Delivered to the Directors of the Seattle School Board

October 23, 2002

Directors of the Board, my name is Michelle Pennylegion and I am the parent of a second grader who currently attends TOPS. I am a Seattle native and have lived almost all of my adult life in the Central District. I am a member of FACES which stands for Fair Assignment for Children Everywhere in Seattle.

We believe that the Superintendent has failed to consider the impact his proposed changes to assignment policy will have on students of color from across the district, but especially in the Central Cluster.

In reviewing School District Annual reports and WASL scores from last year, FACES has found the following:

>There are nine elementary schools in the Central Cluster with a total of 2594 students.

>Three-quarters of them are children of color; one-quarter are white.

>Only 16% of the children of color, of one thousand nine hundred and fifty children, attended an academically successful school.

>Meanwhile, 75% of the 644 white children did.

Changing the current assignment policy, will only increase this outrageous disparity. It will shift still more of the district’s best resources to accommodate a small group of people. In addition, it will further segregate our schools, especially in the Central Cluster.

Changing the rules to accommodate the needs of white families over the needs of families of color is the very definition of institutional racism.

What will you do next year when 37 families who live near Martin Luther King Elementary school propose similar policy changes? Perhaps they’ll ask you to redraw the reference areas. If history is any clue, such a policy change will go nowhere, it won’t make it out of the Superintendents office. His response will go something like this, “I share your concern, but the rules are the rules and I really can’t change them for a small group of people.” That’s what he should have said to the families from North Capitol Hill.

Instead, he wants to further gerrymander the Central Cluster, look at the map, don’t you think there is enough segregation here. We say there is way too much already.

The superintendent says in his letters to us that this is a very complicated matter.

It isn’t.

You are all aware that there are more than enough elementary seats to accommodate ALL of the children in the Central Cluster.

Today, FACES is asking you for four things:

1. STOP these attempts to further segregate our schools.

2. HELP the schools South of Madison become schools to be proud of.

3. REJECT any proposal that limits the chances of families of color to send their children to a school like TOPS which is a diverse, academically successful inner-city elementary school. And,

4. Be PROUD this District has a school that has achieved, without corporate sponsorship, a sustainable model of excellence. Be PROUD that TOPS is diverse. Be PROUD that, in the face of its achievements, the TOPS community continues to say we have not done enough. There is still more work to be done.

On behalf of FACES, thank you.