Centralia School District Superintendent Mark Davalos’ mission to destroy relationships between educators, support staff and the community is blowing up in his face.
His latest attempt is to segregate students clearly based on ethnicity and socioeconomic status, and is evident in his presentation of the new boundaries to make Centralia elementary schools into “neighborhood schools.”
Maybe someone needs to remind Davalos about the historic ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. It was ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools is unconstitutional.
His proposed plans eliminate students living on Cooks Hill and Galvin from attending Fords Prairie Elementary School and going across town to Jefferson-Lincoln and instead leaves the area with all of the low- income and migrant housing filling the school.
This produces other schools benefiting by gaining students from higher socioeconomic families, securing an affluent cohort of white privilege. These de facto segregation options are being shoved down our throats, and we are supposed to swallow it with a smile on our faces? Segregating our students by language proficiency and socioeconomic status is bound to breed subordinate status and racial hierarchy within our community.
There’s only one solution to the problem Davalos has created: keep Edison, Fords Prairie and Jefferson-Lincoln K-3 and Oakview and Washington 4-6.
It will save at least $330,000 to not convert the existing schools to accommodate the other grades. It will save relationships with families, which the district says they are trying to preserve with the change. It will save working relationships between educators, support staff and building administrators, which has been stressed by the upcoming distortion of teachers positions within the district and the unknown landing place for many of the educators.
Robert Potvin
Centralia
