by Mike Warner
While visiting my mother-in-law she gave me an article titled ‘Urban district, suburban community’ from the March 23, 2016 Holland Sentinel newspaper. The article focused on the long-term effects of school choice on the Holland Public Schools.
The lead sentence of the article stated rather straightforwardly, “State policies that promote school choice have fueled a changing demographic landscape for many of Michigan’s public schools.” The article goes on to say that 1,600 students (over 30%) within the Holland Public Schools’ boundaries have used the state’s 20 year Schools of Choice law to attend charter schools or go to neighboring school districts.
What caught my eye was the reporter’s assertion that as a result of school choice, the district “doesn’t represent the town in which it operates” and that Holland has become “a fragmented community that prolongs stereotypes.” The numbers show the demographic differences between the city and school district:
Holland White Hisp./Latino Black Asian
2010 Census 68.9% 22.7% 3.2% 2.9%
Holland Public Schools
2015-16 37.9% 47.1% 7.4% 2.6%
So even though Holland’s
population is about 69% White, only 38% of the students in its schools are White. Similarly, the town is about 23% Hispanic/Latino but its schools have more than twice that proportion. What happened?
Superintendent of Holland Public Schools Brian Davis points directly at school choice as the reason why the district’s population doesn’t reflect the community it serves. Davis recalls 1996 (when Michigan’s Schools of Choice law went into effect) as a time when Holland parents began to look at neighboring Zeeland schools as a choice. Zeeland was 94% White (2000 census). Also, providing school choice was an invitation to start charter schools. Today, 17% of students attending school in Holland go to charter schools.
Davis said some families chose to attend other schools when they noticed an “increasing free and reduced lunch” student population. He stated that “middle to upper-middle class families with disposable income” were the ones with enough time and money to drive their kids to neighboring Zeeland or charter schools. It’s not too hard to read between the lines – because they could afford to white families took advantage of the school choice law and left lower-income Hispanic/Latino and Black families in the Holland schools.
Is it OK that school choice allows parents to create segregated schools? At what point in time do their children learn to live with people who look different from themselves? Is this the kind of America we want?
The change wasn’t in the schools as much as it was the result of illegal immigration and allowing gangs to form and operate within the city of Holland. In the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, the area around Holland Public was mostly a majority of whites with minorities – mostly immigrants from Mexico that sought American citizenship or a green card, allowing them to work for a period of time in the U.S. while awaiting citizenship. I know this because a friend of mine married a “green card” holder.
Once the Bush, and particularly the Obama administration, made it known they would not persecute and deport illegals, the trouble started to escalate. More drugs came into the area and the white population in the area that could afford it sought refuge in the suburbs of Holland or moved completely elsewhere. Gangs activity was hot and heavy for some time in Holland until the crackdown last year, arresting many of the gang members.
I love how school administrators and pundits alike point to racism and school choice, when it is a flight from violence, shootings, rapes, house break-ins, beatings, etc. You name it, Holland has seen the crime statistics shoot up – sleepy little Holland is long gone as is Grand Rapids. If those casting aspersions upon those leaving Holland or sending their children to other schools, you move there close to Holland High and experience what has happened and continues to this day. You wouldn’t put up with it very long.
Supt. Brian Davis knows this, but still continues to blame “school choice” for losing students, it is the symptom, not the cause, of student flight from Holland. Until city and law officials clean up the mess and crack down on the drugs and gangs more, expect more flight from the city of Holland.
Actions have consequences, and the federal and state turns its proverbial head to the plight of our cities and citizens mired in criminal activity through no fault of their own.