As the presidency of Barack Obama comes to a close, the schools across the country named to honor him and first lady Michelle Obama paint a panorama of a divided nation, one separated by race, class, and place.
Many are located in places like Normandy, a struggling St. Louis-area enclave where unemployment rates are high and high school graduation rates are low.
The schools here are among the poorest and most segregated in Missouri. All but a handful of the 400 students at Normandy鈥檚 are black; almost all of them qualify for free or low-cost meals.
The racial and economic segregation that persists here can be found in Obama-named schools across the nation, from Los Angeles to Long Island.
More than 90 percent of students who attend the namesake schools are black and Latino. Fewer than 4 percent are white.
69传媒 at the Obama schools are nearly 60 percent more likely to qualify for free or low-cost meals than their peers nationwide, according to an Education Week Research Center analysis of federal data.
A rural-urban divide also stratifies the schools: scattered throughout 11 states, the Obama schools are almost exclusively found in urban and suburban areas with 250,000 or more residents. They are concentrated on the East and West coasts and in metropolitan areas in the country鈥檚 mid-section, including three in the suburbs of President Obama鈥檚 adopted hometown of Chicago. None have cropped up in the small towns and sparsely populated areas that cover wide swaths of the country.
鈥淲hen you look at the larger geography of naming schools, we do see a reaffirmation or reinforcement of segregated boundaries,鈥� said , a geographer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 鈥淪chool names matter. It鈥檚 part of our larger way that we imagine ourselves and project our identities onto places and onto people.鈥�
鈥榃hat We Could Be鈥�
Naming schools for presidents has been Normandy鈥檚 tradition. The district鈥檚 two other elementary schools honor Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The names of James Garfield and William Henry Harrison graced buildings in the past. When those schools were named, Normandy was a mostly white, middle-class bedroom community. Now more than 95 percent of the students in the district are black.
The idea to name the district鈥檚 brand-new elementary school for the country鈥檚 first black president came from those students.
Choosing Obama鈥檚 name felt different, more meaningful, students and staff say. Not only because he鈥檚 black, but because his legacy is of the moment, not confined to a grainy black-and-white video or history book.
鈥淣ot only is this person a president, but this person looks like us. It represented what we could be or what the kids could grow up and do,鈥� said Jacquette Boykin, a 6th grade English/language arts teacher at the school. 鈥淭hey can鈥檛 put their eyes on Kennedy or Washington. They鈥檙e pictures in a book. But they can see Barack Obama.鈥�
And what the students see matters, said Cozy Marks III, who was the president of Normandy鈥檚 school board when the district chose the Obama name.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not just the name change. It鈥檚 where it was, it鈥檚 how it looks,鈥� Marks said. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 build it in the middle of the best neighborhood, we built it where there were derelict houses, where the need is greatest.鈥�
Boykin still remembers the excitement surrounding the school鈥檚 opening in 2011. Local politicians lined up to christen the new, $11 million building, a beacon of hope in a blighted neighborhood. Desperate to enroll their children in the school, some parents tried using fake addresses.
鈥淭he kids鈥� demeanor was different, the parents鈥� demeanor was different,鈥� said Boykin, who has worked in the district for 16 years.
In the five years since, Boykin has witnessed some of that early enthusiasm fade.
鈥淵eah, but our school is very transient,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou still feel proud saying 鈥業 work at Barack Obama Elementary.鈥� 鈥�
The sense of hope and optimism that the new school and its aspirational name brought to the Normandy community remains. But the harsh realities that are present in so many high-poverty, segregated schools endure.
Teachers and staff members have shuttled in and out. The school has already had two principals. 69传媒 come to school consistently, but their performance on tests hasn鈥檛 changed much.
Not all schools bearing the Obama name are struggling under the strains of poverty and segregation.
At the in Dallas, high expectations have sparked high achievement. Two graduating classes in, alumni at the all-boys magnet in the Oak Cliff neighborhood have collectively earned millions of dollars in college scholarships.
