Let’s talk about public schools (also, did you enter that Goodreads giveaway yet?!)

The conversation we started in The Year of Small Things wasn’t meant to end with the last page. (We’re living the sequel. Welcome to the version without the editor.)  That conversation we started on money? Still having it. The hospitality one? Part of the Arthurs’ everyday life. Oh, and the schools one, the kid monasticism one — all still occupying our thoughts.

Especially that school one.

In the last few months, we’ve been discerning together where our kids should go to school. Again. We’ve asked questions about decisions we’ve made. Again. We’ve made a list of schools, again. I’m talking about segregated schools and school choice and district boundaries, again. The thing about discernment is that it can be a lot of “agains,” so here we are.

Around kitchen tables, through volunteering, through social media, in relationships, we’re talking about feeling conflicted about our values and our choices. To really love our city in an incarnational, live-there way, shouldn’t our kids be educated here, where we live?

This year I (Erin) want to amplify this conversation about equity and relationships and what makes an education “good.” One way I’m doing that is with the new series Passing Notes, where I and guest writers will be talking about our public-school choices (because choosing “the school no one sends their kids to” is also a choice). Subscribe to the Passing Notes newsletter here to follow the voices in this conversation.  

And if this conversation is yours, too — where should our kids go to school, especially if we live in the city — let us know. Comment below or post in our Facebook group. Let’s talk about this thing.

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OH! OH! And don’t forget to enter the Goodreads giveaway to win a copy of The Year of Small Things: Radical Faith for the Rest of Us. The contest ends Jan. 30, so get your entry in before everyone else. (Ha!)