Skip to main content

Erin's adventures in Community Service

Three months ago, after a great deal of beating around the bush, I pulled my resume together, wrote a mission statement and threw my hat in the ring for the Class of 2012 for an organization called Leadership Pasadena.  While the decision to do so was fueled by encouragement of friends and family, the desire to step out of my comfort zone (being a stay-at-home-mom)was certainly lacking. Boy, has stepping out of that comfort zone been empowering!

Leadership Pasadena was started in the early 1990s by a group of community members who wanted to address the issue of gang violence in Old Town (which was quite different than the Old Town of today). In examining the issue, this group recognized the need to address critical and often controversial issues in the greater community of Pasadena.  I am now one of 14 members of the Class of LP12.  Our collective passion is a desire for facilitating community connections.  My passion is creating an excellent educational experience for my children and for ALL children in my community.

Deciding to put the boys in public school in Pasadena was and is a choice.  A choice that John and I made as adults, parents, friends, and professionals who value equal access to education for all.  In the last two years, we have been challenged in even very casual conversations to defend this decision, because it is not a conventional one in our community.  Today, forty percent (40%!) of school aged children in Pasadena go to non-public schools (private, parochial, charter, homeschool).  Many families never set foot in a public school or even consider doing so because in Pasadena, "the public schools are bad".  A number of real estate agents will encourage their clients to consider buying only in choice neighborhoods because of a particular school.  Other agents have made statements to individuals like myself to "look in South Pasadena or La Canada, where the schools are better" or further "avoid buying a home in Pasadena because the resale value of your home won't hold due to the poor public schools in Pasadena".  Even friends without children looking at property here have had similar experiences.

What does this say about our community?
What does this say about our city?
What does it say about the children who ARE in public schools in Pasadena?
What does it say about community definitions based on race and class?

I'm asking myself and you, readers, all of these questions so that together we can work to change things. I know that PUSD schools can be great.  Public will to allow ALL children in Pasadena access to the vast resources within our community is the only thing keeping them from greatness.

It's tough for middle class families to consider stepping out of their comfort zones and surrounding their children by a diverse set of peers.  As I've personally learned, again & again, no great good comes without risk.

Comments

Amy P said…
I am so proud of my little sister. :-)

Popular posts from this blog

back-talk begins

me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.

The Long Con

Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d

Reader Feedback: Whither Kanake in (white) Astronomy?

Watching the way that the debate about the TMT has come into our field has angered and saddened me so much. Outward blatant racism and then deflecting and defending. I don't want to post this because I am a chicken and fairly vulnerable given my status as a postdoc (Editor's note: How sad is it that our young astronomers feel afraid to speak out on this issue? This should make clear the power dynamics at play in this debate) .  But I thought the number crunching I did might be useful for those on the fence. I wanted to see how badly astronomy itself is failing Native Hawaiians. I'm not trying to get into all of the racist infrastructure that has created an underclass on Hawaii, but if we are going to argue about "well it wasn't astronomers who did it," we should be able to back that assertion with numbers. Having tried to do so, well I think the argument has no standing. At all.  Based on my research, it looks like there are about 1400 jobs in Hawaii r