When Connie Williams walked across the stage to receive her high school diploma, this moment should have been one of the happiest moments for her. But it was not. While Connie gripped her diploma and participated in this rite of passage that signifies that we are ready to transition into our next chapter, she was carrying a shocking secret: She could not read.
Her miseducation limited possibilities not just for Connie, but for her children as well — and, she feared, would do the same to her grandchildren.
So when she unexpectedly became the sole caregiver for her grandchildren, she decided to take action. She moved her grandchildren out of a school in the Oakland district that she saw as troubled and into a public charter school.
That kind of choice is what two organizations that profess to fight for the interest of working-class African-Americans like us would take away from us.
Both Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the NAACP called this summer for a moratorium on charter schools.
We spent days this summer with Connie “Mama” Williams and more than a dozen other African-American parents and caregivers as part of a family leadership fellowship.
We listened to and shared resources with hundreds of parents and caregivers with children enrolled in both district and charter schools in Oakland. We urged them to get more involved in their child’s education.
We received the moratorium demands from NAACP and BLM with dismay and want to respond clearly to them: If your solution is simply to turn off the tap and ban new charter schools, then you do not speak for us.
“Mama” Williams’ experience demonstrates why we need public school choice and highlights the complexity that parents and caregivers like us face when making decisions on where to enroll our children.
Like everyone else in our group, Mama recognizes that not all charters are great or even good. We know that while many charters play by rules that require them to accept and educate all children who come to them, some break the rules — and no one should stand for that.
But in this case, she saw a path to interrupt the intergenerational struggle of her family, and like a responsible parent, she took it.
Her choice was a personal one, not a condemnation of district schools. And for our group, exercising this choice requires personal sacrifice, while also dedicating our time working toward solutions that will strengthen the quality of education in community district schools.
We love our communities and know a quality school down the street is the sign of a community’s progress.
As our communities change, so will our choices. But it’s a choice we get to make. And our group is unanimous in asking that no one take that option away while claiming to speak in our name.
The choices parents/caregivers face in communities like ours are rarely easy and rarely completely satisfying. The stakes are high, and the options aren’t always great. But that’s all the more reason it should be our choice.
Lakisha Young is an Oakland public school parent and entrepreneur-in-residence at GO Public Schools, an Oakland-based advocacy organization, and Teresha Freckleton-Petite is an Oakland public school parent and a GO Family Leadership Fellow.
