My experience on the U.S Public School System’s,
overt to covert arena for isms, and political agendas
(The Systemic Op)

Trump started his administration of war way before Iran; he started it behind closed doors where he decided that this war wasn’t just business, it would be personal, that he would go down in history and make his mark first at home with the dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education, “making America great again,” you see this war was to be against the citizens of the U.S., eventually, but first against their children.  On May 10, 2024, the vote to restore 2 schools military confederate names Stonewall Jackson HS, and Ashby Lee ES, was passed by the newly elected Shenandoah School district; in part due to the petition submitted 2 years earlier by the Coalition for Better Schools.  This battle, recently came to judicial decision on this past Thursday August 6, 2026, U.S. District Court Judge Michael F. Urbanski thought it not for the betterment of education, but discrimination instead, ordering that it be changed back to the names prior (one that had been previously changed from its racist origins 4 years earlier). It had been 2 years and some odd months since that attempt to reconcile racism in name, in Quicksburg, VA.  This educational journey embarked on the Fourteenth Amendment; protecting equality; Title VI Civil Rights Act; making access to education equal for all; and the Equal Education Opportunities Act, uplifting desegregation that ignited some 72 plus years ago with the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. 

But before that Black children in the U.S. were denied education and a proper one at that; it would mean death during slavery, and even after during segregation and the Jim Crow era my ancestors were forced to learn separate from their white counterparts in conditions not suited for learning; with whatever school supplies that could be located by the often self-taught teachers who pushed through breaking barriers so that all children could receive an education.  Often sacrificing their meek wages, family necessities, and freedom by creating their own schools so that others could learn. We’re talking about educational pioneers; real heavy hitters, whom schools should be named after, like Booker T. Washington, Fanny Jackson Coppin, Charlott Hawkins Brown, Nannie Helen Burroghs, and Mary McLoud Bethune, to name a few.  Without theirs, and other civil rights lawyers, and leaders’ incessant efforts to level the educational playing field, equal education and a learning environment free from all the isms would not be a thing to debate or vote on. The U.S. public school system is rooted in racism, classism, and funded by capitalistic ideologies by design.  A design that was meant to train white factory workers; with tests that were rigged to measure the unmeasurable, that in part has not changed today.

Before De Jur Segregation there was no equality in the quality of education, access to it, nor the money put towards the education of Black Children.  Before Gerrymandered school zones of yesterday and today, my ancestors were held captive in the ghettos where graduation rates fell below the poverty line, like the incomes of its residents; although ghetto children were guaranteed a spot in the school to prison pipeline, not so much in Ivy league colleges at the time. They didn’t test well for them so what makes you think they would get in?  Still present that constant pull to change things back to the “good ol days,” to “make America great again, to put people in their rightful place, a subservient one to what used to be called the “dominant race,” the face of the 1%.  Before the resistance to desegregation there was a deep seeded hate that extended far beyond education, a hate that used education as a tool to continue to oppress; while pointing the finger yelling “keep going, you’re not there yet, you still have so much to learn, but not here, over there.”  Careful, human basic rights are at stake; the founders must have thought “let’s create a system that will control how much is given and how much one can take.  Now that sounds fair, they must have thought, especially if it’s based on where you stay, a new way to keep people in their designed space, on track to go where we have designed for them to go. It’s limitless on what we can do, we can change things around to bring back the old, but make it seem new, make it seem like the educational thing to do. 

Before I remembered what I wanted to be, I dreamt a big dream, I wanted to be a lawyer. Most children dream of big things, big houses, romance, marriage.  I wanted all those things as a child, but I knew I wanted to be a lawyer. Maybe it was God speaking to me; or the lack of cartoons broadcasting on television back then, often forcing me to watch what my mom was watching on weekdays, which would consist of daytime stories like General Hospital, or One Life to Live, the local News, or television shows like The Heat of The Night, Murder She Wrote, MASH, and Perry Mason.  I wanted to be Perry Mason; that was until I forgot.  Until the trauma consumed me so much, I could only focus on my mom; on having a place to stay so that I could go to school.  Wanting my mom to be ok, wanting her to stay, to not leave me.  I attended Kindergarten twice.  I was told it was because I was going through emotional issues with the loss of my Grandma Alice, who I lived with until she passed.  My mom said I used to talk to her looking out the window, looking at the sun.  I remember the warmth of the window, and the sun shining through our apartment in Bellevue, but I don’t remember hearing from her specifically, I wish I did, I wish I remembered her voice.  Things turned for the worse after my grandma passed.  I guess I wasn’t the only one suffering from losing her, my mom was 22, maybe 23 years old at the time and her past of abuse, her lifestyle, her having a pimp, her dancing, her growing drug habit didn’t help her suffering, it didn’t help my suffering, it didn’t help our suffering. I went to a predominantly white school, Ardmore.  The campus seemed so huge, and in comparison, to the other schools I would later attend it was.  I mean we had a large open field and a creek with a wooded area in the back.  All the students brought really nice lunches to school.  I should know because I would often eat them after asking to go to the restroom. My kindergarten teacher was my favorite, and I know now that’s probably because I was in her class 2 years straight.  Somewhere along the way I forgot what I wanted to be in the safety of education because school was my safe place, or was it just better there than in the uncertainty that I would call home; than in the streets? Either way it was where I excelled, where I could be stable where I knew what to expect. Because of this my academic career was long and all over the place as I went from journalism, communications, and then social work.

