Chanae

Yes. I can actually describe the disparities between public and private school. And then also Out East and Out West. I like to let people know and understand, because I've experienced all of them. So as a parent, I actually pulled my children out of public school. I pulled two of them out and put them in private school. And the reason that I did that is because we moved here from another state. So my kids never had been educated here. And it was not a good transition for them. So they left a school system where them actually being Black was important, and it was viewed as an actual good thing. They were told that the world was theirs. They learned Black history and they had that sense of self. I remember my son telling me, he was like, "Boy, I am so glad I did not learn Black history here." He said, "Because this is the Whitest Black history lesson I've ever had." And I wanted him to actually explain that. And for example, they could talk about Reconstruction, but the Black people who actually impacted Reconstruction are omitted from the conversation. So you hear about Reconstruction, you hear about Andrew Johnson, so you always hear about, basically, the great White savior and what they did in Reconstruction. Whereas, where he came from, we know that Black history is American history. So there's not anything that separate it. So there's a great sense of pride in who you are. So that was number one. Number two, the school system was actually very advanced. Number one in technology. So in middle school, each child actually had a laptop they were issued, so you could either use your own laptop and then they would put the software on there, or they would issue a laptop by the school to make sure that everyone was successful. There was not high-stakes testing there, as well. So therefore, children could actually be who they are, and they could actually focus on their strengths and not just actually taking a test. Once we got here, my children who are fully—I had a son who was an honors student and actually he only needed three credits to graduate, which was very interesting because the school system thought that was so shocking. And when he got here, he was actually—I couldn't figure out why his senior year, he kinda lost that emphasis on education and knowing what he wanted to do. Literally I was spending—up to three or four o'clock in the morning with him watching him do assignments that he already knew how to do, because he doesn't project getting here. Finally, after he graduated, he shared with me that when he arrived, they told him he didn't have to do anything to get his diploma. It was made very clear that all he had to do was show up to class, and if he showed up to class, he would graduate. So although I had instilled in him the importance of the hard work and not just getting the piece of paper, but how you're getting it—he was like, "Mom, I'm a teenager. So I'm gonna take the easy route out, of course." So they did things—like, he was in a math class that was more work than he wanted to do, so they moved him out of the math class without my permission. Actually, without my knowledge. I found out later on. So they did things just enough for him to be able to get by to get the piece of paper. Which was frustrating as a mom. With my second son, he actually does have learning disabilities, but he does exceptionally well. He always has. We would show up to meetings. I remember one meeting, it stood out. The guidance counselor. Number one, it was the second time we had met. And she was like, "Oh, I don't think we've met." It was frustrating for me, because you have a file folder in front of you, so why would you not look at the file folder and say, "Okay, we have met." Refresh yourself on what we discussed so me and my son would seem important to you. And then in the meeting, she kept saying, "Oh my gosh, it's so amazing. He's on track to graduate. He has enough credits to be there." So it wasn't that my son had done anything exceptional. To her, because the expectation was that children that looked like him, or children with disabilities don't do well—she had to keep saying over and over that it was so shocking that he was actually on track to graduate, which is very frustrating as a parent. Even in that meeting, one of the options that we wanted was dual enrollment, in order to be able to do their construction course. And all she kept saying is, "Well, we don't need to do that, because they're gonna look at the testing." So it didn't matter all of the diligence and hard work, it didn't matter that he has A's and B's, it didn't matter that he'd overcome everything. He should be up for that. Her thing was, no, I had to tell her, "When you do your part, we'll do our part. And then we'll take care of it from there." And so he actually ended up testing very well, much better than any of us anticipated. So he does actually attend Buchholz, where he does a few classes there, and then he does the actual dual enrollment. But it was an opportunity in Georgia that's normal. You give your children all opportunities. For here, it was constantly, we want to take those opportunities and tell you what your child can't do instead of what they can do. Even with my daughter, so even in middle school. I have one who's very, very bright. Matter of fact, I went and got her tested, because she can't pass the FSA. So she's always at a level one or a level two. But she has a hundred and twenty-nine IQ, which means she's overly bright. With the matter of tests that we actually got, it's just the test anxiety because of the pressure they put on here. My other daughter, when we first got here, she had no FSA prep. She got a four and a five, that previous year. The following year, she only got two threes and then she got a five in physics. And it was because of anxiety. She didn't sleep any night before the test. Although I was a mom who didn't place that pressure, she was told by teachers that the Black kids here don't do well, and if you don't do well, you can't go into magnet programs. You can't do this. So she was told all the things she wouldn't be able to do. Her being so very serious-minded—since she's been seven she decided she was gonna be an attorney; she was gonna go to Stanford or Yale for law school. So for someone to tell her all the things she couldn't do if she didn't do well on this test, it actually became very counterproductive for her. So I pulled them out, and I placed them in private school. And people said, "Oh, things are better just because it's private school." But I want people to understand, it's not the private school, it's the