BUCKING THE SYSTEM: SCHOOL BOUNDARY DEBATE OVERSHADOWS ISSUE OF EDUCATION

I've been watching the controversy over Cape's elementary school boundaries with great interest and more than a little disgust since the whole thing came out two months ago. I've held my opinions for as long as I could, so now I'm going to have my say.

First of all, school officials need to keep the communication lines open with the public. I don't think their intent was to push the proposal of the boundary committee through without public comment. I know things would have gone a lot smoother if people had known school officials were meeting because the creature "too much information" does not exist when it comes to patrons and schools.

Second, the school board needs to trust its committees or stop organizing them. Give them clear directions and trust them to do what's right. Otherwise, stop wasting everybody's time.

Pretty soon, parents will refuse to be a member of a school board committee because they know the board is going to denigrate them to the public at the first outcry and then do whatever the loudest and most influential voices tell them to do.

The things I've heard and seen people do since February have disturbed me, to say the least. For example, I've listened as people voiced anger because promises they said were made two years ago were now being broken, even though those promises never existed in fact, despite what some people thought.

I've also listened and even empathized as people defended their beliefs in neighborhood schools, telling us how they selected their school because it's the best, and that's where they want to stay.

Well, I'm sure people like me who had a choice about whether to live around Washington and May Greene feel the same way. But I chose to move to the May Greene area because of the neighborhood and not the school, which was just an added bonus.

I do understand the desire for neighborhood schools, but Cape is becoming a sprawling community with lots of streets and cul de sacs and lanes and boulevards, and neighborhood schools just aren't practical.

Besides, I attended a school district that encompassed several small towns and villages whose residents were fiercely loyal to their communities, so that idea just doesn't fly for me.

I've also heard veiled or outright references to "bad schools" and "those children," statements that imply that Cape has schools that are inferior because of their higher enrollments of children from low-income, rental homes.

That one's much worse because it's a blatant untruth. It assumes that schools in more affluent neighborhoods are better, an idea that should have gone out with segregation. It's a great way to sell houses, though.

Unimaginably, I've even heard debates during which people barely stopped themselves from using racial epithets regarding school enrollments only after realizing I was still in the room. I thank them for being that polite, although I wasn't impressed by their benevolence.

In other debates there were no racial epithets, only numerous versions of the "Some of my best friends are black/I really like my principal and he's black" comments, which are nearly as unpalatable. I don't have the exact quote, but I know it was Shakespeare who wrote "methinks thou doest protest too much."

But what really angers me are the people who tried to and succeeded in threatening the school district. Move us, and that second bond issue you wanted just might be in jeopardy, they said or implied. These people appear to be more worried about their property values than their children and community, which will be led by people from ALL of the district's schools.

The only thing I think that came out of this entire fiasco was that Cape has some deep-rooted problems with ethnic and socioeconomic prejudice. People were willing to sell their homes or enroll their children in private schools to keep them from attending "that school" with "those children."

I don't understand why we haven't realized that children learn best who learn together. Maybe grade centers are the way to go, but that wasn't the will of the people two years ago, and in any case, it probably couldn't have been implemented in the short time that was available.

In the end, maybe we need to look at the children. When they are unaffected by parental prejudices, children do a wonderful job of playing together, regardless of ethnicity, or mobility and mental aptitude. Children like to have friends, so they usually make them, regardless of the school building they attend.

Our nation's most recent school shooting tragedy should have reminded us of one thing, if nothing else: There's a whole lot of things in this world to worry about, and school boundaries just aren't one of them.

God bless us, every one.