I found my next while attending a breakout session at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ). I was there presenting Can Oppression Be Liberation; a short film about the generational impact of the commercial sex trade on Black girls, women, and the impact on their subsequent communities. While I don’t recall who presented the session, I recall that they were lawyers and their niche was supporting students with disabilities and their families as they navigated the public school system.  While I have been calling it a disability and educational rights lawyer; I believe it is referred to as a disability rights, or special education lawyer.   The 2-person team of lawyers presented a brief synapsis of their area of law, and a case study depicting their struggles with supporting a child with disabilities obtain a much-needed individual learning plan (IEP).  They discussed the difficulties that the family had with the school and the school district who put the burden entirely on the family who spoke English as a second language and was already over-burdened with meeting their basic needs.  The lawyers highlighted that these issues happened regularly at schools that primarily served Black and Brown students and often families who were unaware of their rights.  The lawyers discussed how this burden was a responsibility of the school and the school district.  Why would you have to pursue a legal battle to get a school district and the schools within that district to perform their duty, behooves me, but they did.  As soon as the presentation was over, I was in line waiting to ask follow-up questions.  “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to be,” I thought as I left the room, I don’t have it in me to go back to social work, not after everything, and what better counselor (with the exception of God is a counselor that fights against the intersections of injustice within our education system in a court room and all that comes with it.  Having attended close to 10 elementary schools as a child in various neighborhoods and areas of Seattle, Washington and its surrounding areas, I learned quickly that not every school was created equal. At least not from the student’s perspective. Some schools had the best equipment, whether it was in the gym, the library, the food in the cafeteria, and once I became a young adult attending a private school, I found out it was the same with the teachers as well.

Situated on its crooked pedestal, the U.S. has created a system for our schools that house our children and somehow the lines have gotten blurred, or maybe they were blurred to begin with. Are we growing or enriching our economy by growing schools or growing children or neither? This system with limited State and Federal oversight is governed by the local school board, and its District Superintendent, who relies on the people within that district to really be functional.  To be able to raise the funds needed to be able to operate the school, qualified teachers to teach the kids, to learn a particular area of study, like art, or coding, to make sure things are advancing in the right direction, for all not just one district, for every child, not just white children, or their children.  But first the leadership within that system needs to be vested in our laws, in equality, educational equity, and the advancement of all children, unfortunately that is not the United States case. This system within a system called School districts or the local board of education is something to be studied.  If you decide to go down that rabbit hole you will find that since its origins racism was its policy.  Dating back to the post-war era where validation from the highest court of the law in the Plessy v. Ferguson case established the “separate but equal” doctrine cementing racist ideologies within the educational fabric of the U.S.  Although our school system started with the law it didn’t stop there.  School districts across the U.S routinely practiced giving less to schools that housed Black and Brown students. 

As time went by the openly racist practices and isms within the U.S educational system and school districts moved from legal and in your face, to behind closed doors and not just against Black people but against immigrant children and children with disabilities with the use of constructed loopholes.  One case that exemplified the weaponization of education against immigrants and their children played out as they “explored” different countries advertising the American dream and jobs, thus inviting cheap labor into the U.S. only to deny their children access to a quality education.  This is evident as the Supreme Court had to again interject when the Tyler Independent School District in Texas, tried to charge a fee for undocumented children to go to school; a fee they knew they couldn’t afford, and when that didn’t work, they outright tried to bar them from attending.   I wish this was the only case in point, but it’s not.  The covert discrimination extends to our children with learning, emotional and behavioral disabilities as well. It takes money to hire qualified teachers and support staff, so the amount of funding given in school districts is paramount to the quality and reach of the education within that district.  Having a trained math teacher decide who qualifies for special education for 2 hours out of the 8-hour workday is an injustice to our children and should be considered criminal. 

