The preschool dilemma
by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Amber
When my daughter turned three, my husband and I began the search for a part-time preschool. In addition to finding a match for our academic and location preferences, we wanted to find a school that was representative of the Midwestern city where we live, including African, African American, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, Asian and white kids. It seemed like a modest enough goal.
We started our search with a list of three schools in our area recommended by other parents (the ultra-liberal school, the hippie school and the neighborhood school). When asked, the other parents claimed the schools had “diversity.” It didn’t take much research for me to eliminate all three of them because they had only one or two children of color in the entire school.
I broadened my search and found a church preschool whose website claimed “Muslim, Hindu, Catholic and Protestant” children were enrolled there. Maybe in other parts of the country this wouldn’t mean much, but to me it meant that there were some kids of color at this school.
When I called them, I had high hopes. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to learn they couldn’t guarantee my daughter would not be the only child of color in her class, nor did they have any teachers who were not white.
The director’s reply when she was answering my diversity questions:
“Well, the school is mostly caucasian, but, uh, you know, diversity has never been a problem here. I mean, sure, preschoolers will notice that there are differences. They will say “Why is his skin brown?” but you know, they don’t mean anything bad by it. We just talk about the differences in a POSITIVE way. For example, we celebrate both Christmas and Hannukah. Oh and we also celebrate Kwanzaa! At this age, kids really love the diversity of holidays so we try to focus on that. We try not to focus on the differences in skin color and instead we focus on celebrations!”
Because my idea of diversity involves a lot more than just celebrating holidays, I hung up the phone pretty quickly. Not to mention, the image of a bunch of white teachers celebrating Kwanzaa in a complete vacuum of African Americans who might actually celebrate this holiday in their homes was a very uncomfortable for me. I was pretty sure we would not send our daughter to a school where she would be the token Asian or the only kid who actually celebrates Chinese New Year at home.
Finally, a friend recommended a local preschool owned by a Korean American couple. About half of the class would be of East or South Asian decent and three of the four teachers are Asian. There were also a number of kids from mixed race white and Asian families. This school is by no means representative of the racial diversity in the city where we live, but we eventually decided that we would send our daughter there.
Did we make the right decision? I don’t know. For us, the preschool selection process was about learning which compromises we are willing to make. We decided our number one priority is for our daughter to be surrounded by kids who closely reflect our family and her racial background during this critical age of racial identity development. Only time will tell if that choice was the right one.
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Amber is currently underpaid and overworked as the full-time parent to a three year-old daughter. Currently, she and her husband are in the process of adopting a child from China. Amber blogs about motherhood, adoption and life in her Midwestern multiracial family at American Family.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Lyonside wrote:
this post absolutely proves that the stratification of neighborhoods is a nightmare for anyone trying to find a diverse school. One of the reasons I was OK with moving to the burbs this summer was that the public schools at least seemed more diverse than the private schools I attended. I think it’s great that you were concentrating on diversity in preschool.
My mom’s a Montessori Head Start teacher in the Philly public school system. When she had classrooms in Southwest Philly, her classroom was amazingly diverse for public school – Hmong, Viet, Latino, African-American, and white, for years. Didn’t mean that her kids lived on the same block, though – there were ethnic enclaves surrounded by other enclaves, and they didnt’ all get along.
When her center moved to North Philly, though, she suddenly had a 100% African-American classroom, with the occassional token biracial kid. It doesn’t change how my mom teaches, but I think it does make her actually miss SW Philly sometime.
The Kwanzaa idea made me smile – my mom covers all the winter holidays, but doesn’t go into detail w/ any of them (public school, natch). Besides, not only do none of her African-American staff celebrate Kwanzaa, but neither to any of her students according to the parents. It’s good, I think, for preschooler to know the word and have an image (the menorah, the kinara, etc.) to go with it, so that it’s not new when they encounter it later. But if it’s not a part of the faith tradition, it comes off as patronizing and assuming.
Posted 15 Dec 2006 at 10:13 am ¶
Rachel wrote:
I know what you mean. We live in what is supposed to be the most diverse city in the U.S., but a lot of the preschools are lily-white. Fortunately we were able to get in the community college co-op, which is socioeconomically/ racially diverse. It was the first thing I noticed about the school, that it really seemed to reflect the demographics of our city. I think preschools are even more racially divided than elementary and high schools, perhaps because there’s no mandate to integrate.
Posted 15 Dec 2006 at 11:18 am ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
We’ve been forced not even to consider these issues at all. If you’ve got kids who have developmental delays, those become sort of defining in a way that race is almost of zero importance. They don’t notice race differences at all, and their inability to function normally in social situations certainly becomes more obvious than whatever someone might have been thinking about them because of their race. In the light of all that, race seems very unimportant. Pre-school choice becomes largely about which school can most help your kids learn to communicate at a level closer to their own age group. It turns out that the schools our kids have been in are diverse, but I would never have even thought to choose or not choose a school based on that criterion. I don’t know if we’ve been spared from something bad or deprived something good in not having to think about these things. Perhaps both.
