/Salvadoran student of mine. He was a pain in the ass. He never did his homework, he talked too much in class, but we all loved him anyway. He was one of those kids who came into a room and brightened it with his smile.
Two years after he asked that question in the hallway, I went to Michael’s funeral. He was shot and killed in an alley in Echo Park, around the corner from his house. In the casket, he was wearing beige khaki shorts, a white T-shirt, and a shaved head. His white knee socks were pulled up past his knees. Even I, an Irish Catholic girl from Massachusetts, knew what that meant. I also knew that there would be no attempt to find out who killed him, and that most people in that room already knew.
Part of me feels responsible for Michael’s death. Michael, and Anthony the year before him, and Roberto three years later. To escape the culture of gang life takes a strong sense of self and, I assume, hope of a better future, or at least better options open to them. Could I have done more?
What must it have felt like to sit in a classroom of 38–48 other students, day after day, year after year? Not once going on a field trip, with no access to technology, no elective classes. Knowing that the “white” kids across the hall are going to Europe in the summer. In all fairness, they weren’t all white. This particular magnet was what they call a 70/30 magnet. This meant they were mandated to have 30% white, and 70% “anything else.”
Across the hall, in Ms. B.’s magnet science class, they had a poster with a thermometer on the door, showing how much money their PTO had raised for materials, trips, etc. When I asked if the “regular school” could fundraise, I was told no because there could be only one PTO on a campus. So, at faculty meetings, we would watch as the 10 magnet teachers would look through their catalogs and fill out their orders. Magnet teachers were given $3,000 per semester for materials. I couldn’t even get a pencil sharpener. When I asked Ms. B., the department chair, if I could get poster paper for my kids to create posters for photosynthesis, I was told to “go to CVS and get some.” Each year the regular-school teachers would spend thousands of their own dollars to buy materials. I was enraged, but everyone else seemed to turn a blind eye. Was I the only one who saw this happening? Could I be the only one who cared? How must those children have felt? Did they even notice? Most days I assumed they didn’t, but on days when kids like Michael asked those questions, I knew better.
I was new to teaching, having left a career as a marine biologist. I began teaching because … well, where else can you talk about and actively “do” science all day to a somewhat-captive audience? I loved science. I loved everything about it. I loved that it could answer just about any question I ever had, and I especially loved sharing it with seventh graders.
The idea of a magnet school was new to all of us. We were told that the teachers with the most seniority would be teaching the magnet classes. That wasn’t me, but I was conveniently located across the hall from Ms. B., who would be the seventh-grade science magnet teacher. This ended up being an excellent vantage point to witness the injustice, inequality, and outright cruelty of thousands of students over a 10-year period.
The “regular” school went through nine principals during my first 10 years. The magnet school had their own coordinator, who had his own assistant, consistently each year. They had parent meetings when we had none. They had the rich, educated parents from the neighborhood coming down the hills, finally sending their kids to this school.
I had a unique perspective because I lived in the hills above the school. I was one of those “rich, educated, white” women. When I first started working there, my neighbors would gasp, “OMG, how can you work down there? I drive by at 3 p.m. when they are getting out of school, and it is scary! They’re a bunch of thugs.”
One day, I got a call from a neighbor. She wanted me to come over for a glass of wine to tell her about the school. She was thinking about taking her daughters out of private school and sending them to the magnet school at mine. She wanted to “pick my brain.” I went. There were about 10 other women there. I had to reassure them and talk about how great the kids were, and how wonderful the school was. It was difficult because their kids weren’t coming into my classes — they would be going across the hall. And I wanted so badly to ask for their help, to even the playing field for all the kids, but I knew better. I could tell they weren’t like me. They were only interested in their own kids. But I sold them on the school, anyway. I felt a need to share that my school was not a scary place.
Magnet schools were created to desegregate the student population of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). When a school is 98% Hispanic, and the neighborhood white students are all fleeing to private schools, what do you do? I constantly wondered how more funding to magnet schools to attract white students … how that was okay in any way? Imagine how much it must have cost to have a full-time magnet coordinator, a full-time office assistant just for the magnet, laptops in classrooms, all types of field trips, color printers, copy machines in classrooms (if you’re a teacher, you know that this one is a big deal), and all kinds of supplies that the “regular” school did not have. How much was spent on attracting white kids to the school? What if they had just pumped that much money and time and effort into the whole school and let everyone there excel?
About 10 years after that first magnet was formed on our campus, we got a new principal. She was white, educated, and from Massachusetts. We bonded over the Red Sox, the Patriots, and those funny accents our families had. I shared my concerns with her, and we ended up creating a second magnet, the Environmental Magnet (EM). I was the coordinator. I hired the staff, created the curriculum, and reached out to community groups for support. Now it was up to me to go and recruit white kids to come to our magnet. I did. I went to elementary schools all over L.A. and showed my PowerPoint and pitched our school. It was a huge success. In our second year, we got LAUSD (the second-largest school district in the country) to ban Styrofoam lunch trays. We started a program to feed the homeless with leftover food from the cafeteria. We were often on the local news and in the local paper and were even in a Disney commercial! We were honored with an award from the city, not once, but three times. The students at our magnet were from all over the city. I actively recruited at 75th Street Elementary, where my friend was a counselor. This was a school in South Central L.A. Those kids rode a bus for more than an hour every morning to get to school.
Even though the EM was now soaring, however, I knew enough to be careful and aware of the inequalities and the damage it might inflict on the remaining “regular-school” students.