High wealth and low wealth school districts don’t just differ in their political views or money but in access to qualified staff, school maintenance and upkeep.  Even with the federally funded Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) school districts are expected to fill the gap with property tax revenue but you can’t harness energy from a dry river.  Although IDEA was designed to cover “around 40% of the cost” associated with placing, instructing, and supporting students with disabilities it rarely meets that goal falling short at around “15%.”  That brings me to my next case in point where the magnitude alone exemplifies that the failure of our school districts coupled with a lack of supportive relevant reach, and structure is not a State-wide issue but a systemic one.  The monetary disparity creates a black hole that Black, Brown, and disabled students fall in when relying solely on our public-school systems; and as our system stands today, there is no bridge, or plan to build one to prevent future children from falling in. If anything, we or our current government, that is has widened it, resulting in the need for an evidenced, solution-based reconstruction of our Department of Education and its oversight and reach on U.S. School Districts by trained, knowledgeable professionals. What you thought it would be an individual or maybe a school district, no this is concerning a whole State’s failure to support a predominantlyBlack city, the city of Detroit that is.  In Gary B. v. Synder and later Gary B. v. Whitmer students with disabilities including those with emotional or learning disabilities were subjected to “self-contained isolated classrooms rather than direct instruction” due to the gross educational negligence of a States school system.  The atrocity didn’t end there, I’m sure there are tales that describe the horrors and residual impacts of such treatment of babies.  This extended to the infrastructure of buildings that often lacked air conditioning and access ways impacting students with mobility and sensory issues the most.  And again, no accountability by the Department of Education or the State of Michigan until the courts got involved.  How long did this go on unnoticed and how many other schools in different States had experienced the same situation?

My K-12 resume was extensive having attended upwards of 7 elementary schools and at least 4 middle schools that I can remember. Somewhere along the line I had a principle who took notice of me and pushed me forward to my correct grade, so by the time I graduated from Mcknight Middle School in Renton and advanced to Evergreen High School in White Center, I was doing extremely well, in my correct grade earning a 4.0 GPA.  It was during that time that my mom experienced her longest period of stability with me, but the damage had been done.  I thought I was grown, I hadn’t been a virgin since I was 11 years old, I had been emotionally and sexually exploited and taken advantage of so many times before that, I got high to forget, I got high to go to sleep, I got high to wake up, I got high and went to school. I had been on the street so much, it was normal to be out all night doing what I wanted.  Begging to go to school with my play cousins I was allowed to enroll at West Seattle Hight School where I majored in Jack-n-The Box which earned me a 0.0 for 3/4th of my sophomore school year.  Because I was book smart and not so much street smart I would have periods of time when I would run away and wouldn’t go to school and then I would come back and rush to get my credits up.  The principal tried to reach out to my mom, but my mom didn’t come to the school unless it was something bad and that had been the same for her mom (culturally it just wasn’t a thing that Black people did and I wonder why), but the only signature that the school had was mines and every time she would threaten to call, I would counter her offer with a threat to run away (I would later really run away). 

So, I would end up with a lot of in-school suspensions instead.  The in-school suspensions often took place with those in Special Education; I kid you not.  You had room full of all the popular people either in trouble for not doing their work, being late, or for clowning in class to cover a learning disability etc.  Sometimes I would walk pass the Special Education classroom when I wasn’t in trouble just to see all the cute guys because that’s where they were, that’s where the gang-members were and that’s what I liked, I was raised around them, that was all I knew.  My high school recently reached out to me to update my information and after sharing my extensive graduate education she asked if my school had prepared me for college, and I replied that it had not.  Now was that my fault or did they just push us out without explaining the possibilities of college, like schools practiced during my mom’s generation and the generation before that when hands-on parenting wasn’t a thing.

