Co-Opting Progress: Resistance of Affluent Parents to an Equity-Minded School Merger

• In Event: Examining the Politics of Local Governance: A New Wave of Research on School Boards

Abstract

Purpose
In this study, we document and analyze the policy process of the Washington-Napenda merger. In 2019, the Superintendent of the Echeverria Unified School District (EUSD) in California proposed a plan to merge two elementary schools. Under the plan, Washington Elementry, a high performing and racially diverse school—but predominantly White and high socioeconomic status—would be merged with Napenda Elementry, a low performing and predominantly Black school. A number of studies provide historical accounts and analysis of anti-integration efforts (Champagne, 1973; Horsford, 2011; Rothstein, 2017). The case of the Washington-Napenda merger allows for an exploration of current arguments and practices utilized to debate a school integration policy. We ask the following questions: What were the public arguments made for and against the merger of two public elementary schools? To what extent did the public’s arguments and values ultimately shape the design and implementation of the merger policy?

Theoretical Framework
We draw on Squire’s (2015) framework of Critical Race Institutional Logics (CRIL), which places the two theoretical concepts of critical race theory (CRT) and institutional logic into conversation. CRT argues that racism is an omnipresent institutional force (Delgado & Stefanic, 2017). Institutional logics explicates how institutional forces influence organizations and individuals’ choices and behaviors (Thornton et al., 2012). With CRIL, Squire calls for an approach to institutional logics that centers racism as an institutional force that influences organizations and individuals’ work and decisions. We argue that the CRIL to understand the values that undergird the process of a school merger policy.

Methods
We designed a single ethnographic case study of the merger process. Our data consists of observations of video recordings of four EUSD board meetings (n= 20 hours of pertinent video), district policy documents (n=13), newspaper articles detailing district and community arguments (n= 9), and media articles providing context and information on the policy process (n=6). All of the data for the study were publicly available. We engaged in multiple coding phases in order to reduce our data and identify preliminary themes emerging from the data (Miles et al., 2014; Saldaña, 2016).

Preliminary Findings
Our preliminary findings indicate that the most passionate arguments for and against the Washington-Napenda merger process were made across three school board meetings. Our data indicate that EUSD leaders began the Washington-Napenda merger process in good faith and intended to bring two divergent populations together. However, although the leaders may have been well-intentioned, the school board ultimately bowed to public pressure that opposed the merging of these two schools. After outrage and protest from Washington parents during school board meetings, the district changed the original policy. Ultimately, our data indicates racialized ideology—anti-Blackness in particular—was embedded throughout the policy process.

Significance
Our study highlights the difficult positions leaders, particularly school board members, are placed in as they mediate a community’s response to racially equitable policies (Diem & Welton, 2020; Horsford et al., 2019). Ultimately, the study considers whose voices are valued in policy processes, providing lessons for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers.

Authors

• Eupha Jeanne Daramola, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Taylor Enoch-Stevens, University of Arizona