As a mother, I had to make tough choices when it came to my child’s education, and none of them were about how much I loved him. They were about a system that makes Black parents work twice as hard just to get a fair shot. When he tested into Gifted and Talented at age four, there were no seats available at the elementary school I wanted to send him to. So, he was relegated to his zoned school, which was majority Black and in a low-income community in Brooklyn.

I had to make a tough choice: Do I keep him there? Do I have other options? As a single mom, navigating the New York City Public School system was daunting. The neighborhood was gentrifying, but at the time, it was still precarious. Did I want to raise my child in the city? All these questions swirled in my head. Then, that summer, I got a job offer in the DC area, which led to more existential questions: Do I move to another urban city, or will I run into the same issues? Do I move to the suburbs and completely change our lifestyle? How can I get my child a better education and a chance at a better life? The decision was difficult, but I said yes. So, after researching school districts and schools in the surrounding area, we moved to Virginia.

Elementary school was great, but when it came to middle school and high school, I had to make another tough choice: There was only one middle school and one high school in my district. The unofficial motto was “Yale or Jail.” Black parents know that motto all too well, because we know what happens if our kids land on the wrong side of it: fewer advanced classes, lower expectations from teachers, a harder road back they fall behind. Middle school is when that sorting starts, quietly, toward whichever high school opens doors later. Again, what kind of education would my child get, and what were my options?

As luck would have it, I got another job offer in Maryland. So, I decided to move us again — this time, to one of the best school districts in the country. There, he had access to advanced coursework, like eighth grade Algebra in middle school, and AP and honors classes in high school. It was diverse, with white, Black, and Latino students. He played cello in the orchestra. He had excellent teachers and a school counselor who saw his brilliance. This proud mama is happy to report that he is now on the Dean’s List at the University of Maryland.

That’s why Nikole Hannah-Jones’ article in The New York Times Magazine resonated with me so deeply. She and her family live in Bedford-Stuyvesant, just like we did. She chose to keep her daughter in her community school. I chose to leave. I don’t think either of us made the wrong call — there wasn’t a right one available. But her daughter paid a price my kid got lucky enough to dodge: her reading and math skills fell several grades below level, and despite earning A’s, she was actually failing. That carried into middle school, where she couldn’t do long division. She’s now in high school, working with tutors to catch up. Had we stayed in Brooklyn, would that have been our fate too?

While I miss NYC tremendously, it’s a tough place to raise a family. Ironically, as I was driving down to Virginia in a moving truck, I got the call saying that a seat had opened up in the coveted Brooklyn school. But by then, our fate was sealed.

Sixteen years later, I believe I made the right decision, but sometimes, it still sticks in my craw. Why should families have to uproot and move to a new state just for their child to get a good education, or fork over tens of thousands of dollars for private school? Clearly, the education system is broken. But broken for whom? Not for everyone equally. It works fine for some, just not for families like mine.

I consider myself one of the lucky parents. I was able to make sure my son had access to good public schools. But I had to make life-altering sacrifices to do so. So many Black and Latino families, and families from low-income backgrounds don’t have that kind of room to maneuver. Every parent wants the best for their child, but in this country, access to a good education still depends on who can afford it or who can navigate around it. Luck shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Photo by Allison Shelley for EDUimages

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