Retired educator Aaron Fernander would often quote to us in staff meetings, “Teach the children!” He didn’t want us focused on anything other than teaching the children.

Over a decade ago, then Principal Aaron Fernander of Ralph Johnson Bunche Middle School was known for telling not just the teachers but all the educators who came into contact with the students of our school to simply “teach the children.”

The concern then wasn’t focused on which entity, public or charter schools, was educating children better. We were focused on teaching the children.

Years later, the debate against traditional public schools and charter schools continues with data reports focusing on the success of charters as many public schools are still struggling.

I just simply can’t keep going along to get along with these conversations on what school is performing the best when children are being underserved, used, and quite honestly failed.

Failed by a public education system. Not by the public schools in our communities nor by charter schools helping to elevate the much-needed conversation around school improvement.

School choice means parents can choose the schools their child(ren) will attend for elementary and secondary education. It helps remove the red tape that pushes parents out of schools, silences teachers, and fails our students. 

Public education systems are designed to assign children to schools where they live. Funding formulas are then set up to determine the success of the academic programs, the students, and the communities in which they reside. Charter schools disrupt the formula that allows children across communities and zip codes to be intentionally left behind.

School choice isn’t the problem; the problem is our inability to accept that public schools continue to struggle because the system is failing to embrace change.

Change means that parents have the right to be engaged with and in conversations about the type of school academic programs offered to their child(ren), and students have a say-so in the policies used to govern them. Teachers’ and educators’ voices would be involved in school budgets, teaching, and learning models.

School choice is a springboard for parent, student, and teacher empowerment! It should be a gateway for us to begin challenging a system that continues to fail children. Especially Black, Latino, poor whites, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, disabled, mixed-raced children whose families depend on a public education system to help them reach the notion of the American dream.

But this notion of a dream is a living nightmare for many of the children who fit into the aforementioned categories because the public education system continues to fail them and lead them to illiteracy, underemployment, poverty, and the school-to-prison pipeline.

If we truly believe that no child deserves to be left behind, then we’d stop attacking the schools, public or charter, within our community and actually hold the system for educating children in America accountable for providing quality, fair, free, and equitable education. 

Let’s really look at what’s going on in public education. Post-pandemic, we can determine that now is the time to reimagine education because going back to business as usual with school simply isn’t working.