The Washington Post discussed recently the immense pressure administrators, and staff as well, are under to re-enroll students in their schools in order to keep and maintain resources.

The move is a sign of the tremendous pressure on the District’s traditional public schools. Charter schools, which appeared less than two decades ago, now enroll nearly half the city’s public school students, and they continue to gain popularity. It is a trend that many believe threatens the long-term survival of the traditional school system.

This to me is a sign of predatory enrollment, as I’ve come to call it. This outcome is precisely what the racism of education reform desires: pitting one section of low-income communities against another. This phenomenon was discussed in a subsequent Washington Post article on a charter “unknowingly” opening right across the street from a public school that serves the same niche and a very similar student population.

As charter schools flourish, they often are competing with neighborhood schools for the city’s students, and the two sectors barely communicate about their plans.

I have seen first hand the result of pitting a community against itself. Although largely anecdotal, I observed students talking about other students in a derogatory fashion, staff talking to other staff in a derogatory fashion, and parents speaking of other parents in derogatory terms. These are students and parents from the SAME community, suffering very similar realities from the community colonialism that is education reform.

The District, which I would assume has its interests vested in educating the children in its care, ceded its responsibility to prohibit this from happening. Alternatively, myself and other staff members are going to our schools in the coming days to canvass our communities. This does not mean we get to improve our practices, reflect on our instruction, and do what we must to prepare for what we’ve been trained to do. The District’s responsibility should be getting us the students and families that we need to serve.

Ironically (is it irony?), I feel as if I am volunteering for a political campaign. This is after all entirely political, yet some would have us erroneously convinced that teaching should NOT be about politics. This is exactly what I did when I volunteered for the President’s campaign in 2008. This administration’s education policies, ones that have resulted in predatory enrollment, are why I did not volunteer in 2012 and will never volunteer for Democrats ever again.

The District is behaving as if this is a phenomenon that would have occurred with or without its participation. No, this is the result of laissez-faire economics; that is, passively permitting, and in some instances actively changing legislation, predation in low-income communities of color. This kind of garbage behavior, and it is indeed garbage, does not occur in more affluent communities for a variety of reasons.

I know for a fact that charter schools are not doing their jobs better. We can easily research the evidence; do that yourself and you will see. I agree that if some market forces are allowed to participate in education, which I fundamentally oppose, it is up to the consumer enterprise to advertise and market on its own behalf. They see students and parents as consumers, ultimately. But the public school should not have to market on its own behalf. It is the District’s responsibility to push, and push, and push their schools. It is the District’s responsibility to fund, renovate, and polish its own schools so that there is no way on God’s green Earth a parent would be so foolish as to choose a chartered school for their child.

That’s the position we should be in, with the District’s support. Instead, we in low-income communities, those of us with the courage and the cojones to work in these communities, are left entirely on our own to not only teach, but to make sure we have the “clientage” to teach. That’s not what we signed up to do when becoming professional educators. There are enough responsibilities that we have assumed, including personally subsidizing inadequate budgets. This should not be one for which we have to compensate.

Nevertheless, here we are. It’s funny. People tell me how good I have it because I have ATTO (all that time off).

No, I don’t.