Amazing Stats About Schools Picked for Closures (By a Parent, of course)

Naturally, it comes from a smart parent crunching the numbers. In this case, that smart parent is Albert Wong. (And boy, do I hope he runs for the Board someday.) He publishes this article on Medium called Anti-Asian Bias in Seattle School Leadership and Advocacy Community. Bold mine.

I am extracting a large amount of what Wong has written because it hits great points solidly.

His opening statement:

Deciding to write this post has been difficult as it leaves me exposed to a lot of the inter-parental bullying that happens in the SPS city-wide advocacy community, but given the data I’m seeing I feel compelled to put it in text. If you don’t want to read, play with the graphs here. If you want to connect with others about Asian advocacy, fill in this form here.

I find this a very humble way to start, saying "you don't need to read this but look at these numbers!"

The “Well Resourced Schools” plan has a disproportionate impact on school communities that have a higher percentage of people of color. The impact is clearly visible if you make a graph ordering schools in each region by % of [demographic] (example: NW region % Asian) and look at which ones are being closed or having their program reconfigured for them.

 In particular, though, in every closure region except SE, the schools with the highest percentage of Asians are consistently being closed/reorganized.

When I first graphed this (see below) and saw it, I felt so sick to my stomach I had to close my laptop. The demographic impact looks so blatantly racist I could not believe it.

No one from the School Board. Not President Rankin or Director Briggs who recently ran campaigns highlighting their keen attention to equity. Not the Seattle Council PTSA whose current and former executive board members frequently bandy about the phrase “equity-lens” while also reacting immediately to micro-aggressions on FB forums with fast, strong, condemnation. Not even the district staff itself — though that surprises me less as they’re attempting to sell a plan.

He continues:

The roots of this resounding silence is major racism here. And it seems to be perpetuated by a number of folks who — I believe authentically — identify as anti-racist.

He posits that with no Asian representation on the Board or senior staff, it makes it possible that is why these trends aren't being noticed.

He says that:

The only Asian, Vivian Song, on the school board was bullied out (yes I said bullied out… dig deeper)...

Digging deeper, he makes a key point that surely is visible when you talk about the HC cohort:

Worse, there is a “black-white” understanding of racial dynamics in Seattle (see The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans from 1999 by Professor Clare Jean Kim) that leads to non-conformant views by Asians being othered as “privileged white-adjacent ” and therefore dismissible. This goes beyond Seattle Public Schools and can be seen recently in the stereotype reinforcing arguments used in various forums and in media like the Stranger when criticizing or attacking Asian political candidates.

Ignoring, othering, or devaluing Asian experiences because they’re too white-adjacent to be truly anti-racist isn’t anti-racist. It’s just racist. Classically so. It’s triangulation using othering to say Asians are not authentically part of a cultural movement.

If the collective unconscious bias of the people with influence do this othering, it becomes systemically racist.

Note also that “Two or more races” is a tricky category. I cannot find the citation, but as I recall someone got a public-record-request from the district showing that many of those students in this part of Seattle are actually part Asian which makes the Asian targeting look even worse.

I believe I saw data that multi-racial is the fastest growing subgroup in Seattle Schools.

But it's not just about Asians:

Only 5/30 schools in North Seattle have > 15% Black/African American population. We are closing the largest of those and moving the next one down. How has no one called out this impact on 2 distinct Black communities?

The targeting in North Seattle continues if we lower the threshold to > 10% Black/African Americans. Only 11/30 schools in North Seattle fit that description. Of those, 6 are slated for closures or moves. That’s over half the schools with any significant concentration of Black / African American students.

Why isn’t the traditional PTA advocacy roll-up structure, whose members regularly pound on people online for using wrong words, not getting up in arms for an actual structurally racist policy shift??

After staring at these graphs and watching discussions for the past 2 weeks, I think understanding may start from examining the long running argument about option schools.

Stereotypes about Neighborhood School vs Option School

Let’s hit the hot button topic about option schools. There is a common stereotype that option schools are privileged and more white than the integrated neighborhood schools around them.

Given that 22% of our schools are option schools, you are going to find examples where this is true. And maybe if you are traumatized by experiencing some of those dynamics, you will overgeneralize to thinking it must be true across the whole city.

This means that the idea of an “integrated neighborhood school” is laughable for various portions of the city where entire neighborhoods are basically white. This causes the socio-economic relationship of option schools to neighborhood schools in these regions to be REVERSED from the stereotype above.

This is the situation in NW Seattle. If you plot the schools by % white, only 7/16 schools are < 50% white. 5 of those are option schools.

So if you make any policy that does anything negative to ALL option schools in the city, the experience for NW Seattle — a sizable chunk of the city — is that you will have targeted the LEAST WHITE schools and you will look like you are enacting a racist policy.

What happened after he crunched the data:

After graphing it the first time, I spent a week attempting to validate them because I was so shaken by how blatant it looked. And it’s not just race. If you play with the interactive graphs, you’ll see disturbing clustering across many OSPI categories that I have not managed to discuss.