笔颈迟迟蝉产耻谤驳丑鈥檚 is a high-poverty school that offers International Baccalaureate courses to students. A new technology-themed magnet elementary school鈥攏amed 鈥攐pened just this month in Dekalb County, Ga., a district in suburban Atlanta.
Still, other schools named for Obama have struggled with high suspension rates, chronic absenteeism, and access to high-quality courses.
鈥淐hanging names can be important symbolic moves, but they don鈥檛 do anything to change the structural inequalities and racial inequalities facing schools and school systems around the country,鈥� said , an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Avoiding Political Names
More schools have already been named for Obama than any president since Ronald Reagan.
But a majority of districts nationwide do not have a single school named after a commander-in-chief, a Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in 2007. Instead, school-naming committees have embraced names unburdened by politics鈥攕ome of the more popular monikers are inspired by nature or geography.
Naming schools for public figures is one way to ensure public spaces reflect the nation鈥檚 diversity. When the name of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or labor organizer Cesar Chavez is attached to a school or street, the push often comes from the black or Hispanic community. A different demographic鈥攐ften white Southerners鈥攎akes its voice heard when communities fight back against efforts to rename schools that honor Confederate generals or slave owners, said Alderman, of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Alderman has . Like the Obama schools, they are mostly in central cities, serving primarily low-income black and Hispanic students. His research into the King-named schools delved into a late 1990s debate in the district in Riverside, Calif., where parents protested the school board鈥檚 decision to name a new high school for the slain civil rights leader. The parents, Alderman said, feared that the school, where two-thirds of the students were white, would be perceived as a 鈥渂lack鈥� school, harming their children鈥檚 chances of getting into top colleges.
鈥淎 lot of people in the 1990s used the term 鈥榗ultural wars鈥� to typify this struggle to claim American identity, the American past, and assert one鈥檚 vision of what we should be remembering about America,鈥� Alderman said. 鈥淢aybe the term is no longer fashionable, but the struggle itself has not gone away.鈥�
For Scott, the University of California, Berkeley professor, debates over school names are a realistic portrayal of the struggles over race and education鈥攐nes that will continue long after Obama leaves office.
鈥淔or far too many years, children went to school and continue to go to schools named after figures who would鈥檝e been hostile to them,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e at a very interesting historical moment where people are attempting to face history.鈥�
Metropolitan St. Louis has been at the epicenter of many of these conversations. A white police officer shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in August 2014, eight days after his graduation from Normandy High School. His death ignited weeks of protests in neighboring Ferguson.
Thousands of students in Normandy and similar districts around St. Louis are in the middle of a tug-of-war between state leaders and courts over a law that allows families to transfer out of failing schools.
鈥淲hen you come into St. Louis, you see the disparities, the stark disparities around housing and income and education,鈥� said , a professor of urban education at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.
In his farewell address to the nation last week, Obama said that hopes that his presidency would usher in a post-racial America were 鈥渘ever realistic.鈥� That is certainly evident in America鈥檚 public schools.
More than 60 years after the Supreme Court鈥檚 historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, the nation鈥檚 public schools are re-segregating at a rapid pace. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report released in May found that the percentage of public schools in high-poverty and the percentage comprised of mostly black or Hispanic students have more than doubled since 2000. The percentage of all schools in which 75 percent or more of students are of the same racial or socio-economic class grew from 9 percent to 16 percent, roughly one in every six schools.
Nearly all the Obama schools fall into that category.
In a May 2014 in Topeka, Kan., the birthplace of Brown, Michelle Obama said segregation is exacerbated by the fact that many schools serving mostly black and Hispanic communities don鈥檛 have equal resources.
Those are the places that Marks, the former Normandy school board president, expects to see more schools embracing the Obama name.
鈥淚n any place you need hope, where everything is not going in the direction you want it to go,鈥� he said, 鈥淚 would expect to see that name.鈥�
