Microschools Deserve Public Money Too!

Most of us focus on how vouchers will help public school parents pay for private school, but there’s another option out there in the learning stratosphere – microschools.

Why shouldn’t a single mom with three children have the option to send her kids to a well-run microschool instead of the traditional private?

Last week, The Texas Tribune reported that,

“Sharby Hunt-Hart stacked a table at her local library with colored pencils, skin-tone crayons and picture books with Black girl protagonists. Four girls, ready to start their school day, looked up at her.”

“’I want our big girls to think about the kind of person you want to be,’ Hunt-Hart, an educator of 17 years and a mom, told the girls.”

“With a marker, Addi, 6, furrowed her brow and got to work. She drew a picture of herself with her hair short, like it was that day. She added blue scribbles for the sky and green scribbles for the grass. Her arm in the picture was extended, holding a flower: ‘I gave Mommy a flower.’”

“’You want to be a giver,’ Hunt-Hart said. ‘Thank you for sharing, Addi.’”

“Here in the eastern suburbs of Dallas, three mothers are home-schooling to reimagine education for their daughters. During school days, the girls get in about two hours of core instruction like reading and math, but they also draw, go on nature walks and build fairy villages with the rocks they find.”

“The mothers say their public schools were not equipped to create a learning space that’s wholly safe for Black kids or embrace their culture and identity. Together they create lesson plans to meet each girl’s learning needs and adapt their pace when a child is struggling.”

“The mothers want to expand their group and create a ‘microschool’ that serves more Black boys and girls in the region, mirroring the Black Mothers’ Forum schools in Arizona. Microschools refer to learning setting where class sizes are small, typically composed of fewer than 15 students, and the schedule and curricula are tailored to the needs of each student. It is seen as an arrangement between home-schooling and traditional schooling.”

“’What we’re doing with the microschools is decolonizing what we know of education,’ Chantel Jones-Bigby, mom to Addi, said. ‘And we have so much less resources. We’re working with so much less, but yet, our children are doing academically, emotionally better.’”

“The mothers already have spoken with other parents ready to pull their kids out of private and public schools to participate in their collective. But to grow, they say they need the Legislature to create education savings accounts, a voucher-style program through which families could access state funds and pay for private school or alternative education settings.”

“Jones-Bigby said the public education system must face the reality that they often fail to serve Black kids well.”

“’I didn’t just remove my daughter from a building in a school. I removed her from the consciousness that was there that was creating the symptoms of what I was seeing with her in her learning,’ she said. ‘Even if [schools] have more money, if you still have the same culture and consciousness, but new technology, what does that change?’”

…

“In Arizona, 40 Black moms gathered in 2016 with the same worries for their children, ready to dismantle what they call the school-to-prison pipeline. Their kids were bullied in school and did not feel supported by the teachers. The moms started by pushing school districts to form a re-entry-after-suspension plan and find alternatives to suspension as a disciplinary measure.”

“By 2021, they had opened their own microschool, also known as outsourced home schooling. The Arizona microschools depend on the state’s education savings account program for sustainability.”

“’The public school system that was in place was not doing what it was supposed to do. Our children were not reaping the benefits,’ said Janelle Wood, the founder of Black Mothers Forum in Arizona. ‘And so we needed a tool to help us fuel our vehicle of the microschool in order for us to grow.’”

…

“Like in Arizona, the mothers of the Dallas suburbs want to grow their small teaching collective with the help of an education saving accounts program in Texas.”

“Education savings accounts would allow families to exit the public education system and use taxpayer dollars to pay for alternative learning settings like a microschool. The three mothers would welcome those funds to scale up and pay for instructional materials and a dedicated learning space.”

“The fate of school vouchers and the mothers’ plans hang in balance while the state Legislature and Governor Greg Abbott wrestle over creating this type of program.”

Abbott’s special legislative session ended without agreement on school vouchers. The Texas governor called for another special session to begin the day the previous one ended.

I used to be anti-voucher, but no more. And what is happening with the Dallas suburban Black mothers, forming their own microschools, has a lot to do with why I changed my mind.

Because, if our public school system isn’t going to look out for black, brown, and poor kids, then why shouldn’t parents and families receive public money to do what our current public school system isn’t?

Friday News Roundup tomorrow. SVB