What if we decided not to wait for the school district to do right by Black children?
In November, parents protested against the potential closing of nine Pittsburgh Public Schools. Parents stressed the lack of benefit to children, the potential harm to children and that school closures kill community culture.
After this protest, the school directors seemingly listened to the demands and voices of the parents and students and decided not to close the schools. The problematic Future Ready Plan had been defeated. Pittsburgh parents had scored a powerful victory. Or so we all thought.
Recently, Pittsburgh Superintendent Dr. Wayne Walters announced his intentions to revive the unpopular Future Ready Plan; the very same proposal that stands in direct opposition to what parents, students and the community want.
Lacking authentic and meaningful engagement with the parents in general and the Black community in particular, Future Ready Plan is top-down, poorly planned and absent of true benefit for the Black children and their families. The result is Black families’ return to a high level of distrust with the district, and the grand possibility that promises made will never come to fruition.
Generation after generation, Black children have received a schooling experience that does not prepare them for their dreams. This moment demands that we stop waiting for the district to do right by our children. Instead, we must build educational programs that meet our children where they are and where they aspire to be.
It is important to note districts nationwide justify closures by citing declining enrollment or low scores — promising consolidation will help. But these reforms rarely improve outcomes. In 2013, Chicago closed 50 schools to save money and address under-enrollment, but the promised full improvements never materialized. Black parents cannot wait to see if the district’s future-ready plan will work. We must act.
Without a doubt, advocacy remains essential. But as a football city, Pittsburgh knows a team needs both defense and offense to win. Advocacy is our defense — protecting what we have — but building independent programming is our offense — creating what we need. We must use our agency to do both.
Consider that throughout Black history, Black people have built their own learning experiences, even in the face of adversity.
During slavery, Black people would leave the plantations and hide in the woods to teach each other how to read and write. These actions were criminal and punishable by the harshest penalties, even death.
The Reconstruction Era saw an explosion of one-room schools to educate the newly freed Black people. And history books are filled with examples of these schools being funded by the Black community and offering Black people a chance to learn how to read and write.
And finally, we have Freedom Schools from the 1960s and early 1990s. The 1990s version of Freedom Schools became a national movement in which college students provided educational programming during the summer for children across the country, with the Philadelphia Freedom Schools becoming best known for its transformative work. This model featured both college students (servant leaders) and high school students (junior servant leaders) entering urban schools to educate elementary-age children. The Freedom School Literacy Academy is another iteration of this work.
These are just some of the ways the Black community has used our agency to offer transformative learning experiences for Black children. If we did it in the past, then we can do it now.
We can’t wait. Our children’s dreams must not be squandered. Let’s build educational experiences and help our children develop and pursue their dreams.
