Essay for Michael and Marc to Get into Private School

Both of our boys work hard at school, but their schools aren’t working for them.  

Our older son, Jonathan, sang “I wanna go to MIT” from the time he could toddle.  Math and Science have always been his strengths.  He will thrive at MIT someday, like the other students welcomed there, if and only if, he has the best teachers, intellectual stimulation and inspiration like the other kids do. 

But there’s none of that in Montgomery County – none - where faculty disappear like shadows, without warning or subs, leaving my smart boy with two or three empty classes, everyday, which his school fills with video games.

What? 

Our younger son, Marc, is Black, and came to us temporarily, through the Foster Care program.  But temporary became forever in a heartbeat, because we all fell in love immediately with this joyous little boy with hope in his eyes.

He’s done well at school so far, loving math and making friends in the split second it takes to smile.  But trying to learn in a crime-filled ‘hood, where teachers spend most of the day on discipline and collecting weapons, he could end up right back where his abusive, drug-addicted, biological family abandoned him as an infant, at the corner of nothin’ and nowhere.

My husband and I thought it would be enlightening for our children to grow up in a mixed neighborhood.  But now, outside their seedy schools, the first things my kids see every morning are squad cars, with their engines running, waiting for gunfire, and yet another child’s murder.     

Our one-hundred-and ten-year-old house on Shepherd Street is all we can afford and is this close to falling down.  When it’s freezing in the winter, we stuff socks around the gaps in our windowpanes.

From day one of our professional lives, my husband and I have chosen to make a difference by working for non-profits instead of Wall Street.  We like to think we’re leaving positive footprints and a good example for our children.  But now, Wall Street has private school money.  And we’re relegated to the sad truth there are no opportunities for our promising, middle-class kids. 

This is not my America.  Is it yours?