A ‘Communally Bonded’ School for African American Students, Families, and a Community

Abstract

Not all urban schools that serve African American communities are the disasters portrayed in the media. Mr. Morris shares insights he has gleaned from a seven-year study of Elementary School in St. a school that has successfully with its community. THE CAMPUS grounds and the ambience of Elementary School, located in what is known as North St. Louis, differ vastly from the images of inner-city schooling presented regularly in news accounts.1 The shiny hardwood floors and the immaculate hallways defy the pervasive perceptions of urban and predominantly African American schools -- the types of conditions that are vividly depicted in Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities and Amy Stuart Wells and Robert Crain's Stepping over the Color Line.2 In contrast to the situations portrayed in Jean Anyon's account of urban schools in Ghetto Schooling, the mostly African American educators at have not given up on the the system, and, most important, the children.3 Since 1994 I have been engaged in an extensive study of Elementary School. is not a perfect school. As in many urban schools that enroll primarily low-income students, the educators contend daily with external factors that affect what goes on inside the school. However, Farragut is a good school, as a parent notes. In this article, I will show how school personnel have communally bonded with African American families and the surrounding community to foster an academically supportive environment for the predominantly African American and low-income student population.4 I will then discuss how my investigation into Elementary School extends to the broader issues of urban education, academic excellence, parent and community involvement, and the color line in the 21st century. Building on the Past Elementary School creates a sense of pride for African American people in the nearby community, much like the pride that many formerly all-black schools once represented for black people.5 boasts a strong academic reputation, which also was present in some of the segregated, all-black schools that we (academics, educators, and policy makers) know too little about. Although parents from the attendance zone near the school have the option of sending their children to magnet or predominantly white county schools as part of a voluntary desegregation plan, very few parents from the community have exercised that option. Instead, they have chosen and are satisfied with the quality of education their children receive in the school.6 Students at also have one of the highest attendance rates in the city and consistently outperform students at other schools in the St. Louis public schools -- including magnet schools -- on traditional measures such as standardized tests.7 Is Elementary School an anomaly? And how does the communal bonding between the school and the community contribute to the rich and rewarding educational experience for African American students? Initially, I attempted to use existing school/family partnership models to describe what I observed at Elementary School, but this school did not fit those models. I talked with friends and shared findings with colleagues but stumbled when attempting to describe the nature of the bonding between the African American families, and the nearby community. Then I realized that the difficulty might have stemmed from the way school and family connections are traditionally viewed in the academic and educational communities. The larger society is not aware of the historical context in which functions. In the midst of pervasive societal racism and discriminatory practices -- which resulted in separate and grossly unequal facilities -- many segregated, all-black schools served as stabilizing institutions for African American communities, and those communities shared in the ownership of the local black schools. …