The Politics of School Rezoning in the “Cradle of a Nation”: Racial Segregation, Settler Colonialism, and Private Property in Williamsburg, Virginia

Abstract

Rezoning public school attendance boundaries offers important possibilities for promoting school integration; however, it tends to generate contentious debates, often with white, middle-class parents furiously opposing school reassignments. In this paper, we ask: what logics and discourses do race and class-privileged parents draw on to justify educational inequities, and how are such discourses employed? To explore these questions we analyze a high school rezoning controversy in the Williamsburg-James City County School Division in Eastern Virginia. We conducted a content analysis of public commentary collected from school board meetings, two district-administered surveys, and social media and local news outlets. We bring together Critical Race and Settler Colonial theoretical perspectives to argue that white, middle-class parents and residents mobilized the intertwined logics of private property and whiteness to claim entitlement to the highly ranked Jamestown High School. They did so by combining well-worn colorblind, deficiency frameworks with argumentative logics that leveraged their position as property owners in affluent neighborhoods. First, they linked home ownership in expensive, residential subdivisions to “responsible parenting,” “freedom,” and “choice.” Second, they constructed the social bonds and “community” forged in overwhelmingly white, high-cost, residential sub-divisions as valuable to schools, making residents deserving of assignment to “the best school.” This analysis sheds crucial light on the discursive linkages between color-blind racism and white private property and how white, class-privileged parents mobilize these deeply intertwined logics to defend entitlement to educational resources.

Drawn Into Policy: A Systematic Review of School Rezoning Rationales, Processes, and Outcomes

“…Rather than confront underlying “thorny issues of race, ethnicity and class differences,” White parents resisted rezoning plans for integration by using a common refrain echoed in previous debates—that is, “they have the right to live in a neighborhood of their choice and send their children to homogenous schools” (p. 241). Recent studies in Virginia (Castro, Parry, et al, 2022; Castro, Siegel-Hawley, et al, Mendez et al, 2022) report similar themes expressed by White and affluent parents. Importantly, these studies interrogate race, and specifically Whiteness and White racial interests, in ways that challenge assumptions that White parents, despite espousing value for racially and ethnically diverse schools, will always support policy mechanisms like rezoning to achieve educational equity (Evans, 2021).…”

“…That is, under a rezoning policy process that interrogates community power dynamics, what collective values are prioritized? Recent studies illustrate that values of “parents’ rights,” “responsible parenting,” “freedom,” and “choice,” as well as a sense of entitlement to educational resources, narrate community members’ fear of being disadvantaged by rezoning (Castro, Parry, et al, 2022; Mendez et al, 2022). CPA’s emphasis on policy “winners” and “losers” allows researchers to assess barriers to collective action in rezoning.…”

“…Quantitative studies that examine linkages between schools and neighborhoods to determine the effects of adjusting SABs are surely necessary, but complementing these studies with explanatory frameworks or methodological approaches that account for the cumulative impacts of race/racism and school and neighborhood segregation would strengthen the field. Future research might integrate critical quantitative approaches (e.g., Tabron, 2019), critical race spatial analysis (e.g., Morrison et al, 2017), and other qualitative or sociological research (Castro, Parry, et al, 2022; Castro, Siegel-Hawley, et al, 2022; Mendez et al, 2022) to unearth broader insight to improve rezoning. The field is also ripe for longitudinal studies to map the long-term social and academic outcomes associated with rezoning.…”

“…Rezoning is also explored in the school choice literature as choice policies enable schools to draw from multiple catchment areas, disrupting how students are traditionally assigned to schools (e.g., Siegel-Hawley, 2014; Tannenbaum, 2013). Additionally, given that school rezoning is a policy issue governed by local school boards, the topic is connected to theoretical and conceptual work on the politics of education (Castro, Parry, et al, 2022; Mendez et al, 2022). Another line of research explores motivations and inhibitors for undertaking school rezoning.…”