I had to laugh yesterday when we delivered our hard-won newspaper to our fourth grade class and other administrators around the school and a new parent approached. Her daughter was being brought into the fifth grade magnet. Supposedly, according to the admins, there would be no slots for fifth graders and if there would be slots they would go to minorities, like African American or Korean – but no, this kid was lily white, internet friends. So she wanted a copy of the newspaper and just to be a bitch, as I am now comfortable being (“Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto) I said, “oh, well this is from the HOME SCHOOL, not the magnet.”

I know I sound bitter. I guess I am bitter – not because I think my daughter did not get a good education but because I willingly put her in a position of being crowded into a school of people who think their kids are “better thans.” And I’m not talking about the inner city, low income smart kids who get bussed in, I’m talking about the Hollywood Hills parents who are supposed to be in the home school but crowd their own kids into the magnet, thus depriving a low income kid of a slot. Sound fucked up? Well these parents figure, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. So they get the 12 extra magnet points upon graduation and they play the game because it’s prestigious to have their kids in the program and it’s a better program maybe? I don’t even know at this point, all I know is that it is wholly wrong on many levels