"I think we need neighborhood schools back, so that parents in the neighborhood can work together to support their school,
and the future of their kids and neighbors kids."
I guess it's up to the republican to state the obvious. What Bob and Tom are longing for are the days before school bussing. When I was ten, we moved from the Rondo neighborhood to the Selby-Dale neighborhood and I enrolled at Webster elementary. My family was glad that now, instead of walking 8 blocks to Maxfield, my siblings and I only had to walk 6 to Webster! The kids I met there in the 4th grade became my after-school playmates, since we all lived within a few blocks of each other. If someplace was too far to walk, we biked over.
We all went on to Marshall Jr. High together and our unsupervised play graduated to sports (basketball, dodgeball, softball) at the Selby community center which was "staffed" by college kids from the U. Their "coaching" involved bringing a bag of bats and balls out to the paved-over playground, where we played from dawn to dusk in the summer; or unlocking the gym and throwing a dozen basketballs out onto the floor in the winter. There were no coaches, there were no uniforms, there were no leagues. But most importantly, there were no parents around. We learned the game from each other, and every game was a pick-up game. Sometimes the community center staff would organize games against kids from other community centers, like Hallie Q Brown, Oxford, or the Salvation Army on 7th Street. They'd pass out different colored jerseys so at least we knew who to pass the ball to.
When we went on to high school, we STILL walked to school ... some went to Central, I walked about 3 miles to Mechanic Arts (I don't know the distance for sure, I never thought about it so I never measured it) but we still hung out together after school. As high school athletes, we competed against those kids that we had met from the other playgrounds, who were now playing for Monroe or Highland Park, or Central. I still see those "kids" today and our conversations have been known to include such things as the disputed homerun someone hit in the 6th grade or the crush we had on a particular girl in the 8th.
It's been said by people from out of town that it's hard to make friends here. I remember one quote in particular where a woman said "These people have the same friends they had in Kindergarten, and they're not looking to make new ones." I laughed when I read that because my wife's closest friends today (who are now all grandmothers) are girls she met in kindergarten at Cathedral School.
So, if you relish that type of up-bringing, just remember, none of it would have happened if there had been school bussing. Neighborhood schools are the glue that bind neighborhoods together, and the upbringing I enjoyed will never happen again because to eliminate bussing would inconvenience too many parents who would oppose it with the same phony arguments they used for bussing in the first place ... desegregation. And the well-meaning parents who know the value of strong neighborhoods will be cowed and intimidated into silence. Just like they were then.
Dennis Tester Mac-Groveland
Cleverly Arranging 1's And 0's Since 11110110000
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