The Urgency of Uncommon Schools: A Holiday Letter from Norman Atkins

Dear Friends—

Two days after my wife gave birth to our eldest child 19 years ago, the nice folks at the hospital swaddled our newborn, put a nice warm hat on his little head, and wished us luck. 

It scared me how little we knew.  I’d had to take a semester-long course and pass both a multiple choice test and a performance assessment before I earned permission to drive a car on my own. But now the officials at the hospital were handing us this kid without any assurance that we knew what to do.  (One lesson I learned from the nurses was that heat can escape from babies very quickly through their bald domes.  So I made certain to keep the hospital’s hat on our little guy’s head for months and months until it didn’t fit anymore.)

I’ve learned a couple of things since.  First, all parents love their children; and second, all parents struggle to raise them.  As hard as it is to parent well, and as little preparation as we all receive, I can’t fathom the depth of the challenge that some of us face when living under the crushing burdens of poverty or in finding ourselves born in forlorn geographies.

My heroes and she-roes then are the very individuals who cross oceans or endure violence and hardship for the sake of giving their children a new and better life.  The grit, hope, and love manifest in their sacrifices fuel the world with inspiration. 

I recently was overcome with these feelings when I heard an electrician named Rochelle James deliver testimony about her tribulations and triumphs (scroll down to see story below) and learned about a Senegalese gypsy cab driver named Mr. Ballamoussa (story below).  As it turns out, both of them are “Uncommon” parents of 1st graders at Leadership Prep, a school about which they feel unbridled joy.  Both also know what it’s like to want a world-class education for your kid only to be a number on a waiting list.  They prayed for odds and outcomes that their more affluent counterparts expect and demand as a matter of course. 

I think about the thousands of other parents like Ms. James and Mr. Ballamoussa in New York, Newark, Rochester, and Boston, who’ve never gotten off the waiting list of “Uncommon” schools or other top-flight schools.  Parents will do everything imaginable to lift their children up, but even when they do, all too often systems and schools aren’t available or able to deliver on the promise inherent in all children.   Thirteen years of non-education, weak education, and mis-education will eat away at the promise, and generations of our children are consigned to a destiny based largely on a zip code not of their choosing.

There’s a Newark father I know at North Star Academy, Micheal Lytle, who says that the lottery system we have for selecting students is fair, given the pent-up demand (and given the corruption and injustice of alternate approaches), but it’s cruel in that too many will be denied the very opportunity that enticed them to apply in the first place. 

At Uncommon, we should be proud that the newspapers today indicate that one of our schools – Williamsburg Collegiate – is the highest ranked public school in the city of New York on the Department of Education’s new report card (Click here to read articles). If Excellence Charter School, which was authorized by SUNY, had been scored, it would have been right up there up there with Williamsburg College, ahead of 1,200 other schools.  We are proud this holiday season that a couple of thousand children in our schools and our associate members’ schools are getting the very highest quality educational experience.   But we also know that we – and so many others – have much work to do in the days and years ahead of us to create more schools to give more children the opportunities that Ms. James and Mr. Ballamoussa have fought hard to secure, and then won by chance, for their children.

Please read the stories of Ms. James and Mr. Ballamoussa and, during this holiday season, feel their love and dreams for their children.  And may we, and our children, all be blessed with the virtues that these incredible parents bring to our world every day.  May their grit and determination be a model for us as we continue the work in front of us.     

Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas. And a sweet New Year to you and your families!  

                                                                                         Cheers, peace, and love,