culture of the private school. Which, now I'm paying for the exact same culture that I got in public school at another state. So the culture is that children can do whatever it is they set out to do. They may need to have more hard work that has to be done. They may have to get more resources. They may have to actually engage with teachers more, in order to be more successful. But in private school, teachers work collaboratively. And even in the school system in Georgia, there was a collaboration. Teachers and parents worked together to ensure that children are on board together. Here, that's not the case. So I'm a very proactive parent. I'm the person who call meetings very proactively to let them know what type of parent I am. What can I do in order to help you? And what I realized is, I was shut out of everything. So in Georgia, they have apps that parents can communicate and text back and forth with teachers. There the teachers actually update very regularly. And the same thing is in private school. They use what's called Canvas. So typically, many of the assignments that are submitted are graded immediately. So therefore, there's a good idea of what my child is actually doing. Here, I stopped checking the portal because I was in panic mode. Because I would check it and it would look like they didn't turn in assignments, when the teacher hadn't updated the portal for three or four weeks. And what they would do is, because they hadn't graded anything, they would grade it, like, two or three days before the grades were actually due. So if there was an assignment they could do better on or an assignment they could actually go back and do some more work on, that opportunity was not there because you wouldn't know that the assignment—either was not turned in, was missing, or something happened—to grades were already due, so there was nothing you could actually do to be able to fix that. I would actually find myself asking teachers, "Hey, if this is going on, why don't you call me?" And I was told, "Well, teachers don't have time to call parents." Well, how can I help you to help my child if you're feeling you don't have to communicate with me? Or you keep saying "check the portal," but when I check the portal, nothing's updated on the portal. I just could not fathom or understand, how is it that teachers here believe that parents shouldn't have to communicate with teachers and vice versa. But in the same breath, you said, "Well, it's the parents' fault." Well, I'm a parent who can speak very clearly and state that I do everything I can for my children to have what they need, and to communicate. "Well, it's your child's responsibility to tell you that." Well, children are children. And, I mean, that's what they are. They forget, they get distracted. So, therefore that's the reason they have parents. If kids knew everything and had it all figured out, they wouldn't need parents. So, for me it's very frustrating to say, "Well, it's the parent's fault." But then you shut the parents out of the decision-making, and then you blame me or then you say, "Okay, well you should raise your children better," when that's typically not the actual case. And then when I look at the disparities here—as I live in West Gainesville, so my kids are zoned to the "best schools" in Gainesville. I remember talking to them. There was a bunch of money wasted at my children's school. Even when I started to speak up about the actual disparities, the assumption is that I'm an angry East Gainesville parent. And I always ask people, "What about me tells you that I live in East Gainesville?" And when I ask people that question, they kind of look and of course they get confused. They don't know how to answer that particular question. I say, "Well, I'll answer the question for you. The only thing about me that says I'm an East Gainesville parent is the color of my skin." I said, "Because I make the same amount of money as West Gainesville parents, we actually live in West Gainesville." So when I speak to you about a disparity, I didn't make it up and assume that the children in West Gainesville get these things. I live it. And so that became very frustrating. But what I realized is, my kids have a lot more resources just because there's a lot more money, just because—even with parents. I have a child now that lives with me, who's my goddaughter, who's in elementary school. We just did a fundraiser and raised $25,000. Many of the parents in East Gainesville are literally just trying to survive. So they can't—for them five dollars might mean the difference between getting to and from work. So where that might not seem like a lot of money to me over in West Gainesville, it's a lot of money to the parents over here. So, therefore, they might not have the resources available in order to do fundraisers that are beneficial. And so my daughter, in this particular school with my goddaughter, she's struggling with reading. She actually has free tutoring that's built in that's twice a week. Whereas there's many schools in East Gainesville that can't offer the same thing, because they don't have additional funds. They don't have those particular resources. One of the frustrations when I talk about the disparities is, you actually have the data that's being presented before you, where Black children are in the lowest twenty-fifth percentile in this county, in this state. And then White students in the exact same school are in the highest twenty-fifth percentile. When you're looking at racial disparities in a school, everybody's in the same school. They should be getting the same thing. Why are we not actually looking at those particular disparities? When I look at people look at the disparities, the blame is, "Oh, it was because they're poor." I used an example with one of my daughters when she got her report card. She got a C in a class. When I called a meeting and asked the teacher, why did she get a C in her class, the teacher said, "Well, oh. She said she didn't have access to a computer." I don't even know if it was a computer or internet. But it wasn't true. So now I ask the teacher, "Well, why didn't you call me when she stated that?" And the teacher couldn't answer. And I asked her again. And I was actually in a meeting with all of the teachers, and no one could answer that question. And I stated to them, "Well, let me answer that question for you. The reason I asked, why didn't you call me, is because if you had taken the time to call me, you would have realized that my daughter was not telling the truth. And perhaps she just didn't wanna do those assignments." I said, "But better