Education: Mother’s Rights Threatened by Government
January 31, 2011
by Karen
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Here is one major reason why parents should liberate our schools from government and union control: when organizations instead of individuals control our school systems, the organization will impose its own biases, prejudices, and values upon the students. Because the responsibility of education often falls to the mother, women become the main targets and have their rights violated when the controlling organization does not approve of their decisions.
Kelley Williams-Bolar was a single mother in Ohio with two teenage daughters. She feared for her children’s safety, so she enrolled them in a safer school district. Although they lived in Akron, they attended school in Copley Township. She cared deeply about education, which was why she sent her daughters to schools with excellent ratings and why she attended college to become a teacher.
Violence filled the Akron schools and the house projects where she and her daughters lived. However, the Copley school district hired a private investigator who followed her children and who learned that her daughters were not residents of the district. The organization admitted to making and example of her and accused her of grand theft worth $30,500. She was sent to jail for ten days, and a felony record destroyed her opportunity to become a teacher.
Racism becomes disguised as promoting racial diversity. Such was the case in Berkeley High School. Berkeley High eliminated its advanced science programs because the majority of African-Americans and Latinos were simply not interested in science. Although the students enrolled in advanced science courses were 17% African-American and 15% Latino, Berkeley High decided that “the science labs were largely for white students.” Removing the science programs also eliminated the educational opportunities many students desired including the African-American and Latino student population.
Brenda Voydatch is a single mother like Kelley Williams-Bolar. Also like Kelley Williams-Bolar, Brenda Voydatch gave active attention to her daughter’s education. Instead of selecting a public school, she chose to home school her daughter. Many mothers home school their children for a variety of reasons – to provide history on racial or cultural heritage, to add other courses, to provide a more conducive atmosphere, and also to provide a religious education.
When the government learned that Brenda Voydatch home schooled her daughter, the government forcibly took the girl and placed her in a public school. This violated her right as a parent. There is a twist in the story, however. Her ex-husband got the government involved in the matter. Brenda Voydatch apparently had main custody of her daughter, and he could not tolerate his ex-wife exercising her rights. The sexist action of her ex-husband can endanger the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Not to mention Public schools tell children they are not good enough if the children come from impoverished neighborhoods.
I understand the need for public education but using this format to teach children their place which is what happens to many times. Is not productive.
VERY interesting article, Karen! As a teacher who worked in low-income neighborhoods and schools, I know a lot about the inequity in poor schools. It is heart wrenching and unfair. Who can blame Williams-Bolar for simply wanting to do the best for her children? I would have done the SAME. I am also horrified that the mother’s teaching license was revoked for simply wanting her children to get a proper education. It’s sadly ironic.
I once worked for an extremely violent and incompetent school for high schoolers. I would not send my own daughter to such a school and I would do anything to keep her out of such a school. So when we say to poor parents, you must send your children to these violent, incompetent schools I consider this a civil rights violation.
How to stop this cycle of inequity,incompetence and violence in our poor schools? This is an issue for women and an issue for our children. And unfortunately, both democrats and republicans have not been providing basic rights to poor children in terms of education.
That’s really awful. I hope Kelley Williams-Bolar continues to fight.
In my experience the best public education is community controlled, where parents and the community are involved and have some influence over what goes on. The people own their school. The worst schools are those you are mandated to go to, people in the community feel like they have no choice, no influence over what goes on, so they aren’t involved. Kids are forced to go there because it’s their district, because parents work and don’t feel like they have choices, etc. There’s no sense of community ownership.
Yttik,
I agree, community involvement is very important. But in the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar, another community had better schooling while her community had a poor school. Why some communities have poor schooling is very complicated and how to get out of this cycle is very complicated. I’m not sure what the answers are, but I do believe accountability (at the local or state level) as well as community involvement (as you stated) may be the key.
Awesome. Thank you, Karen, for shining a bright light on these cases. Education is our next big Civil Rights issue. Most schools budgets are tied to property taxes and that model has got to go. It only perpetuates a system of unfair privilege and creates an unequal education system. What that Ohio school district did is no different than throwing a poor beggar in debtors prison circa England 1750. It’s ridiculous!
I went to a poor school district and I feel I got a better education then my kids attending their school. The truth is my kids were treated differently NOT based on race but based on where they live. Most of the teachers are wonderful teachers but its the few rotten ones who insult children or have preconceived ideas about ghetto/poor children based solely on what they believe these children are.
This sets up distrust with not only the t teachers but also education as a whole.
