Riding the wave of the Southern civil rights movement and the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the struggle in the North against the separate and unequal, racist public school system grew more intense. In New York City Rev. Milton Galamison assumed the leadership of that struggle, but he was taking over struggles that had been waged by Black parents in Harlem and elsewhere for decades.
Schools which were all or almost all Black and Latino (of the Latino students the vast majority were Puerto Rican), were often dilapidated, overcrowded, running on half-day sessions, lacked books and supplies, staffed overwhelmingly by substitute teachers without credentials. While the schools that were all white or virtually all white, on the other hand, tended to be modem, well supplied, operating a full day, and staffed with experienced, licensed teachers. So the movement for quality education for children of color took the form of a struggle for integration. It was not that Black and Latino parents were anxious for their children to sit next to white children as an end in itself, but they believed that the System would not shortchange a school with Black children if there were also a substantial number of white children attending it. And so Black and Latino parents were mobilized mainly around the demand to have their children bused to white schools, and further, at a time when whites still constituted the majority in the city, the demand was raised to have schools rezoned to further integration and new schools constructed in “fringe” areas where white neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color bordered one another.
The high points of this movement were the school boycott involving almost half a million children – virtually every Black and Latino child, as well as thousands of white children in 1964, with Black churches opening their facilities for hundreds of “Freedom Schools,” a second massive boycott of more than 300,000 and finally a powerful campaign to shut down the “600 schools” which had been set up to warehouse “emotionally disturbed” and “disruptive” students – which it turned out were almost all Black boys.
ln the face of the fierce resistance to integration by the Board of Education and many white parents, and the fact that segregation was actually growing in spite of the enormous energy expended in mass actions for integration, parents and communities of color came to the conclusion that integration was a vain hope. Moreover, the civil rights movement, especially in the North, had been overtaken by the Black Power movement, which saw integration not only as impossible but not even desirable. The demand now was for self-determination, which meant when applied to education, community control of schools.
Community control of schools meant that the community would choose those in charge of the schools, that a curriculum would be put into place that truthfully portrayed the history of those of African and Native American descent, rather than the demeaning lies, distortions and omissions which were the standard fare. Moreover, bilingual programs would be put in place that would help students learn English as they strengthened their home languages and cultures. Community control of schools meant that teachers would be chosen who respected the community and who would encourage and not thwart the aspirations of children of color, and that the educational leadership would serve as role models for the children, instead of reinforcing feelings of inferiority and dependency.
Ont of this ferment emerged the Ocean-Hill Brownsville “experimental” district, as well as two other experimental districts that would be permitted to apply principles of community control, experiments that the powers-that-be thought they could control behind the scenes. Upon discovering that they could not, they went to work to torpedo them, with the United Federation of Teachers leading the charge. The attempts at community control were shot down, and in its place was installed a system of “decentralization” which pretended to give parents and the communities a greater voice, but represented still another fraud perpetrated upon the people.
The experience of first integration and then the community control movements of the 1960s for quality education established that it was the parents of color, especially African-American parents, who provided the main force and energy as well as the leadership, supported by the students, community activists, and progressive teachers. It was the parents, first and foremost, taking matters into their own hands, that forced reforms in the education system, not the politicians, educational activists, or civil rights and liberal organizations, many of whom at crucial moments betrayed the
movement. Thus, the parents of color had to wage their fight on two fronts: against the racist Establishment which had always shaped education policy to serve as a vital tool of white ruling class supremacy, and at the same time against the liberal “friends” who sabotaged the parents when they took the militant actions necessary to obtain victory.
Since the 1960s the City has undergone dramatic population changes. People of color are now in the majority and the public school population is now overwhelmingly children of color, thanks to white flight and the arrival of large numbers of African-Americans from the South, as well as the great recent influx of Latinos and other immigrant groups. This demographic shift provides us with the opportunity to raise our demand from community control – which means ceding control of schools in white communities to possibly racist forces – to the demand for the democratic control of the entire school system, incorporating the essential elements of community control but going further in that the entire school system will be controlled by people of color.
In order to introduce this more democratic system we must do away with the current system of Mayoral control which is nothing more than a Corporate Dictatorship. Mayor Bloomberg is destroying the public school system and introducing privatization so that his Wall Street buddies can rake in huge profits and, moreover do it with largely public tax dollars. Since Bloomberg took control of our schools, parents and students have less of a say than before. School staff are harassed, and constantly threatened with layoffs, threatened with loss of seniority, required to pay an ever heavier proportion of their health benefits and of their hard-earned pensions.
The education gap between white students and African-American and Latino students is widening. The percentage of Black and Latino students entering the best public schools has decreased. The number of students who are prepared to take college courses upon graduation has decreased. Public schools are being closed while charter schools either replace them or invade them in what is called “co-location,” robbing them of vital space and resources. And yet charter schools perform no better, only 1 in 5 succeeding. People Power Movement is mobilizing against this destruction of our public school system. We believe that Popular Control can save it.
Popular Control means control by parents, first and foremost, as well as by students, supported by progressive teachers and concerned
community members. Popular Control requires setting up bodies independent of the established educational apparatus and bureaucracy. It means independence not only from the current mayoral dictatorship, but any other control by the politicians, such as the City Council. For the politicians have always shown themselves to be instruments of this racist system and the racist elite.
We are talking about the setting up of parent councils in their schools, community councils composed of people dedicated to the education of the children in their neighborhoods, and student councils, for students certainly deserve an important say in how they are being educated. These councils will be running the affairs of their schools and also join together to make policy and distribute budgets for the schools citywide. What we are talking about is a People’s Board of Education, which will be in charge of budget allocation, curriculum, personnel, class size, and all other pertinent matters. Through Popular Control, for the first time in New York City history there will truly be quality education for all our children.