Posted 15 Dec 2006 at 6:08 pm ¶
Kari wrote:
This is such a tough call. It sounds like you found the best solution out of all of the choices. We are looking for a preschool for next year, and most people give me a blank stare when I mention that I want the community to be diverse. It seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to find here in California!
Posted 15 Dec 2006 at 8:55 pm ¶
Stephanie wrote:
I feel pretty good about the mix in my daughter’s preschool class. Her teacher is Asian and while most of the kids are white, there’s one biracial boy and a few Asian kids. Not quite my ideal mix, but on my budget I could really only afford the neighborhood school so I’m just glad to get any diversity in there.
Her school also does something I think is pretty neat. They have a class for autistic kids, and one of the ones I think must be higher functioning comes to the regular preschool a couple times a week. Gives the kids a chance to deal with someone who doesn’t react like the other kids do. My daughter adores him and is always trying to hold his hand walking to class – too cute!
I’ll admit, my daughter has been known to ask people the awkward question about different skin color. Caught me off guard because she had previously played with an older girl who was African American, just like the girl she asked. I was saddened when the girl took offense, since coming from a then 3 year old that is a very innocent question. I calmly told my daughter it was simply that some are born with different color skin just like people have different color hair and eyes.
Posted 16 Dec 2006 at 1:41 pm ¶
landismom wrote:
Hmm, I feel a little weird commenting on this post, as I think I am one of the few readers who is a white woman raising white children. It was incredibly important to us to have our kids go to a diverse pre-school too. We ended up looking at a couple of places that were like the ones you describe, and ultimately sending both of our kids to a preschool where all the teachers were women of color, and often they were the only white kids in the class.
There will be plenty of times that they will be in the majority in school settings (although our public schools are fairly diverse–my daughter is in 2nd grade, and she has yet to be in a class where fewer than 40% of the kids were of color). It was important to us that they get a different perspective, the perspective of being in a minority.
We have gotten more than a few comments about this choice from our friends and family, though, and almost all of them have been negative. It’s sad.
Posted 16 Dec 2006 at 4:35 pm ¶
AmericanFamily wrote:
Landismom,
I dont’ think you should feel weird about commenting at all. I always say more of us anti-racist white folks need to share more about our experiences.
It is a lot easier to talk the talk than it is to walk the walk and I am no exception. I didn’t go into it because the posts here are relatively short, but despite our concern about diversity, the daycare my daughter went to previously was mostly white too. We decided we could make an exception until she was three because we loved the program, location and teachers so much.
When we left for the new more-diverse school, we had some pretty strange conversations with some of our friends and the teachers . It didn’t help that once we located the new school, the other Asian kid in my daughter’s class ended up moving with us to the new preschool too.
We still love the old school (my neice goes there now). It just isn’t the right place for my daughter any more.
Posted 16 Dec 2006 at 6:03 pm ¶
Sandra wrote:
Living in Chicago, we sent our daughter to the local park district preschool program. They are always diverse, racially, culturally, and economically, so no problem. Also extremely cheap.
Posted 16 Dec 2006 at 10:08 pm ¶
Meera wrote:
Ever since moving to a community where we’re the only black family with kids under age six, my husband and I have grappled with this issue. Our
daughter is one of only four kids of color at her pre-school, and the only black child. Last year, she was the only child of color, period. We were very concerned about this for her – she has no Asian or African American male peers at all.
This is her second year there. We considered finding a new school at the end of last year, but had to consider many factors before ultimately choosing to keep her where she is.
I guess the biggest reason is that the tuition is free because my husband teaches at the college the school’s a part of. Secondly, we live within walking distance. The school has an excellent rep in the community (a waiting list a mile long) and is just about as diverse as any other school we’d find within a forty minute drive.
And lastly, she just really feels at home there – far too accustomed to their rituals and daily routine for us to think of switching her this year. Kindergarten next year will be enough of a change.
So it’s far from ideal, but we chose to stay. Hopefully, none of this will come back to haunt her later.
Posted 17 Dec 2006 at 1:39 am ¶
SF Mom wrote:
We live in a very diverse city and were shocked by how un-diverse the public and private schools were, even the progressive nonprofits. Our daughter was adamant that she did not want to be the only African American girl in her class. So we looked and looked, and the only schools we found that were truly diverse were the Catholic schools. Go figure!
Posted 19 Dec 2006 at 3:17 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
SF Mom: If SF means San Fran, then rest assured that it happens on the East Coast too.
What it shows to me, personally, is how ethnic enclaves are dominant in many city neighborhoods (which you’ll see if the public school assignment goes by address), and how ethnicity is tied to socioeconomic level (as you’ll see in the private schools).
My parish Catholic school is about 85% non-Catholic. Given, that doesn’t mean that those kids necessarily have a particular religion to practice at home, so the religion classes they take may be all they get. But the #1 reasons local parents send their kids to the Catholic school is that it’s a safer, better performing school than the local public alternative. My particular parish school’s diversity is something like 70-80% minority (black and Latino, teeny Asian percentage), higher than the citywide and neighborhood ratio of something like 60%.
I’ve been tempted to send my kids to that school in a few years, even if it’s a haul, particularly for that same “not-a-minority” experience.
Posted 19 Dec 2006 at 4:32 pm ¶