Bad schools are one more thing (like sexist Corporate Media)that can’t be rehabbed, there are too many people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. It is best to drive them out of business with a voucher system. I opted out of public schools and paid tuition at Catholic school for my kids except I did send my extremely resilient son to public High School when I grew tired of mediating his free thinking religion class essays. It was a huge mistake. I spent an unbelievable amount of time advocating for him and that was only possible because I had a flexible job. Home Schooling is a good alternative for some people although I don’t think my kids would have lived through the experience. Washington state has laws that support home schooling and I think that is important. I am not sure if they were written by the Legislature or by Peoples Initiative. The kids are tested yearly and if they pass I doubt a non custodial parent would have grounds for complaint.
“What that Ohio school district did is no different than throwing a poor beggar in debtors prison circa England 1750. It’s ridiculous!”
Well said, Anna Belle.
“Bad schools are one more thing (like sexist Corporate Media)that can’t be rehabbed, there are too many people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.”
Bes, I hope they can be rehabbed but I do agree with your last point in regard to “vested interests”. We forget that the school systems and unions employ a great deal of people and a large number of them are not teachers. There are many, many jobs that are being watched out for here and I have observed, more effort has been put into job maintenance and creation versus fighting for the welfare of our children and their families. Believe me when I say administration in the school where I taught did not even take basic steps to protect the safety of my students (or the teachers) but instead sought to save their own bottoms as well as constantly reward their friends/ colleagues in a corrupt system filled with nepotism. In this school, one teacher was physically assaulted by a student and developed a blood clot as a result. One teacher was sexually assaulted and I was sexually threatened by students more times than I can count. Three years before I came to this school, one teacher was raped by a student. This is only what happened to the teachers. What the students had to endure from each other was far worse. How can learning occur in this sort of environment?
I am not sure how I feel about the voucher system as I haven’t read enough about it. But I will say that I have taught poor mothers in adult education classes and I had one class of moms from the Carribean who were appalled at the state of education in innercity New York. These mothers worked 2 jobs, often at irregular hours to afford to send their children to Catholic schools. And guess what? The majority of their kids (if not all) went on to go to college. I wonder what would have happened if these kids had gone to the public school that I worked in where close to 75 percent of the kids did not graduate high school.
Kelley Williams-Bolar is a heroine, IMO, for daring to fight the system. I hope this story continues to get media attention as it could be a catalyst for change.
Karen – congrats on a wonderful piece. It’s a pleasure watching you grow as a writer
Well I am not trying to say we should tolerate having our children in bad schools or tolerate sexist media I am just saying you can waste a lot of time fighting against an entrenched system when that energy would be better spent building a new system or home schooling. But for each individual child the moment is NOW. By the time the extremely slow educational system decides to move towards the latest fad in learning the child has grown up and for her it is too late. There are also a lot of kids that Catholic schools don’t serve but they serve the 80% in the middle quite well. The gifted kids or the kids with learning disabilities are generally not well served in the neighborhood Catholic school but they are at least safe and that is better than nothing.
Karen thanks for drawing attention to Kelly Williams Bolar. It is outrageous for what type of “crimes” women can end up in prison. My experience with the public school system is very similar to others here. as parent you are a pawn. If you are lucky to have a good principal and teachers you are lucky. if not, having any input for change is impossible as many parents in my middle class neighborhood learned. anyone in parent organizations (not PTA, they are often cheerleaders and completely deaf to any critique) I talked to has a similar impression. public school admin is not listening to parents. no matter whether it is missing repairs in the schools, or bullying, or a principle who sexually harasses teachers and coerces students to false statements in his fight to eliminate teachers who stand up to him. the public school system does not investigate, not listen, in contrast they do everything to silence parents, even threatened the parent orgs webhost with legal actions. not too long ago a gang-rape happened at a classparty from a highschool. the rapist were sentence to very short sentences in juvenile court and were within days weeks back in the same classroom. it took a very active parent to get the state legislature last year to pass a bill that rapists cannot go back in the same school where the victim goes. our public school system does not know how to approach such a crime and victim had to attend school out of state (for not seeing her rapists) with relatives before the new bill was passed. I have come to agree with Bes on vouchers. with vouchers there would be an exodus from the public school system. and they had to think how to cater to communities.
completely agree with Henrietta’s and Anna Belle’s assessments.
back to the brave Ohio mom. what can we do to support her?
Thanks. I also wanted to draw more attention to Brenda Voydatch because she and her lawyer intend to take their case to the Supreme Court if a lower court fails to resolve it. In fact, I had recently watched a news story about her before Amy Siskind emailed an article about Williams-Bolar. Government and union interference affect all areas of education.
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