Resisting the Foreclosure of Equitable Futures From the Grassroots: Narrating a Closed Progressive Bilingual Charter School

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Equity in Bi-/Multilingual Education Research and Dual Language Programs (Table 1)

Abstract

This case study explores how employees understood the forced closing of a dual language charter school with high parent support in a working-class community with predominantly Latinx teachers and students. The concept of foreclosure of the commons and of equitable futures is forwarded to understand three findings on the school’s grassroots resistance. First, the school was founded by teachers and community members in resistance to a recent ban on bilingual education that rapidly closed programs. Second, the school marshaled grassroots organizing to persuade district and state officials to allow it to remain open after 15 years in operation. Third, the grassroots resistance extended to the larger struggles of ecological sustainability and subtle forms of neoliberal privatization.

Author

• Garrett Delavan, University of New Mexico