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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > March > 07 > Entry
Our divided city
Take a look at the map at the top of this page. It’s a precinct-by-precinct representation of the Clinton-Obama primary results from Tuesday for all of Montgomery County.
Focus on the center-right portion of the map, where there is a big blotch of dark red across from a wide spread of light and dark blue. That’s the city of Dayton, and that pattern should look familiar.
It is the same pattern we saw on the precinct map the DDN ran last year on the results of Dayton’s school levy. And that underscores, once again, the racial divide in this city.
Four precinct maps from recent elections follow this same pattern — the Rhine McLin-Mike Turner mayoral race of 2001, the McLin-David Bohardt mayoral race of 2005, the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton primary election earlier this week and the 2007 Dayton school levy.
In all these races, heavily black west Dayton voted strongly one way while heavily white east Dayton voted the other way.
In the case of three of those races — McLin-Turner, McLin-Bohardt and now Clinton-Obama — you had black voters primarily voting for a black candidate and white voters primarily voting for a white candidate.
That’s what makes the school levy results so curious. In that race, mostly black west Dayton voters favored the levy while mostly white voters in east Dayton were opposed.
That’s not something you expect to see in a school levy race. You would not expect voters to identify racially when choosing whether to vote yes or no on school levies. It is a rare electoral pattern.
That was the basis of a controversial story we wrote last year about the influence of race on the levy vote.
The Obama-Clinton results only reiterate the questions we raised.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Schools and Politics
Comments
By Riverdale Ghost
March 8, 2008 8:44 PM | Link to this
Sorry, but I must object to this: By Scott Elliott March 7, 2008 10:22 PM Ghost, back in May we ran all those scenarios for the Dayton levy � correlating home ownership, home values, income, etc., with voting patterns. It wasn�t even close. Racial makeup of the precinct was the strongest correlation with voting patterns. You have to believe Dayton is the home to the most extraordinary coincidence in statstics to believe race is not a factor in the four elections I�ve cited. ~~~~ My reading of Dayton’s political thought for the last twenty-five or so years is: vote black OR vote Republican; if you have to choose between the two, weigh in other factors such as “who’s turn is it?” Certainly it is true that there are avowed racists in all races and certainly it is true that many white Democrats get elected to local office; but not in either case is it simply because it’s the wisest or trendiest thought. Black people are not stupid — many are very well educated. And, one reality is, they quite clearly understand two cultures, their own and yours, which is more than can be said for most white people, me included.By Buford
March 8, 2008 6:54 PM | Link to this
Concerning voting for either of the major Democratic candidates. I am a registered Democrat, but ALWAYS vote for the person I most believe in. In the choice of Hillary or Obama, I don’t much like either one but I consider Obama more acceptable - and as a white male senior citizen I voted for him.By charterschoolhater
March 8, 2008 6:21 PM | Link to this
Point of clarification here. Oldprof never did offer to me to run for school board. He did however suggest in one of his previous posts, that if I was so displeased with the direction of the board of ed, and the district, I should jump in and try to help by running to become one. I agree with him. That is why I may run next time. Then I can go on the record and be held accountable to the electorate in a way that Dr. Mack will not and does not have too.By charterschoolhater
March 8, 2008 6:16 PM | Link to this
A couple of points here. To MC. There is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of the staff of the DPS are fine people who really care about the children they serve. These are the teachers, bus drivers, aides, food service, secretaries and maintenance staff. They are the heroes. They also have a big thing in common. They are the ones in the trenches who have daily contact with the children. My beef is not with them. It is with the bloated and incompetent administration that set the policy and direction of this district. They have failed our children. And to the board of ed. When will you hold Mack and his cronies accountable for the lack of success in the academic and financial affairs of this district? To oldporf. I agree that modest and I might add very modest ones have been made in the academic area. We are still waiting on Mack to cut Ludlow Building administration to a bare bones. He has chose cut the building administrative staff. Wrong answer. The staffing needs to be where they have the most contact with students. That is at the building level. But how long is it going to take to get to where we belong? By the way oldprof. What corporate CEO continues to be employed year after year, while his company still is losing money? Only Dr. Mack. What I mean in his case. DPS is, despite these modest gains, still a long long way away from being educationally effective. Guess what? Mack is still here. MAck is probably a nice guy. He is by his long track record though, not an effective CEO. One more thing oldprof. If we continue to get good board members like Joe Lacey and hopefully get rid of bad ones like Ms Issacs, I might just take you up on your offer to run for school board. We are getting some lively debate here. Thats what is good about this blog.By MC
March 8, 2008 4:11 PM | Link to this
Charterschoolhater, you have certainly picked the right moniker, “hater.” The Dayton Public Schools have the issues they have because of the population they serve. Those folks who send their children out of the district would, for the most part, enjoy sending their children to the public schools and spending their thousands of dollars on other things, but it is the negative influence of all those “good folks” kids that drive them away. The staff serving the DPS in the school buildings is mostly first rate (you will find bad apples everywhere) but no matter how good they are they cannot combat the poor parenting, neglect and abuse that leads to such behavior problems like you can’t even imagine. So, please, stop blaming a school system for what they cannot control. You are correct though in pointing out that DPS wiil not change for the better but that is because the folks in this fine city are living off of the system, doing their drugs, and running around doing everything else but paying attention to their own kids and the things that really matter, like an education. Dayton will eventually implode, not explode becaue the city’s infrastructure is weakened by all of the leeches of society. What happens in the society is merely reflected in the public school system. By the way, the doctor I see, the veterinarian I take my pets to and my attorney were all graduates of the Dayton Public School District. Oh, and before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, of course not all those “fine folks” in Dayton are leeches just too many in this town.By Rick
March 8, 2008 1:59 PM | Link to this
Scott, I just talked with a caucasion father whose son left Stivers because he felt racial hostility from another student. Rather than discipline that student, the school succored her. How do you think those parents will vote in the next levy? You refuse to report on the significant discipline problems in the DPS; the lack of discipline has a significant effect on how those in East Dayton voted on the levy.By DavidSS2
March 8, 2008 1:04 PM | Link to this
This points out how the blacks blindly vote for blacks. That’s how we got the current mayor and some commission members. The school vote is because there is a group that is the source of the problems and view the schools as theirs. Until you change the responsibility of the parents of the kids and weed out the many, imbedded ineffective teachers and administrators (top down) you won’t change the schools. Don’t act like the schools failed the kids; parents have gotten the schools they wanted through the decades.By Oldprof
March 8, 2008 12:43 PM | Link to this
Hater, you seem to be stuck in 2002. Dayton Public Schools HAVE improved. Their test scores keep rising, their graduation rates are far higher, and more of their students are going on to higher education. Still room to improve, certainly, but the main reason that DPS isn’t getting proper funding is a stubborn state legislature and an equally stubborn refusal among many political conservatives to acknowledge that public education works when it’s properly managed and funded.By Buford
March 8, 2008 11:14 AM | Link to this
Dayton and DPS will continue having problems with school levies, not in any way helped with another recent State Supreme Court decision that property tax reliance as a primary source of school funding is unconstitutional. Our Governor, the Legislative electees, and members of the educational community are sticking their collective heads in the sand to believe the remaining property owners are not fed up to their eyeballs will agencies and organizations reaching into citizen pocketbooks for more money. Dayton has lost roughly 100,000 citizens over the past 20 years and DPS has lost essentially 10,000 students - and those numbers are likely to continue a downward spiral for some time to come. To be fair, DPS most likely DOES have some teachers who care about teaching. However, their efforts are impacted by the student body, lack of parental involvement, discipline problems, and supposed lack of support from principals and management. Dayton pays more and gets less bang for the buck. Fewer property owners to pay, more public assistance who do not have to pay - any surprise that financial support or interest is lacking?By Dayton Resident
March 8, 2008 10:51 AM | Link to this
The stats are hard to argue. When I read comments like “I don’t feel” on “in my opinion” it flys in the face of the cold hard facts. The cold facts are that Dayton is a racially divided city. Does income play a role—yes. Does housing values play a role—Yes. If DPS wants this levy to have a snowball’s chance to pass, it must comes to grips with the fact that Dayton is racially divided. I don’t think being racially divided is the worst thing if you know where people are coming from. I’m not advocating segregation, however, as a African American male, I’m okay with a white person voting for Hilary because she’s white-(i think that’s an oversimplication) That doesn’t make that white middle class woman a racist just like me voting for Barak doesn’t make me a racist. Let’s keep it real people.By Joe Lacey
March 8, 2008 10:45 AM | Link to this
I would say that there are some very big differences between the levy and primary maps. Harrison Twp, Trotwood, Jefferson Twp and FROC which are all solid Obama supporters, all opposed the levy. On the east side Patterson Park and Shroyer Park voted for Obama but voted no on the levy by some of the higher margins. In DeWeese Park Obama came pretty close but the levy failed by some of our higher margins as well. Huffman Historic gave the levy close to 40%, pretty high for the east side, but voted for Clinton with about the same margin as its surrounding neighborhoods. Overall I think the map reflects Obama performing better among whites with higher income levels while I don’t think that can be said about the levy.By Mary
March 7, 2008 11:39 PM | Link to this
I am a political junkie who watches shows like Meet the Press, Reliable Sources, George Stephanopolous, the CNN evening shows, etc even when it is not election season. I have watched all the pundits analyze groups of voters in this year’s presidential race by ethnicity, region, gender, race, north south, urban, rural, college education, income, etc. The group that apparently most consistently votes as a pronounced voting block in this year’s presidential campaign are African Americans for Obama in the 80%-90% tile and up range. Does that make this group the most racist voting block? Asians, whites, men and women and other groups have their tendencies, as well but they are not as pronounced and more in the 50-60%, or maybe 70% range, but closer to the center split than the African American block. I have noticed white men are somewhat more likely to vote Obama than Clinton. Does that mean sexism is still a stronger emotion among some white men than racism? There are many ways and angles to look at these numbers.By Scott Elliott
March 7, 2008 10:22 PM | Link to this
Ghost, back in May we ran all those scenarios for the Dayton levy — correlating home ownership, home values, income, etc., with voting patterns. It wasn’t even close. Racial makeup of the precinct was the strongest correlation with voting patterns. You have to believe Dayton is the home to the most extraordinary coincidence in statstics to believe race is not a factor in the four elections I’ve cited.By Riverdale Ghost
March 7, 2008 8:43 PM | Link to this
Why do you assume black voters voted for Obama because he’s black and white voters voted for Clinton because she’s white? What you really need to work with are maps of housing values and income level.By charterschoolhater
March 7, 2008 8:43 PM | Link to this
In my opinion the school levy had absolutely nothing to do with race. The breakdown you see does however have an explanation. Most of the people in West Dayton’s choose to send their children to Dayton Public schools whereas the most residents of East Dayton either do not have children in the schools or choose to send them to private/charter, or they home school them. Either way, people whose children attend the public school would naturally be most predisposed to supporting them. What is puzzling to me is that the folks in the East have figured out that the Dayton Schools have utterly failed our children. The people out West haven’t got there yet. They will though. With vouchers now available to nearly every child DPS student in West Dayton, it is only a matter of time before massive numbers bolt for private schools. That process has already begun happening. I have heard that the enrollment at Mary Queen of Peace school is up dramatically over last year. I am no supporter of the charter movement. However, it is all but evident that the Dayton Schools will not get any better. This is not they can’t but they will not. So the children in West Dayton deserve the same good education that many in the East are getting. Vouchers will give these good families who cannot afford private school tuition that well deserved opportunity. Isn’t it ironic that every high school student can attend a private high school on a voucher too? Just shows you how far the Dayton Schools have sunk in quality. What a shame. Scott why are you trying to make this an issue of race? It is more an issue of parents wanting a first rate quality education for their children. By the way, the failing of Dayton Schools is why the levy will never pass. It seems that many board members still believe new schools are the cure all to that which ails this district. It is more much complex than that. I am sorry to say it appears that the Dayton Public Schools are terminal.