June 18, 2008: Council Member Peter Brown Supports Neighborhood Schools
Yesterday council member Peter Brown released the following news release stating his strong support for community schools. This letter embodies our feelings towards preservation of community schools. Below you will find our response. Please support council member Brown and like minded colleagues. Lets keep our community schools open. Save Wharton!
Council Member Perter Brown's news release
CITY OF HOUSTON NEWS RELEASE OFFICE OF CITY COUNCIL MEMBER PETER BROWN
CONTACT: Maverick Welsh Chief of Staff 832-393-3014 atlarge1@cityofhouston.net
COUNCIL MEMBER PETER BROWN SUPPORTS NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS
When a public institution loses the trust of the people it serves, it loses its reason for being. Houston Independent School District (HISD) knows that public schools are about reaching and teaching children first, rather than "economies of scale" and "efficient administration." Particularly at the elementary school level, there is a strong case that "smaller" is better, much better - for pupils, teachers, parents, and their neighborhoods. "Smaller" works for children and neighborhoods - higher attendance rates, less busing, more parental and community involvement, less stress for teachers and administrators, all attributable to a more humane and personalized environment. Larger, impersonal schools, designed for "control," are ready-made for discipline problems, absentee parents, gangs and high drop-out rates. Every school teacher knows this well.
As an At-Large City Council Member and experienced parent, I am deeply concerned about our at-risk neighborhoods and the loss of our kids to boredom, gangs and drugs. I vigorously support the parents and teachers of Wharton Elementary School , and the families who share an emotional bond with their neighborhood school - in some cases a bond that spans three generations. Parents in Clinton Park , Brock Elementary in First Ward, Turner in Third Ward, Dogan in Fifth Ward, and R.L. Stevenson in Cottage Grove should be concerned and opposed to these school closings.
There is another serious concern. The City of Houston , under Mayor White's leadership, is investing tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to restore our ailing neighborhoods. Families are moving back and reclaiming once blighted areas. The sudden closing of a local school seriously compromises these efforts. Neighborhoods are the basic building blocks of the City; neighborhood elementary schools are the bedrock institutions essential to authentic neighborhood life. This is the American way.
The City needs a creative partnership with HISD to revitalize large areas of the City, but thus far, HISD is going at it alone. I urge Superintendent Saavedra and his Board to think outside the box, to work with our Mayor and City Council, to find ways for smaller, traditional neighborhood schools to flourish. To our children, who are our future, we owe this extra measure of civic devotion.
Peter Brown, a third-generation Houstonian, a nationally recognized architect and urban planner, and is serving his second term, in At-Large Position One, on Houston City Council. He welcomes your comments at atlarge1@cityofhouston.net.
For more information or to set up an interview with Council Member Peter Brown, contact Chief of Staff Maverick Welsh at 832-393-3014. ###
Friends of Wharton's response
Council member Brown,
Thank you, thank you for your support and your insightful news release. We are in 100% agreement. It is troubling that HISD would choose to close a performing school under the guise of fiscal restraint. Our city needs more good schools not less. Furthermore, Wharton the building, the greenspace, the playground, and the baseball field are important to the surrounding community. They are a focus of community activity and central to our civic life. To take this away from us would diminish us in ways that go beyond loosing an excellent school and its programs.
We have repeatedly made this argument to Dr. Saavedra and the board of trustees, but it has been ignored. First, they are under the mistaken belief that one can transplant a program from one school to another and that it will thrive regardless of its surroundings. Second, they believe that community is not important, that it is HISD policies and procedures that define a school. We strongly disagree on both points. Community, civic engagement, children, parents, history, buildings, and lastly HISD policies and procedures define a school. A school is a sensitive ecosystem, take one component away and everything falls apart. This is why we believe that Houston City government needs to be a stakeholder in this discussion. You represent the views of the community as a whole, but most importantly you are trusted with the vision of the city's future. We hope that this is a walkable, sustainable, community focused future.
Right now it is crucial that we continue to get the message out. We have already been effective in showing that HISD's community engagement process was flawed. Now we would like to show that the underlying assumptions for HISD's conclusions are similarly flawed. We believe that the demographic data, the Magellan Report, and the assumption that big schools are better than small schools are flawed.
We the people living and walking the community know better. We are in the process of conducting a block by block assessment of the number of children that live in the area zoned to Wharton. We know that we have families with children living here. We have already done some preliminary off the cuff totaling and discovered a significant number of children where HISD says there are none. The data HISD used was too broad in scope and failed to take into account thriving communities in our midst. Finally, if we can show that the school age children population is increasing in areas where HISD says enrolment is decreasing, then we will need City Government to step in and address why HISD is failing to attract these families to HISD schools.
In the meanwhile, please pass the word on to your colleagues. Help us connect with decision makers so that when we are ready to present our finding we will have a receptive audience. All of us know that there are families here. We know that a number of these families are choosing to ignore HISD because HISD is ignoring them. Most importantly, we know that there is a crop of children who are about to reach school age and we want to ensure that HISD is ready for them. These are not the children of apathetic families. These are the children of families who value civic engagement and will fight for their children's needs. What has happened so far, what we have been able accomplish in the short time allotted is just a prelude of what is in store for HISD if they fail to take the needs and desires of the community into account. We want to work with HISD, but most importantly we want to work with the community as a whole to realize our common vision of a vibrant, urban, civically engaged future.
Thank you for your support. We look forward to working with you and your colleagues to realize our common vision for the great city of Houston.