If it took me 15 mins 2 weeks ago, why did no one on the Board or in the major advocacy orgs (with the exception of a parent in All Together for Seattle Schools coming to similar conclusions a few days ago) scream?

I have worked in government before and believe deeply that anyone who stays in civil service or runs for office truly wants to do good. It’s just too abusive of an environment to be in otherwise. So how could so many people who talk equity, social justice, or African American Male achievement in nearly every sentence miss something so big? Why are they silent?

I wonder if it’s because they live in similar parts of Seattle and things look okay for them.

He goes into "geographic concentration of power and influence" at about the middle of the piece, with a cluster map created by yet another bright parent, Tara Chace.

It’s not hard to see how these sets of people could have totally different understandings of what the biggest problems are and what the solutions should be.

Our advocacy community is split in half and that split hurts our ability to find solutions that work for the whole city.

As is, you can see a huge cluster of influence in NE Seattle. Note also that current President Liza Rankin, former President + Vice President Chandra Hampson, and newly elected Evan Briggs all cluster around NE Seattle.

Big points here to take in:

If you ideologically believe HCC and Options schools are inequitable** and should be destroyed then overall the graphs don’t look too bad! Especially since “Sandpoint” is a “just” a location move.

(**Note that ignoring that HCC/Option school in NE Seattle also means you ignore the impact on the 3 schools with highest % Asian. Here is the uncomfortable truth: you cannot be against Option schools and HCC w/o also supporting the dismantling these Asian communities.)

Since the center of influence in advocacy is STRONGLY clustered in NE Seattle, it suddenly becomes quite easy to see why response is tepid.

This unconscious bias likely gets reinforced too because the folks in the affected communities that are most effective at speaking out likely won’t be the immigrants, the English language learners, the families with refugee histories whose families are afraid of public challenges to authority. No, it will be someone that fulfills some privilege stereotype.

 Huge Point:

In this bubble, it’s actually possible for every advocate to truly be trying to do their best to help equity but to have created an echo chamber where it is possible to accidentally devote a huge amount of energy to focused on controlling the 0.5% of the district budget that is PTSA funding instead of heeding the calls from option schools in March that knew they were being targeted for closures since their waitlists were not moving leading to a situation where the largest % Asian and % Black schools in North Seattle are targeted to have their community dispersed.

The racism that will occur here is not from advocates trying to preserve privilege. It will be from from advocates picking the wrong priorities because there isn’t enough representation in the advocacy community collaboratively find the right ones.

Huge Point 2

Side comment about Asian concentration in Option Schools and HCC

When you look at the graphs, it’s impossible not to notice that there is a correlation of higher % Asians and options schools + HCC.

Nearly everyone just leaps to the racist stereotype about Asians being good at tests and trying to hoard privilege.

I have an alternative possibility. If you live in this part of Seattle, where nearly every single school around you is 70% white, what would your world look like? Maybe a bunch of your friends say “apply to this option school” or “go for HCC” or “get into the DL/I program” because its “so much better.”

Why do they think it’s better? Maybe it’s because it’s finally a community where you and your kids actually see people like yourselves at school events. Maybe you can walk in the hallways and have a chance of hearing people speak your languages around you. And maybe that is an unconscious incentive to try to cluster here.

So when we as a city decide these programs are privileged (maybe they are) and mark them for destruction, what would have been the alternative reality for those families as they are dispersed and scattered back into the 70% white schools. What’s the impact on self identity?

I’ve got a trend going here of making seemingly contradictory statements but here’s the crux: you can be equitable and non-equitable at the same time.

The problem I have, and where I see racism, isn’t with having to make hard choices. It’s with choices being made without these complexities even being aired or discussed. And it’s also with choices being made TO a community rather than WITH a community, because some set of people in power apply a stereotype and create the policy equivalent of saying “all look same.”

The word inclusion is used a lot, but it’s often meant as a measure of how many best practices one puts in. I look at it differently now. Inclusion isn’t about best practices. It is about how many people who have changes made to them cannot find access to power so they may be heard.

By that definition, I think we do not have a very inclusive community.

His Conclusion

I don’t know how to get out of this mess but there are a few things that are very clear to me now:

• The topics here are complex and most actions have multiple possibly contradictory impacts.
• It is possible to be anti-racist and racist at the same time.
• Representation of impacted communities is hugely lacking on the school board and among the leaders of the advocacy community.
• The word “equity” can be used to legitimately defend the oppressed while ALSO bullying others into following policy that is based on a narrow (and sometimes upside down) understanding of the city.
• Fighting for equity and bullying are two different things. Bullying needs to be stopped and the word equity needs to cause introspection, not silence.
• If you are Asian and you feel othered in your interaction with Seattle Public Schools and the advocacy community, that’s because you are being othered and targeted. Time to stand up, organize, and assert the right to take up space, and find a way to evolved the advocacy so that we and everyone else are included.