Background Information
I teach in a magnet program, the Academy of International Studies at Independence High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our magnet program serves approximately 300 students within an overall school population of roughly 2,200. The Academy's mission is to provide underserved communities with a comprehensive education grounded in service learning and global awareness.
Independence High School was for many years the largest high school in North Carolina and is still a large, urban high school. For most of my first decade there the student body was overwhelmingly African American, approaching eighty or even ninety percent in some years. Over the last three years redistricting has shifted our school's geographic area towards majority white neighborhoods near the school.. White students now make up a majority, roughly 60%; African American students make up approximately a quarter of the student body. The remainder is mostly Latino, with numerically small but highly visible Asian representation.
The "new" children my school serves have not faced the same challenges my high-poverty students face, but their childhoods have witnessed a steady erosion of family net worth and earning power. From 2008 to 2011 median sale price of homes in the neighborhood dropped 30% of their value; distressed home sales for the area for 2011 represented 35% of total sales.3 Census data shows that from 2000 to 2010 median household income decreased by as much as 20% across the area my school serves.4 At the same time, the majority white portion of my school's zone is politically and socially conservative, consistently voting Republican at rates ten percentage points or higher than the rest of the county.5 There is no shortage of voices in the media offering such families an array of ready scapegoats for their predicament. The racial climate is still generally good, but I have to be increasingly vigilant about anti-Latino and anti-immigrant hostility voiced by white and African American students.
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