| Last December, The Capital City Hues featured a story about the Volunteer Mentor African American Man (VMAAM) class at West High School. The class had been created by Tenia Jenkins, who had run a similar class at Shabazz High School before she retired in June 2006. Jenkins and her student teacher Matthew Braun would present information about topics applicable to the young men's lives and then volunteer mentors who were present at the class would talk with the students and help them process the information. It was a program that targeted African American male students at West. By February 15, 2007, the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) had hired Percy Julian, a well-known civil rights and constitutional law attorney to investigate whether or not the MMSD anti-discrimination policy, the state of Wisconsin's anti-discrimination policy and the U.S. Constitution had been violated when Jenkins and West High staff targeted African American males to be enrolled in VMAAM, an elective course. Over the course of the next seven months, Julian investigated the program, including extensive interviews with MMSD personnel. While the 2006-2007 VMAAM class was completed in June 2007, it was not offered by West High School for the 2007-2008 School Year. Julian completed his report on September 26, 2007, the day before MMSD Superintendent Art Rainwater and MMSD Board Chair Arlene Silvera met with Jenkins, Rev. Gregory Armstrong and approximately 18 former mentors and supporters at S.S. Morris AME Church. For 1-2 hours, Rainwater discussed the VMAAM class with the gathering and fielded questions. Of all of the points of contention, the primary issue was whether or not the recruitment process for VMAAM was discriminatory. In his findings, Julian stated "I find and conclude that Section 118.13 Wis. Stats. was violated by excluding students from participating in the VMFAAM class or program based on the student's race because of the unlawful use of race as a factor in the recruitment, recommendation, selection, and/or assignment of students for the class." At S.S. Morris, Rainwater clarified the finding. "The primary focus of the investigation was really a review to see whether or not a class can be offered that is restricted to one race," Rainwater said. "That was the fundamental issue. And the finding by Percy Julian was that it cannot. That doesn't mean that the curriculum can't be exactly what it was. You can have a curriculum that focuses very much only on African American males and their place in society and the culture and whatever you want to do. What can't do under the law, our board policy, anti-discrimination laws and the U.S. Constitution is restrict that class' enrollment to just African Americans. You can have the same curriculum. You just have to open the class to whoever wants to do it. And to be honest, if you offer a class that is focused in terms of curriculum on African American males and focused on the culture and how to work with African American males, are you probably going to get a lot of other people to sign up? No, you aren't. But you can't restrict the class to African American males." Jenkins contended that the enrollment was not restrictive and that the whole investigation was initiated because the MMSD administration did not want the class taught. "We were not a segregated class," Jenkins emphasized. "We had White teachers in it. We recruited Black students, but any student could have signed up. It was a pilot class. Targeted, yes! Restricted and said no one else could take it? No! The information went to the counselors and we told them to recruit students for it. And I probably did tell them to recruit some Black students because we wanted some Black men in there. But if another student walked in and said 'How about that class,' hopefully, they did not tell them they could not take that class. I did not tell them to restrict it. So that whole thing about Section 118.13 was bogus." There were also questions raised why the class had not been offered this semester. Rainwater stated that it is clearly up to the individual high schools to decide which electives to offer. Rainwater asserted that he had not discussed the reasons with the West High staff and did not know why it was dropped. "In this case I did not talk to Mr. Holmes about why he did or did not choose to offer the class -- he made the decision based on his allocation and his priorities," Rainwater said. "He made the decision not to offer this class this year." Jenkins had a different opinion. "I don't believe Ed Holmes made this decision without being prevailed upon by the school district," Jenkins said. "He came into this project very positive. He wanted it there. He was really high on it at the end of the school year. And sometime during the summer, something happened that caused him to draw back. I really do believe that he was just tired of being beaten up by the superintendent and by this school district over offering this Black man's class." Rainwater stated after the forum that he was actually supportive of this kind of programming if it proves to be effective and meets constitutional muster. "If the school is willing to run it, they can do it," Rainwater said. "I'm even willing to say that we need to take another look at it and think about doing it. But again, that hasn't been the way our high schools operate or the way they want to operate with me dictating to them what electives they offer. But I'm more than willing to sit down with them and say 'Here's this approach. How does it look?' We can look at the data and see what kind of impact it really had. I think we can look a little bit to see what happened with those kids during the year last year. But the real evaluation comes with to have a class now and see where they are a year later. Did attendance improve? Did all of those things really happen? The whole purpose of whatever we do -- whether it';s this class or it's the race relations work we're doing -- is to help our African American kids become successful in school, graduate and become successful adults," Rainwater said. "That's what it is all about. When culture or race is interfering with that, we need to find a way to help our teachers who work with our kids so that doesn't happen. And if this is a good tool to do that, then that's what we want to do." When asked about plans to start the class up again, Jenkins replied "I don't know if Ed would agree to run the program at West again." The spirit of the program had been extinguished. |
| African American Centered Pedagogy Curriculum Project A question of race By Jonathan Gramling Part 2 of 2 |
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| Teacher Tina Jenkins (l) and MMSD Superintendent Art Rainwater discuss the controversy over the cancellation of Jenkins' class at West High School. |