Placing Value on Education, Equity — and Soap

I’m standing at my customary position in the cafeteria during lunch duty one day, watching students pass by, lunches in hand, heading to their usual tables. Some students say hello to me. Others give a quick wave. Some avoid eye contact at all costs.

I catch snippets of conversations related to class work, weekend plans and lunch offerings when two boys walk by from the direction of the boys’ bathroom. 

“Our school is so ghetto,” says one. “There’s no soap in the bathroom again.” 

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard students refer to our school as “ghetto.” It’s a term that really gets under my skin when used in this way. I frequently give students gentle (and peers not-so-gentle) corrections when I hear it used to describe something as rundown or lacking.

Aside from the inappropriate use of a racially, ethnically and economically charged word, this boy has a point. How long are we as a society going to accept sub-standard conditions for the education of our children?

Each year in my career as a professional educator I have witnessed cuts to school budgets across the nation.  Education funding has had a downward trajectory here in Oregon since the passing of Ballot Measure 5 in 1990, which cut education-related property taxes. 

As a result, it’s not uncommon to have 40-45 students per class at the high school level, and, no soap in the boys’ bathroom. I’m not going to get on my soapbox here about the importance of education as the very foundation of our society, as this audience knows it all too well, but I will continue to wonder when we will start making our children and their education a priority.

We must communicate to students that they have value if we want them to achieve in school. How can we do that when passionate, dedicated teachers continue to be let go, students have to share desks and books and boys can’t have clean hands?

How can we continue to tell them that yes, they can, when society at large is telling them on a regular basis that maybe they can but it won’t be easy or even pleasant? 

I did the one thing I could think of to do: I got on the radio and called the custodian to replace the soap in the boys’ bathroom. It’s a start. 

Ryan Fear is a high school dean of students in Oregon.