Seeing Dollar Signs

Two headlines are on my mind this morning. The first:

Plan to build 150 Clarksville homes approved

Kittleman, advocates listen to concerns about proposed Jessup homeless center

It's no surprise that in this world there are the haves and the have-nots. But there are plenty of folks out there that believe Howard County is all about the haves. I was in a meeting the other night where someone said, "They want to work with us because when they see Howard County they see dollar signs."

Dollar signs go both ways. A high cost of living combined with a low minimum wage may not affect some, but cripples others. Why does HCPSM seek donations of instruments? For students whose families could never afford buying or renting an instrument. For schools whose PTA's can't raise additional funds for music programs. Why do the residents of Oakland Mills and the students at Stevens Forest Elementary School have an ongoing food drive? To make sure their own neighbors won't go hungry.

Now, I'm sure there were objections raised to the 150 high-end, single-family homes in Clarksville. I am going to guess traffic concerns, environmental concerns, and potential overcrowding of schools. Objections to a facility for the homeless: public safety, turning the area into a ghetto, concentration of homeless population in one place.

And yet the Clarksville folks and the (potentially) Jessup folks are all Howard County. It is foolish to ignore this. Some people think that the solution is as simple as redrawing boundaries to make poor people disappear. It's based on the notion that everyone gets excited about building for and marketing to rich people, so let's get more of them. And the poor? Well, if they can't afford to live here, they should just go somewhere else.

That is not the truth of what Howard County is. The sooner we wrap our heads around that, the better. A shout-out to all of the people who work with at-risk populations in Howard County every day. They know better than most that we are all Howard County.

*****

Hey there, time is running out! Click the Rafflecopter widget and enter my giveaway!

CDC Meeting tonight, 7 pm at the Jeffers Hill Neighborhood Center. The topic is Human Trafficking. (Another topic we don't really want to wrap our heads around in Howard County.)

Posted with Blogsy

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday. Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018. 2018 . But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest. In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog