When I first read about a 12 year old African American student being sent home from Teleos Preparatory Academy because his hair was braided, I dismissed it as little more than a dress code, or hair code, story.
Teleos charter is part of the Great Hearts charter chain which has 23 schools in the greater Phoenix area. The schools say what clothing and hair styles are acceptable in their handbook, and if students violate the rules, they’re sent home. At Great Hearts, boys aren’t allowed to have shaved heads, Mohawks, rat’s tails, pony tails, or braids. They also can’t have long hair or dye their hair in non-natural colors.
Yawn. Next education story, please?
As the story developed, I realized I was suffering from a case of white blindness. All the other prohibited hair styles are societal statements or personal fashion choices, and reasonable people can debate whether or not they’re appropriate in a school setting. But hair braids are part of an African American cultural tradition, and to deny that hair style is to disrespect the traditions and culture of a group of people who have suffered disrespect and far worse since they set foot on this continent. So this is more than a generic dress code issue. Hair braids for an African American male are a different matter entirely from the other prohibited choices.
After first defending the school’s actions to the press, the superintendent of Arizona’s Great Hearts charters reversed course and issued a statement saying the student is welcome at the school, braids and all. “This event has triggered an internal review,” the statement said, “to determine what changes may be needed to ensure this policy is sensitive to the cultural diversity we are proud to have in our academies.”
Great Hearts deserves credit for doing the right thing in this case. But there’s more to the Great Hearts story which puts this example of racial insensitivity in perspective.
Much like the BASIS charter school chain, Great Hearts charters generally have a rigorous academic curriculum and cater to high achieving students. In most of their Phoenix-area schools, the vast majority of the students are Anglo and Asian. The one exception is Teleos Preparatory Academy where the student’s hair braids became a problem. Teleos is 6 percent Anglo and 1 percent Asian. Most of the other students are African American and Hispanic.
Schools with predominantly Anglo and Asian students aren’t unusual, nor are schools with predominantly African American and Hispanic students. But the Great Hearts idea of diversity makes this a deliberate choice. The charter chain believes its schools should be separate but . . . I don’t want to say “separate but equal,” since the achievement scores for Teleos are significantly lower than those of its other schools. Let’s just say Great Hearts believes in separate schools for different ethnic and economic groups. The proof comes from its unsuccessful attempt to open a school in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2012.
In Nashville, charter schools are supposed to serve lower income students. Great Hearts wanted to open a school in an affluent neighborhood. Nashville refused Great Heart’s application. Even in the face of a threat from the state government to withhold $3.4 million from the school district if it refused Great Hearts, Nashville stood its ground.
Great Hearts board President Jay Heiler said the problem was, Nashville has a different definition of “diversity” than the charter school chain.
“We have schools that land all over the map [in Phoenix],” Heiler says. “Some would be serving very middle-class folks by and large, we have one inner-city school that serves ethnic minority kids, and we have another one that would open that would be similar to that. In Tennessee it seems like there was more of a focus of bringing diversity into each school, whereas here we try to serve a diversity of communities.”
When charters open new schools, they can locate them where they want. Schools can be built within walking or easy driving distance of various neigborhoods with a diverse ethnic and economic mix. But that’s not the Great Hearts way. The chain has a consciously segregationist view of diversity. So long as differing communities are served in different locations, Great Hearts says its school are diverse.
I plead guilty to white blindness when I first read about a student being removed from school because of his hair braids, but it was unintentional blindness. Given Great Heart’s history, it looks like the charter chain’s cluelessness in racial matters is more intentional. True, the chain corrected the hair braid situation, but only after defending the policy and seeing that the story wasn’t going away. Its “diversity” policy of setting up separate schools for different racial and economic groups indicates the chain still has a lot to learn.
This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2018.
Huh? This doesn’t even make sense. So any charter school that opens up any school in a predominantly white neighborhood (even though they have lots of schools in various other neighborhoods) is somehow not diverse?
This (and the braids issue) is why parents are abandoning public schools in droves.
I would point out that males with long hair, often worn in a ponytail, is a cultural tradition among many native peoples as well.
And I would also point out that dress (and hair) codes in general are all about enforcing conformity with cultural norms–but only certain ones that have been established and are reinforced by the dominant white Christian culture in our society.
Too often in our schools, any expression of individuality is instantly recognized as a threat to that regime of enforced conformity, and punished accordingly.
I mean, really, WTF does it matter what color your hair is? And, in reality, coloring your hair is fine as long as you’re bleaching it blonde, but if you add a little purple you’re all of a sudden a threat to society?? It’s truly ridiculous and would be laughable, if it weren’t for the pernicious effects such cultural oppression has on our youth.
I do think reversing the decision was right, but hair braids as “part of an African American cultural tradition” is true for women, but only a recent fashion statement for men. They’re every bit as much of a trend as shaved heads, Mohawks, rats tails, pony tails, or unnatural hair dyes. The school has a right to a dress or hair code, but it should be based on cleanliness or distraction. Students should be allowed a right to argue against any dress code.
