Cheap Eats
By Dan Leone

Our Masthead

Editorial Staff

Business Staff

Jobs & Internships

Opinion

By Lisa Schiff

To public school

IMAGINE THIS: you're at a rally with your children. You've just marched for an hour through the streets, holding signs that you all made together the night before: "Kids for peace!" "Don't drop bombs on babies – or grown-ups!" The sun is shining, and people are laughing, hugging, and strolling about. All kinds of people are there: old, young, brown, tan, red, and white.

Flyers are being handed out for upcoming events, more than you could possibly ever attend. It's beautiful, and everything seems possible. But as you start getting ready to go home, that nagging question comes back – what next?

Well, I have a suggestion of what at least some of us can do next: take our kids to school, to public school.

Public schools are one of the places where social justice activists should show up, join in, and begin building toward the vision of that just and peaceful world we hold so dear. As parents, when we choose to enroll our children in public schools, we're making a profound statement about our commitment to our society – and the potential for change now.

As parents, when we choose to enroll our children in public schools, we're entering a sphere where all of our organizing abilities, community-building activities, critical thinking, analytical skills, and historical understandings of oppression and struggle are not only meaningful but also immediately useful.

But perhaps most important, as parents, when we choose to enroll our children in public schools, we're saying very boldly, "My kid deserves the best – and so does every other child – so I am going to help create the best for all of our children."

The consequences of turning away from public education are painfully obvious and grave. First and foremost, abandoning the public schools will lead us to two separate, unequal educational systems: a private one for families who have access to financial resources, and a public one for those who don't. Second, the decline in the number of enrolled students directly reduces the amount of dollars coming into public school systems, which is a particularly serious problem in times of budget crises. Third, the quantity and quality of social discussion about public education is diminished. And fourth, as fewer families participate in public education, there are by definition fewer critical supporters of public schools – and supporters have always been, and will always be, necessary to ensure that public schools can meet the needs of their communities.

When you open the door to a public school, you find something amazing: qualified, well-trained principals; teachers and staff working hard to provide each child with a world of possibilities; children from an array of backgrounds who are eagerly learning and connecting with each other; a physical place that becomes a second anchor in your life. Public schools aren't the beginning or end of dramatic (hopefully revolutionary) change in our society, but they're a good place to start. They're a place where we can get involved, organize for improvements, and hold our government institutions accountable.

When our children are going to public schools, the chant "Money for schools, not for war!" takes on a whole new meaning. Those are our schools, our children, and that chant is for them. This is an opportunity we can't pass by, a community we can't ignore. It is a site of struggle we can't abandon.

So come this fall, take your kids to school – a public school – and come back yourself.

Lisa Schiff is a board member of Parents for Public Schools of San Francisco and the proud parent of two children who attend McKinley Elementary School in the San Francisco Unified School District.