Letter to the Editor: School district models city's historic economic inequities

Editor’s Note: Minorities In Business board members have voted to oppose the Springfield Public Schools’ $71.65 million bond issue on the April 2 ballot. However, after President John Oke-Thomas met with SPS Superintendent Norm Ridder on March 28, Oke-Thomas said the board set aside its opposition and plan to meet with school officials after the public vote. The group is seeking mandates in school construction projects to provide equitable opportunities for minority businesses in Springfield.

The upcoming ballot initiatives for a bond and tax levy referendum by our public school system proposes that our children suffer from lack of updated buildings and state-of-the-art technologies and materials. To remedy the suffering, a bond and tax levy is proposed, on all of us, to fund these building updates and to sit our children down in front of new computers and attractive book covers and to provide salary increase for our teachers.

“What could be harmful about this?” one might ask. “How could anyone find fault in such a seemingly positive effort to improve the environment in which our children learn and play for six to eight hours five days a week?” The answer is not about finding fault but rather about finding equity, which creates balance, in the opportunity that this remedy provides.

Children come from and return to the homes of a growing number of diverse and economically challenged residences in the city of Springfield. All of the data seems to suggest these numbers will continue to steadily increase. Many of these homes also represent entrepreneurs and businesses. These businesspeople need opportunities to provide for their children, and they also need to be seen working by their children in places where the diversity of our community is both an educational imperative and a clear community commitment in their children’s minds. Unfortunately, the history of economic equity in Springfield and especially in our school district is clearly one geared toward winning and losing – not the fair resolution of estranged underrepresented businesspersons’ mutual problems.

Let’s be clear. When underrepresented businesses in Springfield don’t get contracts or procurement opportunities, we all suffer as a community; our children suffer and our city’s mix of different people decreases – something that our local government and chamber of commerce have been very public about not letting happen. We simply can’t grow as a community when the same people consistently “win” economic opportunities with a severely lopsided margin of victory over other community members.

Truth is, updating our schools in the way it’s always been done is an insincere account of responsibility for our children’s welfare because the same old way chokes off the opportunity for prosperity in households of our underrepresented businesspeople. The choking effect causes people to seek work outside of Springfield, consider relocating and use household resources for both. Prolonged periods with no opportunity often result in increased numbers of children requiring free or reduced lunches, limited access to educational programs, and separation from social and athletic networks for children.

Representatives of MIB have met with administrators of the Springfield school district numerous times during the past four years to attempt to find positive ways to provide additional opportunities for groups who have consistently been omitted from the equation at many levels of the school district. Sadly, it’s been without any success or beneficial response.

Our efforts also have addressed the test results and student success of diverse students in our district and appealed for new and meaningful ways to improve in these vital areas. This has often been referred to as the much talked about “achievement gap” which is a serious issue that requires dedicated attention to enhance and ensure student success.

Through several bond requests, the school district has had the ability to spend more than $200 million on capital improvements with no demonstrated opportunities going to diverse businesses or entrepreneurs. Not a single penny.

This letter is an appeal for the audacity of truth, a call to exert the right of our community to ensure responsible distribution of its resources to impact the educational and social conditions of our families and children.

If opportunities are equally created, then people from all over, and all backgrounds, will come to get their fair share. Abolishing inequities that harm our cause to grow more diverse in business and in our neighborhoods will require, as prerequisite, redefining the current historical perception of “good community” from racial to economic terms. It will require that we engage all citizens of Springfield in an educational process to explore how and why historical and present-day thinking about equity stands in the way of progress for all, regardless of color, and keeps us at each other’s throats fighting for opportunities we and our children should have as commonplace.

While sounding acceptable, the propositions – aka Classrooms for Kids and Teachers for Kids –are yet another substitute for something far greater for the city of Springfield, something more lasting and meaningful: an economically supportive culturally diverse society.

—Minorities In Business board members