As a person who’s worked in schools my entire adult life, and who has traveled to schools across the country, in fact across the world, really researching models of the best spaces to create young people who can be magical in the world that is yet to come.

I reached this point a couple years back where I had to find a school where I would send my children to. I had the gift or the curse of knowing too much about schools. Understanding how they work and who works within them with admissions with ambitions and how they greatly vary from what they say, when you get into the classroom and you understand the people who are there.

In all my travels and all my research, I found two places in the world where I would send my children to where I thought would be the kind of place that I would want them to grow, that I would want them to thrive in, and I would want to be a part of that community.

One is across the country and in San Diego, California and the other is MCS. I chose this place for my children because it’s not just about grades, and learning empty knowledge but it’s about growth, it’s about meaning making, it’s about applying what you learn to real life and making connections between what you’re learning and making the world a more just place. And that’s why you know my family chose to go to school.

I’ve been asked to consult a number of schools across New York City some that have themselves as comparable to MCS and I’ve worked with them to help to address issues that would never be a thing of MCS. Issues around diversity, and about certain voices being marginalized LGBTQ youth not feeling welcomed, about black youth questioning their existence and this is the thing I have to worry about.

I chose MCS because this is a place where diversity isn’t just a buzzword. It’s not just some rhetoric, but it’s not just an add-on. It’s woven into every lesson. It’s a place where children are not just prepared for empty exams. They will be prepared for life.

Our babies learn to think critically, they learn to speak boldly, they learn to move through the world with a certain knowledge and empathy. You see this when you see them in eighth grade and their voices are so proud, and so strong, and so powerful.  And so I want my children to be in a place that reflects the value that the world needs.  They’re learning is joyful and curiosity encouraged,  and equity is like a given because we believe in that and that’s what MCS offers.

I’m also deeply committed to the school because of how strongly it is connected to when committed to Dr. Martin Luther King‘s, Gus Towbridge founder inspired by Dr. King. He woke Dr. King‘s narratives a legacy into the into the school and I find it so ironic in this season and this time that we are in the world the time that we are in the school, what a doctor King‘s quotes is the thing we all need to hold onto the sustain, he said “The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, it is where they stand in terms of challenge and controversy”, and these last few months of MCS have been moments of challenge because of the financial issues around our school, but here’s the financial issue on their own to commitment.

The values the strength of the community that even when we are disagreeing, we are able to articulate our voices and ways that we hear each each other - nowhere else in the world has that, and so as you make your final decisions, or as you may need to be reaffirmed in your decision, or if this is just lost on you and you’ve made other decisions… Know that as for me in my house, we choose MCS.

We choose to stay because there’s nowhere else in the world like it. We choose to stay because I’ve seen what the graduates look like when they graduate sound like when they graduate we look at the world once they leave us, I choose to stay because it matters because an era of Trump where fear has become the topic Dijour, I choose not to be led by fear, but by possibility.  Possibility of what we built as a community sustain any partnership as long as we remain committed to it and consumed love and care for our community in our children so we choose to stay at MCS”