At every chance, I included the regular-school kids. It took about two years to form a PTO for the entire school (both magnets and the regular school). I was fought tooth and nail by the original A/T PTO. They wanted to keep their own, as they knew they would be the primary fundraisers for the school, and they didn’t want to share with the rest. I remember meeting with the then-president of the original PTO at a coffee shop and pitching him the idea of all coming together to raise funds for the entire student population. He was hesitant at first, but I sold him, finally. We hugged as we left the coffee shop. He was excited to help. He said he would be in touch after he talked to the A/T magnet teachers. I never heard from him again.
I would find out later that the A/T magnet teachers had not wanted to lose their PTO and had said no. It took another year of meetings. I remember one meeting in particular where teachers from the regular school, EM, and A/T came and listened to our local politician (an A/T parent) pitch the idea of a schoolwide PTO. When one regular-school teacher raised her hand and said, “So this will just be one PTO for the whole school, no more A/T PTO?” the politician answered, “Well, no, we will have one umbrella PTO, and the A/T PTO will still remain …” to which half of the room walked out. Was he kidding? After years of being the only parent group on campus, raising thousands of dollars for their children alone, they wanted to have a large schoolwide PTO and keep their original group? I was fuming. Especially after I had been told over and over that only one PTO can be on campus. He lost a lot of votes that day.
But we kept at it, fighting the good fight. And finally, with the help of parents and the principal, we were all going to fundraise together! We were three schools on a campus now (the A/T magnet, the EM, and the regular school), finally acting like a community. I was excited on the first day of our fund drive … until I saw the woman running the PTO (an A/T parent) walk by me on her way to classrooms to deliver the annual fund-drive envelopes to students. The envelopes were three different colors. She had color-coded them to separate the funds. Red for A/T, green for EM, and blue for “regular.” They all wanted to see who brought in the most money. What kind of community is that?
When the new PTO was being formed, the original one had a balance of $23,000. The principal, A/T magnet coordinator, and I all met and decided it would just roll over into the new PTO. I remember distinctly that this was said at a meeting right before school let out one year. When we came back in the fall, all the money had been spent. The A/T teachers had spent $23,000 over the summer, just to keep the rest of us from getting it.
Time went by. Things got better. But then they got worse. The A/T was hiring a new English teacher. I sat in on the interviews for this position. The hiring committee comprised the principal, the A/T coordinator, the English department chair, the union rep, the local politician (an A/T parent rep), and me. Six of us.
The two applicants were both teachers in the “regular” school. One, Patty, was white, blond, and young. The other, Leena, was African American and older. They both gave similar interviews. They both had similar presentations. When it came time to vote, it was a tie. We voted again. Another tie.
I noticed that the A/T department chair and the A/T coordinator were adamant that they did not want Leena. I assumed it was because she’d said she only wanted to teach seventh grade for one year, then she would “bump” the department chair back to seventh, so she could have his eighth-grade spot. She could do this because she had more seniority over him. Well, this wouldn’t work in this instance because the department chair couldn’t go back to seventh grade — one of the teachers on that team had a restraining order against him. Guess who? Ms. B. Apparently, they got into a political argument at a union rally, and the very liberal department chair “pushed” her. The principal recused herself from the next round of voting. Patty won.
The next day, Leena came to school wearing a blond wig. When the students asked her why, she said, “It makes me a better teacher.” She wore this wig for weeks. She was furious. She ended up suing the school for racial discrimination. She sued the principal — and the district took out the principal and placed her elsewhere. So, now our principal was gone. The A/T coordinator was also pulled and put into another school. And boom! Just like that, all the work we had done to get to that point vanished.
So, we got another principal. He was African American, and at first I thought he was going to be awesome, but he wasn’t. His door remained shut half the time. He didn’t talk to anyone. Everyone who trusted one another left. I couldn’t get things done. I’d spent years writing grants and putting them into a “donation” account for the school. We were up to $30,000. One day, I walked into his office and asked if it were okay for me to take about $80 out of the donation account for a new picnic table. His answer? “What donation account?” And that was the last breath of air that blew out a fire that once raged inside me.
My old principal, the funny one from Boston, used to say to me all the time, “Don’t let them put your fire out.” But now I had no fight left. When he denied the existence of a donation account, I just didn’t have it in me to fight anymore. I visited the emergency room 10 times that year, thinking I had a lung infection because I was unable to catch my breath. When the doctor told me I was having panic attacks, I knew I couldn’t stay in L.A. any longer. I left my job in 2014. I rented out my house, took my seven-year-old son, and moved to an island. I ran away.
A few years ago, I got an email from a former student, Christopher. He was a small guy, Hispanic, lived with his mom and little brother. He was one of those kids who was always hanging around at lunch, after school — seemed he didn’t want to go home. But he was loved. We all, the EM staff, adored him. He was bright and energetic and a hard worker. He emailed me out of the blue, four years after I left, to say he missed me, and that he credits me with helping him be who he is today — an engineering student at UC San Diego. He was one of the lucky ones who went through the EM.
But I often wonder about the kids from Michael’s class, before I started the EM. Or Roberto’s. Or Anthony’s. More than 2,000 students went through my doorway during that time period. Are they okay? Are they happy? Did they go to college? Do they have fond memories of middle school, or do they carry scars?
Do they hold their heads up, knowing that they each have something to contribute to this world? Or are their eyes cast downward, unable to shake the shame put upon them for not being the “correct” skin color? For being born into a society that doesn’t value all children equally? My hope is that they felt no shame and that their focus in those days was on their own mortifying pubescence. But I apologize, either way. I wish I could have answered Michael. I wish I could have helped him understand that it wasn’t about him. But I can never ask him now — I can only hope that he never thought that.
