“God bless you,” she says with a toothy smile.
“God bless you,” I say, pulling my warm wool jacket tighter around me.
At the main entrance to City Hall, a small, makeshift stage has been set up on the steps for our rally this morning. A grade-school class runs past, giggling, as if to remind me why I’m here. Several hundred people are already gathered, a good sign. At the back of the crowd I spot J. B. Harrell’s salon hairstyle and black designer topcoat. He looks a bit slimmer than when I last saw him—six months ago, shortly after he and I solved the mystery of how an American Indian boy died in a foster home. From behind he still looks more like a corporate business executive than an investigative reporter. He turns and spots me.
“Sylvia!” He walks toward me with that familiar grin of his that tells me he’s as happy to see me as I am to see him. “So you’re here to support the mayor,” he says, with a glance at the Save Our Public Schools button on my consignment-store wool jacket and the homemade Stop Corporate Greed sign in my hand.
“It’s good to see you, too,” I say, laughing at his dry joke.
“There’s Peter.” He points to a man with a gray ponytail standing in a cluster of American Indian, African American, and Latino parents near the stage. They’re holding up professionally printed signs in support of the mayor’s plan to place our public schools under the management of the CSCH Corporation.
Peter Minter is the Indian Child Welfare Compliance officer with whom I worked when I was a foster care supervisor. We’ve been friends and allies for years, advocating for improvements in the child welfare system, serving together even now on a statewide reform task force. This is the first time we’ve been on opposite sides about anything. He heads our way, waving. I wave back with a pained smile.
“Here to cover the mayor’s press conference this morning?” Peter says to J. B., shaking hands with him like they’re old friends.
“I’m working on a series about charter schools,” J. B. says.
Peter nods. “Well, if it’s anywhere near as good as the one you did about foster care last year, maybe it’ll help.” He turns to me with a sadness in his eyes that I’ve seen many times before. “One Indian kid is graduating high school this year, Sylvia. That’s it. One.”
“I heard,” I say with a shake of my head. “It’s awful.”
There’s a gleam in J. B.’s brown eyes, the one he gets whenever he thinks he’s stumbled onto a lead or an angle for a story, a way to articulate the issue through someone’s personal experience. “Do you support the mayor’s plan?” he asks Peter. “Do you think charter schools are the answer?”
Peter places his hand over his breast, a signal that he’s going to tell a story. J. B. reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small notepad and pen.
“A better education is the way out of poverty for us,” Peter begins. “We get our inspiration from the stories about the Red School House in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Have you heard of it?” He doesn’t wait for J. B.’s answer. “Well, it was founded in 1972 by Indian parents who were concerned about their kids’ low achievement and high dropout rates. It was about more than one school, though. It was about the American Indian movement and community organizing, and it was the roots of the first official charter school in the country, in Minnesota in 1992. The long-term effect on Indian people there shows us that change is possible.”
J. B. looks at me with his eyebrows raised, but I don’t say anything. Peter already knows what I think. I sweat under my arms in spite of the cold weather and unzip my jacket a few inches.
“How can we deny our kids this opportunity, Sylvia? This possible shot at life?”
“I understand,” I say. “But desperate people can be vulnerable to exploitation.”
Peter pushes his glasses up on his nose, looks over the rims at me. “My people know the difference between hope and trust, Sylvia.”
His rebuke is, as always, gentle, but it still stings. I place my hand on my cheek and nod. “Hope is good,” I say. “I understand.” He smiles, and we part. Still friends, I hope.
J. B. turns to me. “Some charter schools involve people with good intentions who want to address the identified racial inequities,” he says.
“And some involve people who are more than willing to exploit the situation,” I shoot back at him.
J. B. smiles like he does when he’s amused by my passion. “It’s complicated,” he says. The divisiveness of the gathered crowd reinforces his words. The majority of people protesting are white. They hold homemade signs saying Protect Our Schools from Corporate Greed, Stop the CSCH Scam, and Keep Our Public Schools Public, while the cluster of nonwhite people standing with Peter Minter near the front hold signs saying the opposite: We Support Charter Schools. CSCH: Our Hope for the Future.
Two women—a diminutive white woman wearing a long, quilted coat that makes her look like a square box and an ample-sized, six-foot-tall black woman in a plain brown coat with a red scarf at the neck—approach the microphone. The crowd cheers and whistles.
The white woman welcomes everyone and introduces herself as the coordinator of the Save Our Schools coalition, which she says is made up of twenty-six organizations opposing the charter school takeover. Then the black woman takes the microphone.
“My name is Gillian Sparks. In the city of North Forks, where I live, everyone goes to public school. Except for kids like my son Scott, who are lucky enough to win the lottery and go to a Victory Academy school. You should have seen how big Scott’s eyes were the first day of kindergarten. His classroom was fresh, painted in bright colors. There were stacks and stacks of educational supplies, all kinds of shiny electronic equipment, even a mini-library filled with brand-new books.”
She pauses, brings a bottle of water to her lips, and takes a drink. The parents gathered with Peter near the front cheer and raise their pro-charter-school signs higher. No wonder they’re excited. Our mayor plans to turn over all the Monrow City schools to CSCH, so there will be no lottery. All their children will get to go to bright, shiny schools like Victory Academy.
“But, on the first day of kindergarten,” Gillian Sparks continues, “my son got detention for not being orderly in the halls.” She furrows her brow and runs her tongue over her upper lip. “I thought that was a bit harsh for a five-year-old, but since self-discipline is at the core of the Victory Academy model, I figured they were making that clear from day one. Then Scott kept getting detention again and again, for one reason or another. He started having emotional meltdowns in the mornings. He complained of stomachaches. He said the teacher made him and three other black boys sit in the back, separate from the rest of the class. He thought they must be contagious, because one by one, the other boys stopped coming to school, and he became afraid he would be the next one to get sick.”
I scan the crowd, see expressions of growing concern and anger, parental arms tightening around the shoulders of their young children. Some people standing with Peter have lowered their signs.
“I went to see what was going on”—the microphone squeals, and Gillian Sparks moves back a few inches—“and it was like a military camp in the school. Children walked the halls like silent robots. No one laughed or even smiled, not even the teachers.”
I glance at J. B., who is busy writing in the little notepad he always carries with him. Fragmented memories from almost forty years ago when I taught third grade in the Bronx flash through my head. The teacher across the hall from my classroom treated his students like army recruits in boot camp.
“The principal