I’m a nice white mom, and I probably shouldn’t be writing this essay.
For one, I really know very little about the subject of school integration. And for two, I won’t even pretend I’ve ever done anything but put my son’s needs first when choosing schools.
But one of the purposes of The Purse Weekly Roundup is to put forth complicated topics to our readers in hopes of sparking conversation. And this is a very important conversation.
I’m getting ahead of myself. If you missed it, last week New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones published a follow-up piece to her 2016 article about segregation in New York City schools and her decision to send her daughter to a low-income and mostly Black neighborhood school.
“Our decision had been informed by values shaped by my years of reporting on the enduring and too often seemingly hopeless battle for school integration,” Hannah-Jones wrote. She felt an “obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage.”
But a decade later, her daughter, now a teenager, has her own opinions, telling her mother, “Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me. I never really got the education I wanted.”
It’s been a reckoning of sorts for Hannah-Jones, and she was brave and bold enough to share her experience in The Times. “When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child,” she wrote.
Her article touched a nerve. Scratch that: It touched many nerves. There may be a million and one response pieces published on every single information platform you can imagine. I’ve watched TikToks and Reels, scrolled through Instagram carousels, and read essays on Substack and op-eds on education news sites, and I’ve likely just scratched the surface.
What I’ve found most fascinating, though, is that there are so many different ways that people have interpreted the essay. I can’t think of many articles that have inspired so many hot takes, and I think it’s because Hannah-Jones forces us to reckon with many seemingly unsolvable problems all at once: racism, inequality, and our ever-growing wealth gap in the U.S.
She also articulates the fear that I think many parents feel, that despite our very best intentions, we’re totally fucking up our kids.
Personally, I’ve found education to be one of the most difficult pieces of parenthood to navigate. And it only gets more complicated as my child gets older. Like many parents, my first concern has always been my son. While my means are not unlimited, I am savvy and have learned to (somewhat) navigate the New York City school system in ways that (I hope) benefit my child. But it isn’t easy, and it’s incredibly time-consuming, at times frustrating, and occasionally expensive.
I still worry I’m getting it wrong. We are in the process of trying to figure out which middle school our son should go to next year. The choices feel almost endless: gifted and talented, charter, private, or one of the many good public options in our district (which, funnily enough, was on the front lines of an arguably successful desegregation project in recent years). What if I screw up and choose the wrong one?
These decisions feel even more fraught because we haven’t had the best elementary school experience. I could relate to some of the stories Hannah-Jones shared—the red flags that there were struggles at school. My family has navigated the sea change that occurs when a beloved principal departs. My son has complained about disruptive kids and crazy lunchrooms. I struggle to get the administration to communicate with me. Throughout our tenure, the school has been a revolving door of teachers. They built a beautiful library and have no one to staff it, so it sits unused most of the time.
I also vacillate with what my role should be. When do I intervene, and when do I force my child to learn to advocate for himself? Do I simply trust that the teachers and administrators know what they’re doing, even if I don’t always agree with their methods? Aren’t they the experts? What do I know about educating a child?
Parenting is hard, and for me that’s one of the biggest (if unintentional) takeaways from Hannah-Jones’s essay. You can have all the resources and best intentions and still screw up!
To make all of it much worse is the fact that we care very little for children in this country. We see this from birth, when we don’t give mothers adequate access to paid maternity leave. We see it in the rollback of vaccine access. We see it in our inability to pass reasonable gun control laws even after six-year-olds are murdered at school. And we see it in our lack of investment in public education that supports all children, not just the ones whose parents have enough savvy and/or income to understand how to navigate the broken system.
As usual, we expect individuals to fix problems that need to be addressed by society as a whole. And that’s just so frustrating! However you want to interpret the Hannah-Jones article, I think we can mostly agree that despite her best intentions, she was never going to be able to single-handedly fix one the country’s most segregated school systems.
And yet, we can’t give up entirely, even if fighting against the system feels like a Sisyphean task. Maybe Hannah-Jones failed in her mission, but by sharing her experience, she’s brought this issue that has languished in recent years to the forefront of the nation’s attention once again. In New York City’s last mayoral election, only Zohran Mamdani put forth any kind of plan to address our city’s segregated schools. And while his administration has arguably been slow to recommend changes (granted, he has a lot on his plate), hopefully the outcry from this piece will force the issue to the top of the agenda.
Of course there is so much to be fixed. I don’t pretend to even have a clue where to start, and I worry that this piece I’ve written simply pays lip service to the problem. As I navigate the middle school decision this year, I know I will do everything in my power to choose the best school for my son. I recognize that’s a privilege not everyone can afford.
So then, what is the purpose of writing all this down? My hope is, at the very least, to keep the conversation going with the dream that one day parents find a way to be united in supporting all children without feeling like we need to sacrifice our own child’s well-being in the process.
Is that an impossible dream? Maybe.
-Lindsey
What else we’re reading, watching, and listening to
- I have dozens of tabs open with articles and op-eds about school choice, but I want to call out this essay from Atlantic staff writer Jenisha Watts on her decision to send her Black son to private school. The quote from James Baldwin at the end is especially moving -Lindsey
- Sorry for the abrupt vibe shift, but I couldn’t be happier that The Traitors and Real Housewives of Salt Lake City are back! -Alicia (Lindsey here to say that we needed the vibe shift!!)
- I’m really love how The New York Times is leaning into all the “best of” lists with fun social elements. This week’s roundup of the “100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century” didn’t disappoint. I wish Silo made the list, and I guess I’m finally going to have to watch The Wire. -Lindsey
- This is how I feel about the new Taylor Swift music. -Alicia
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On our radar
- Lindsey will be moderating a panel at SABEW’s Personal Finance Summit on October 9, with some pretty amazing guests, including Mandi Woodruff-Santos, Tim Herrera, and Kara Pérez. Tickets are still available here.
- Alicia will be at Money 20/20 on October 18 to discuss preparing for the Great Wealth Transfer with Alix co-founder and CEO Alexandra Mysoor.
- Congrats to our friends at Babylist on the launch of their beautiful new Soho showroom! -Lindsey
Comment of the week
“What I don't see anyone touching on is the ‘little treat economy’ part. People are so used to getting themselves a little treat for ‘surviving’ the day that it doesn’t occur to them that they should be denied it for an hour. You are not going to be dehydrated in an hour (and caffeinated drinks are dehydrating anyway). It’s that Gen Z resents being told they can’t have anything they want in that moment.”
-Susie Q on “Should you bring an iced coffee to a job interview?”
TikTok of the week
@the_purse The only thing more offensive than bringing an iced coffee to an interview is the size of my pimple in this video! 😩 (But also, this is a nuanced question and sometimes it’s ok and sometimes it’s not!)
♬ original sound - the purse
What else we published on The Purse this week
Paid subscribers get access to our Travel Guides, including this fun one to Berlin!
Sesali Bowen
It’s the big social media topic of the week.
Lindsey Stanberry
The size of Home Ec 60’s savings account was a major topic of conversation, so Alicia wrote about how much you “should” have saved.
Alicia Adamczyk
And we wrote out our money principles for The Purse—check them out and let us know yours!
Lindsey Stanberry
Best money we spent this week
- It was a glow-up week for me! I got my hair cut ($125) and my eyebrows done ($100), and I feel much better about life! -Lindsey
- I’m dog-sitting for my sister for a few days, which means I got to stop at the Trader Joe’s by her apartment and stock up on some fun snacks and beverages. ($50) -Alicia
