Travel back with me to 2009, when Minneapolis Public Schools was in the process of trying to quell an insurrection of wealthy white parents. With the exception of the crunchy-granola set, which has long maintained an enrollment stronghold at South High School and doesn’t have enough money to count as wealthy anyhow, the chattering classes wanted to send their children to Southwest High.
But even with a future expansion under discussion Southwest could only hold so many teenage bodies. Kids literally were sitting in window wells in some classes. Lunch was often eaten in the hall. On the floor in shifts.
You remember this, right? The battle of the entitled reached its apex with a raging debate about higher-level math. Southwest, parents actually howled at the board, had all the special math teachers and Washburn had none. Seriously, families knew the names of individual math teachers. It was like fantasy football, but with licensure status instead of career stats.
Parents who couldn’t so much as do long division held forth at parties: Who was the district kidding insisting students at both schools would get a world-class education? Continue reading