yet, if I was a parent who didn't have access to a resource, that's at a time you could've touched base with me and said, "Hey Mom, your child says that you don't have this particular resource. These are the ways that we can help you. You can go to the public library. If you can get them here in the morning, they can come to my classroom." You might even say, "Well, they can come to my classroom during lunch or staying after school." I said, "So, to me it's not poverty being the issue when it pertains to a lot of the disparities, it's your response to what you view as actual poverty." I said, "And the fact that you're not finding ways to be creative to get kids the resources they need to be successful in their classroom, you're always gonna see those particular disparities." Well, when you say that to parents or to other teachers, or to administration here, it's met on deaf ears. When I look at my children being in private school, my other daughter who is very intelligent, who is in the ninety-fifth percentile in the nation—in private school, they realized that she doesn't like to read out loud. So what they did in response to that is the teachers take her to the learning specialist. And the learning specialist gave her just a little magnifier that has a little yellow slip in it. Something that—so minor—that's not about money, but because the teacher is actually paying attention to the student and just not assuming that the student can't do it, they've given her a resource to help her to be even more successful. And those are the things that are missing in this particular school system. I've learned being a parent that actually also advocates for other students, there's lots of options that are on the table that the schools won't even give to parents, because teachers don't want to do the work. So even this year, I've been to four different school meetings, with parents whose children are in third grade. They look like they might not pass the actual FSA. Well, one of the options available is what's called a portfolio. And what a portfolio is, they go through the work that they're doing each year, each term, in order to get through the standards. As when their child actually meets that particular standard, they're able to take that part and put it into a file folder. So it is a lot more work for teachers. And what I realized is, every parent that I've asked if they've been given that particular resource—not one has been given that resource. And they'll give excuses, but my point is, why do we wait until the eleventh hour to say, "Okay, we're gonna give this option." If it's that tedious, we should start early. And that way, if you've already started, if they happen to pass the test, then okay. They're fine, we're covered. If they don't pass the test, and then go to summer school, and then they pass them in summer school, we're still covered because we've been doing the portfolio. But if they go to summer school, they don't pass the test in summer school, at least the portfolio is there. You have a lot of children that are being retained that don't have to be retained, with parents that are actually fully engaged, trying to do what they can for their students. And we had a mom, that's what happened to her son. He almost did not pass because the teacher gave him—she went to all the meetings, she listened to everything that the teacher actually stated. But they didn't give her each option. So her son ended up not passing the actual FSA, and then ended up not passing over in summer school. So one of the things that I asked the staff was, "Well, why wasn't she given any of these options?" And nobody could answer that question. They didn't even tell her that her son was risking not passing. So, when you actually look at all the criteria, the teacher told us she didn't have anything to worry about. But the benchmarks they look at to determine if a child is going to pass, he never met the benchmark at one time. So how is it that you thought he was gonna pass the actual test if he'd never passed an actual benchmark? And I think a lot of the disparities here are—a lot of parents just don't know. And then administration and teachers are not giving them the tools for them to be successful. What they're viewing parents as is opposition. So, parents actually asking questions is viewed as the enemy, instead of a person that's really there just trying to advocate for their students. When you talk to parents about how they're mistreated when they're talked to by teachers, how teachers call them and are very aggressive at times, that's very off-putting to a lot of parents. And don't get me wrong, I understand that there's a lot of parents that might not show up for reasons, but if we get to the root of why parents are not showing up, and why they're not doing their part to assist parents in that, then you empower a parent. And then you can make them be accountable in assisting their child. But what's happening is a lot of parents feel that their kids might be able to do more, and the school is telling them, "No. Let's just put them in this class. Let's just get them through. Let's just not worry about that." And then we keep stating, "Well, why are we having these disparities?" And it's the manner—it's like a culture of low expectations for minority students. So when you have that culture of low expectations, you gonna get—it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's what you're gonna get out. And that's what I've viewed and I actually see. And parents? That's what they feel. They feel like I've just taken my hands off of it. They're not listening to me. They're not calling me. They're excluding me. But then they'll want me to show up when they want me to show up. You know, also, too, you're disregarding—I've talked to moms who've actually went to go have meetings. They've caught two busses, been on the bus for three hours to get there, and then half the teachers refuse to actually show up. How is it that a child can be successful with those particular things? And then when I talk to other parents in West Gainesville schools, we don't have those issues. When I talk to other parents who are White, they're in shock. Like, "That doesn't happen. You're entitled to this." Well, it's happening all the time and those things are actually being disregarded. So now we have an educational system that's actually in crisis. And everybody's like, "Well, what do we do about it?" Well, number one, you start with the parents and the students. Because they're the biggest stakeholders, but they're the stakeholders that are being excluded from the conversation.

Why is education important?

How did you feel when you heard the news about Brayden Wade, the local three-year-old who was struck by his teacher?

So I wanna be clear. Number one, I was—immense anger. And frustration. But my anger and frustration is just not about Brayden Wade. That actually is what happens in this particular school system district. My son, who is nineteen years old, was in Head Start for a very brief moment when we lived in Gainesville and it was here. He actually had a Head Start teacher that left, and after she left they told us how she was calling the kids dumb and stupid. And different things like this. This is not new. When I saw what happened to Brayden Wade, when you look at the teacher's actually behavior, it's not like she hit him those five times and she looked around because there was remorse. Or she felt like she would be in trouble for her behavior. It was normal. And I want people to realize that it's normal. My other thing I want parents and everybody to understand, me as a mom who's an educated mom and who's an involved mom, has always gotten mistreated by this district. So if you're able to mistreat me, someone who can actually—who is an advocate. Who actually is very positive and who makes my children be accountable, how are you treating parents who don't have education? Parents who don't know. Parents who don't have means. Parents who don't even know how to communicate in the same manner that I do because they communicate very differently. So if you're beating down parents, you can't make me believe that you're treating their students any better. If your belief system is that parents are to blame for everything that's wrong here, then that means it's trickling down to their students. You've already written them off before they ever got started. And so that's the reason there was so much anger from me. I want people to understand this. I was actually mistreated by school board elected officials and their family members, and it was actually disregarded. And it was done very openly. And it was done very publicly. So if you have that particular culture where the actual elected officials can bully parents, and disregard parents that look like me, you're absolutely abusing and mistreating children. There are other stories that came about once this story came up, where a mom says her child was spit on by a teacher, and it was disregarded and stated that it was an accident. One of the elected school board officials, his daughter was moved from one school, as a teacher, to another school because it was reported that she was actually hitting on and abusing children. Currently, right now, at Howard Bishop Middle School, the assistant principal is being mistreated because she reported how a teacher slaps kids on the back of the neck. And when she reported that to our—I don't even know what the title is for the equity director—instead of the equity director being equitable as it pertains to our children, she went and reported to other district officials so now they're actually picking on that. And that also what goes on in this district. There's a lots of people that work in this district that are not happy with what's going on and want to make a true difference, but there's so much retaliation and there's so much of the good ol' boy system that needs to be dismantled—that they're not able to speak up like they'd like to. Because that's how they take care of their own families, and we have to understand that. Even with this particular incident, there was a person who was fired because she had brought it to their attention—that this same teacher, that actually hit Brayden Wade, was actually hitting and mistreating other students. So instead of addressing it at that time, they fired the person, basically, who was the whistleblower. And so that actually occurred, to only find out that the reason this teacher wasn't arrested is because the superintendent made the call to say, "Don't arrest her." And to actually suspend her with pay. Well, there's many other incidences. There's a teacher at Newberry High School that this actually happened. It happened here, in even other schools. But they do this because they might be able to terminate that particular teacher from this district, but they'll give them a letter of recommendation to actually go somewhere else. And then in this district, we see—we had the principal over at Eastside. He admitted to misappropriating funds, which is basically stealing money. And instead of terminating him, they gave him a six-figure salary, so they gave him a promotion. We have the principal that was actually over at Buchholz—which I actually liked him, he was my son's principal. I was very surprised. But he has a proven track record of sexual harassing students, and instead of terminating him, you wanted to give him another promotion in another department where he wasn't working with students. So when you have those particular things going on, how am I supposed to believe that you're trying to protect any student, for that matter? But also students that have less means, because those are the ones who are less prone to fight back or to stand up for anything.

Okay. So, for me, the purpose for me participating in the documentary is not just because there's so much change that needs to happen. But I guess this is my rally, or my call, to people that are watching this documentary. We all have to get involved. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link. So anybody that chooses not to be an active participant in change, that means they're upholding the system as it is, and the manner in which it's maintained. I'm asking everyone. This is not about who is the most educated, this is not about who has the most power. This is not about who wants to be known for what actions getting done. This is just about people and everybody that wants to see a better Gainesville. And the only way that we can have a better Gainesville is, we come together as a group and as a unit, in order to be about the change that we actually want to see. Getting involved doesn't mean that you have to give up all of your time. It might be thirty minutes out of your day that you're giving up. It might be texting or just calling a friend and saying, "Hey, can you show up in my place, because I cannot." We have to start to look at change and realize that we have to be the change that we want to see, so change actually starts with us.