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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 56 AUGUST 14, 2019
MY
KYTYN
:^ COUR
TESY^ OF^ SUBJECT.^HO
OVER:^ CHELSEAAR
CH
ER.Educationorchestra and theater programs.
The students are 40 percent
white, 35 percent Latinx, 8 per-
cent black and 7 percent Asian.
The school enjoys a partner-
ship with nearby Santa Monica
College and UCLA.
SOCES
18605 Erwin St., Reseda
The Sherman Oaks Center for
Enriched Studies is actually in
Reseda, offering 10 AP courses
including computer science
and studio art. Says Corporate
production designer Dina Lipton:
“They do a good job balanc-
ing excellent academics with
extracurriculars,” such as an
engineering and robotics team
that became national champi-
ons in 2018, and a strong band
program. The magnet school,
which receives 1,750 applications
for 250 openings, has a study
body that’s 41 percent white,
35 percent Latinx, 4 percent
African American and 15 per-
cent Asian. In 2018, there were
11 acceptances at UCLA and nine
at Berkeley.
VALLEY INTERNATIONAL
PREPARATORY
20801 Vintage St., Chatsworth
The faculty, formed out of
charter iLead NoHo’s closure,
has helped kids into Columbia,
Brown, Yale and Dartmouth in
the past few years. VIP’s speech
and debate team has won four
national championships and was
recently ranked No. 2 in the U.S.
Blending rigorous standards
with progressive approaches,
the curriculum includes eight
AP classes, one-on-one advisory
periods, and individualized
learning plans and college coun-
seling. Says Alex Weingarten, an
entertainment lawyer at Venable,
whose daughter started there
after Buckley, “VIP really feels
like the best parts of a private
school: a small community,
passionate teachers and out-
standing academics.” Located
at Chatsworth High, the school
plans to move into its own facil-
ity in 2021 in Northridge.
P
arents often talk about choosing a school
to get “the best” for our kids. But what
does that “best” mean — and what if it
comes at the expense of someone else’s kid?
Schools in the U.S. are arguably more segre-
gated now than before the Civil Rights movement.
California has the dubious distinction of having
the third-most-segregated schools in the nation
for black students and the most segregated
schools for Latinx students. Children of color are
predominantly isolated into schools of poverty,
while their white and/or privileged peers enjoy
greater access to highly resourced schools. In
L.A., schools separated by a mile can have vastly
unequal access to resources and opportunities.
This means that our individual choices often
support a system that further advantages the
advantaged. (The very idea of a “best schools
list” perpetuates inequitable schools by guiding
parents to ignore the systemic impact of their
choices.) While the U.S. has ostensibly been
working toward desegregation for 65 years, these
efforts are failing in part due to what parents
think a good education should look like. The
research is clear that test scores, for example, tell
us more about the demographics of the families
in a school than it does about the integrity of its
teaching. The research is also clear that, despite
what we may believe, “sought-after schools” actu-
ally do not improve student test scores.
Attending an integrating school — one inwhich yours may be the only or one of a few white
and/or privileged families — can (but doesn’t
necessarily) mean that your child won’t have
impressive-sounding academic programs, after-
school enrichment activities or big parent-booster
budgets. But choosing an integrating school is
not so much sacrifice as it is a reprioritizing what
matters in building a world we want
our children to be adults in.
Along with many parents in L.A.,
my partner (a showrunner) and I
decided against raising our children
in a bubble. We have enrolled our
children (now ages 14 and 16) in schools that
serve disproportionately high numbers of free
or reduced-fee lunch and non-native English-
speaking students. Our experience has been
transformative, and while it has not always been
easy or comfortable, we are grateful. Even as our
kids have gone without field trips or art in the
classroom, the conversations we have as a family
about justice and inequality, about how the world
works and our place in it, have been critical in our
kids’ development.
To foster a larger dialogue around school seg-
regation, I founded a national nonprofit in 2015.
Integrated Schools is an all-volunteer, grassroots
movement of anti-racist parents who are work-
ing toward meaningful equity in their schools.
With our podcast, video-conferenced book clubs
and chapters across the U.S., we are helping to
create a counternarrative to forces that perpetu-
ate segregation, and to build a community of
parents who are “living their values.” By opting to
integrate, one family will not “save” a school nor
anyone in it, but we can refuse to contribute to
the hoarding of opportunity. For those of us who
care about justice, we do not have to win a dirty
game. For those of us who care about our children
and our neighbors’ children, we know that this is
not a question of sacrifice, but of deeply reflect-
ing on what “best” really means.At a School Where ‘You May
Be the Only White Family’
A founder of L.A. nonprofit Integrated Schools and partner to a reality TV producer shares the
benefits of ‘refusing to contribute to the hoarding of opportunity’ By Courtney Everts MykytynMykytynHoover
Elementary
in Westlake
has a
student
population
that is
94 percent
Latinx,
a similar
demographic
breakdown
to the school
Mykytyn’s
kids attend.GUEST COLUMN