love me, but keep me wild

the US government has a program called “title I” where schools in neighborhoods where at least 40% of the students are low income get extra funding for programs like free meals for the whole student body, extra reading and math specialists, clothing and school supply donations, food pantries on campus, etc. i attended a title I school as a kid, and the school where i work now as a classroom aide used to be one before gentrification. it’s a great program for a school to have because it means that kids living in poverty still get some of the resources they need to do well in school.

the problem with how it’s set up is that, when a bunch of richer families move into a neighborhood with a title I school, the percentage of low income students drops below 40%. that means that the school no longer qualifies for extra funding. so if a school that previously had, say, 48% low income students, now has 39%? no more schoolwide free lunches, no more campus food pantry, no more free clothing or school supplies, no more reading specialist. that means that the 39% of students at that school who are poor no longer have access to resources they need to survive. while the gentrifiers’ kids are fine with that stuff going away, the kids who’ve lived in the neighborhood actually need it. 

I want everything that this 🐕 doggo has 

disclaimer: I’m white. I’m white as snow. My ancestors came to America from Scotland before the war for Independence. My other ancestors came from Germany. I’m THAT white. So if there’s any books that I should take off the list or add, please let me know!! 

- Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the Selma Voting Rights March by Lynda Blackmon Lowery

- The Autobiography of Malcolm X

- For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education by Christopher Emdin

- We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love

-  How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

-  Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds, Ibram X. Kendi

-  Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris

- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

- Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System by Cyntoia Brown-Long, Bethany Mauger

- Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case by Patricia Hruby Powell

- At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle L. McGuire

- The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

- The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

“Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson (focuses on racial prejudice within death-row sentences)

“Some of My Best Friends are Black” by Tanner Colby (the story of integration and schools dealing with racism)

“Tough guy protecting his castle…Though the plan failed when he remembered he is a good boi ❤”