It's about race? Really?

Protest over proposed D.H. Stanton Elementary School closing grows heated | 11alive.com
Someone also passed out a flyer that has jaws dropping, even in their own neighborhood.

It's a glossy, professional-looking flyer depicting Superintendent Erroll Davis in a Ku Klux Klan robe. The title reads: "They erased answers. I erase Black schools."

On the flyer, Davis holds a large pencil marked with "No. 00 white schools closed."

The flyer includes pictures of the Atlanta School Board. Davis is African-American, as are seven of the nine school board members.

In small print at the bottom, the flyer says, "Designed by Nathaniel Dryer, Organizer -- Going Against All Odds for our Young People."

Peoplestown residents told 11Alive News Friday morning that the flyer was not created by a parent and they do not support it or agree with its message.

Redistricting is supposed to help solve overcrowding on the north side and empty seats in the south side. It's put some of Atlanta's oldest African-American communities in the crosshairs.

But Davis has said race is not an issue.

Has 11Alive read "Julius Caesar"? Are they trying to sound like Mark Antony? "For Davis is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men."

Let's see. Atlanta is a majority-black city, with a black mayor and a majority-black city council.

Atlanta Public Schools' board is majority black. The superintendent is black. Senior administrators are majority black. The APS work force is overwhelmingly majority black, principals, teachers and support staff. Certainly the system student body is majority black.

And this guy thinks it makes sense to portray the APS board and superintendent as the KKK?

Assuming that this is an opportunistic publicity stunt (which it almost has to be), what audience is Dryer actually looking for?

I'm tempted to say it's not APS' fault that the schools on the white side of town are at or over capacity, while the schools on the black side of town are running at two-thirds to half or less. In fact, in a manner of speaking, it is APS' fault. Sometime in the Hall administration (if not before), someone decided that APS' primary mission was to keep teachers employed, regardless of merit. The way to do this, they apparently concluded, was to put these inadequate teachers in schools APS had already decided would never be academic showcases, because they were full of project kids, and we all know they're not educable, right?* But the appearance of putting up the effort would save jobs.

If I thought this KKK flyer would direct some attention to this still-unaddressed phenomenon, I'd be all in favor of it.

But as it is, it still makes zero sense to close the schools that are overcrowded. Obviously you close the ones being abandoned by the kids the census says live there, but whose parents are getting them into a different school by any means necessary. (Thanks, Malcolm X.) Some request transfers, knowing that means they have to provide transportation to their alternate choice school. Some lie about their mailing address. Some "send the kids to live with an aunt." Some, I'm convinced, just don't go to school at all, because Mom (they're mostly single-parent households) has decided that no school is still better than that school. (And maybe she's right.)

The only solution that makes sense is to close the schools that the parents are staying away from. It's a shame they can't just call them "schools that suck", or the flow of student movement would be a lot easier to understand.
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*  You know I don't actually believe this, right? The problem isn't that they can't learn, it's that no one really expects them to. But children always learn. Sometimes what they learn is not what you meant to teach them. With conduct like this what are we teaching them? That Real Society does not care for them, has no place for them, has no use for them.

LATER: Flyer About APS Superintendent Stirs Controversy | CBS Atlanta: "Dryer says he didn’t mean for the flyer to have racial undertones..." I don't know how a black man can throw the KKK into an argument in a way that doesn't have racial undertones. Is he stupid or does he think everyone else is? I'll stick to my first impression: Opportunistic publicity stunt.