I wish the idea of “girls were expected to wear dresses or skirts” – not even culottes – in Tucson Public Schools before the 1970s had some justification when I was a kid. The expense & discomfort of special school clothes for girls was the worst sexism I remember in my entire life (67 years).
Gosh, what David Safier’s policy preferences actually are can be so confusing sometimes.
Is the below a fair summary of conclusions we can draw from this blog piece?
***It is wrong to allow charters to locate within neighborhoods serving similar populations, not between neighborhoods serving different populations, and it is wrong for parents to elect to have their children attend a charter school near them that does not integrate people of different economic levels and races. If that’s what charter planners and charter parents want, they don’t know children’s best interests and the state should block their ability to make their own choices.***
Did I get that right? If so, I’m not sure I’m clear on ALL the implications of this. Within and between our public school districts, we find some of the same failures of integration and achievement David Safier identifies in the “Great Hearts” charter chain. (Within TUSD, compare and contrast the SES, racial composition and test scores of Fruchthendler, Sam Hughes, Sabino, and UHS with those of TUSD schools on the South and West sides of Tucson, including the recently de-magnetized “magnets.” Now complicate the problem and multiply the inequities by comparing District 16 to District 1, or District 13 to District 12.)
So which does David Safier favor?
A) It is fine to allow parents to buy a home in the neighborhood of a school that suits their child’s needs and enroll their child in that school, whether or not that school is integrated by race and SES, as long as that neighborhood school is not a charter, but is part of a public school district. Before the TUSD Board majority changed to a majority not affiliated with Safier’s political party, it almost seemed like he might be of that opinion, and might think that TUSD should not be held accountable for integrating:
https://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2015/12/18/troubling-news-about-desegregation-out-of-new-york
But it could be that in light of the changed Board majority, David has now become more optimistic about the prospects for public districts to effectively integrate (or at least more optimistic that beating the INTEGRATION drum will not cause collateral PR damage for a favored Board majority that is trying to downplay the need for integration). He may now favor:
B) (OLD SCHOOL INTEGRATION STYLE) Parents should be forced by central administrative planners within large “unified” public school districts to bus their children long distances to schools where the authorities determine the correct racial / SES balance has been achieved. (Parents in more uniformly affluent and racially homogeneous districts get a “Pass” on this.)
OR
C) (NEW “INTEGRATION LITE” STYLE) Within and between public school districts, there should be voluntary integration through choice incentives and magnet programs, but choice incentives and magnets should somehow be centrally managed to effectively achieve integration.
Whichever policy preference David has now in light of the changed TUSD Board majority, it would seem that one or the other would be advisable:
A) Answer the question of why we should be faulting charters for where their planners choose to locate them and whether the parents who elect to enroll in them achieve voluntary self-integration by race and SES when it’s clear that central administrative planners and parents in our local public school districts (the largest of which has, ironically, been under a deseg order and receiving millions of dollars of deseg supplements for decades) have not found it possible to integrate (via central planners) or self-integrate (via incentivized parent choice).
OR
B) For every piece highlighting charters’ failures to integrate, write a companion piece highlighting similar failures within and between public districts.
Oh for the good old days, before chart schools, diversity, and African-American. The public schools were always underfunded and continually running bond issues, which the farmers hated. Diversity? What’s diversity? One either went to the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church, and there were a few minnow munchers that attended the Catholic Church—fish every Friday. And then there were the few colored kids, about four out of 27 in my class, who lived on Barnett Ridge; they didn’t go on the annual junior and senior trips to Washington DC, because there was no place, like hotels, for colored folks to stay. However some things have not changed all that much, the colored guys, now identified as African-Americans, were the stars on our HS basketball team. Note: neither the white or the colored guys braided their hair, and there wasn’t much discussion about culture or ethnicity or diversity or equal rights. There was no discrimination when it came to corporal punishment. I, the class president, got my last boarding when I was a senior, one lick for every day I was late to study hall, applied by Wild Bill Eldridge with his might swing, in the back of the study hall. The good old days.
When I was in junior high in 1970 (“middle school,” for those much younger than I am), letting girls wear pants to school was against the dress code. (No, really.) During the winter, a couple of girls wore jeans to school because they lived 50 miles from the school (in the area north of Phoenix, a sprawling school district that, in those days, started at Phoenix’s northern border). The area where they lived was higher in elevation than our northern Phoenix school, and during the short winter days, they both boarded the bus and returned home on the bus when it was dark. In short, it was COLD. Nevertheless, they were sent home. This happened on a Monday.
The next day, a few of these girls’ friends wore pants to school as well, and they were sent home as well. On Wednesday and Thursday, as more girls and their parents learned of the story, more and more girls wore pants, and they were sent home.
On Friday, nearly 150 girls – almost all of the female population of the school – were lined up to go to see the principal because they were wearing pants. Part way through all the principal’s office visits, the district superintendent called and said he was rescinding the “no pants” rule.
This is a little advice to any kids going to school in modern times, and who see individuals being unfairly singled out due to fashion choices that do not disrupt the classroom in any way. Non-violent civil disobedience WORKS.