I learned so much when I learned what hands-on parenting truly was with my youngest daughter. I learned that being at your child’s school increases the chances that they will do better, even if they don’t like or want you there.  I tried so hard to get her an IEP plan to support her but was stonewalled by her school, among other things that went on.  I had gotten her into therapy and had a signed letter that it would be beneficial to my daughter’s education that she has one, when she fired her therapist the week before the conference to solidify her obtaining one; I didn’t think it would be a problem, I mean I had a letter signed by a professional like they wanted.  During the conference I presented the letter signed by her therapist and was told that I needed to get a new one since my daughter no longer went to therapy.  Apparently, she would be required to go if she were to be eligible to get an IEP.  I had to ask myself if we were discussing the same person because her teachers definitely agreed she needed one.  It was the counselor and administration who said there was some administrative rule that required that I get another letter.  I had a hard time getting her to come to school, I was lucky I got her to go to therapy for as long as I did, there was no way I could talk her into that.  It was like the school was against me, or the policy was, or both.

So how much influence do I think Trump’s overhaul of our Department of Education had on one prominent coalition’s decision to revitalize racial rhetoric in name, prior to his 2nd swearing into office?  I don’t think it directly impacted the Coalition for Better Schools petition, or the Shenandoah’s school districts decision to reinstate racism (this had occurred 2 years prior), but it is a display of racist ideology within the U.S.’s school system,  that is definitely a shared belief of people with a lot of money, social wealth, and political influence. I believe this is and was a tale, tale sign of what was to come from Trump and what is going to gain momentum in more than name if we don’t do something.  I believe the isms, disparities, and racist foundations of our education system never went away; its just operating under a different name, a different title, and trying different methods. There’s so many questions left unanswered like: how much power can one government entity, special interest group, organization, coalition, or group have?  How is it so entitled and validated in practiced policy centered around racism, that it perpetuates it structurally, by name or policy without the fear of consequence or opposition?  How much of this goes unnoticed or unchallenged within our school system, every day, every year?  If we continue to do things the way we’ve always done them, how will we get different results?  If we return to the days of old, how will we be prepared for the challenges in education of today or tomorrow for that matter?  How much money is lost each year to address problems that don’t advance literacy rates, and improve learning environments for our children but in fact create barriers like attempting to reverse a decision to remove names that signify that a group or person doesn’t belong?  Who is to blame when said government structures fail our children?

So I conclude this article with more than just my opinion, experience or more questions; but a call to action to all professionals, parents, citizens, groups, and coalitions of all areas who care about our children’s future, our future : Let me be clear when I say that no one person can do it, no specialized group, or government entity acting in silos is going to protect our future, our children, our children’s #1 protective factor against adolescent harms then US, united, as one; gone are the days when we sit back and expect our government to operate in the best interest of our children without us being involved, we have to unite and stand up now and take our education system back as they are currently attempting to undue our children’s civil rights of the future. Ok, one last question; who’s going to go first?

Matthew 11:12 (KJV)
“And from the days of John the Baptist, until now the Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violence take it by force.”




References:

June 11th 2024 Complaint
2024.06.11-No.-1-Complaint.pdf
NAACP Virginia State Conference
News – NAACP Virginia
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
Virginia State Conference NAACP v. County School Board of Shenandoah County 5:24-cv-00040 (W.D. Va.) | Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse
January 22, 2025 WashLaw.org Memorandum and Opinion Denying Defendants Motion to Dismiss
1-61-MTD-Opinion.pdf
WashLaw.org Order and Opinion
MO.524cv40 VA NAACP v. Shenandoah County_Opinion – August 6.pdf
The Coalition for Better Schools (The Coalition to Better Shenandoah County)
General 1 — The Coalition for Better Schools
The Century Foundation
School Segregation in U.S. Metro Areas
Edbuild
EdBuild | 23 Billion
National Center for Education Statistics
Public School Revenue Sources
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
State Budget and Tax | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
US Supreme Court Decision: San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973)
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez | 411 U.S. 1 (1973) | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center
California Supreme Court Decision
Serrano v. Priest :: :: Supreme Court of California Decisions :: California Case Law :: California Law :: U.S. Law :: Justia
The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles
The Civil Rights Project – Proyecto Derechos Civiles
Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka 347 U.S., 483, 1954
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka | 347 U.S. 483 (1954) | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center
Plyler v. Doe 457 U.S. 202 1982, Opinion Text
Plyler v. Doe | 457 U.S. 202 (1982) | Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center
Analysis of Gary B v. Snyder and The Constitutional Right to Literacy
In a Case with Blockbuster Potential, Detroit School Children Assert a Federal Constitutional Right to Literacy | Vikram David Amar | Verdict | Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia
Gary B. Whitmer, 18-1855, (6th Circuit, 2020)
Gary B. v. Whitmer, No. 18-1855 (6th Cir. 2020) :: Justia