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| Tim Rogers is the executive editor of D Magazine. |
We were fools, my wife and I, when we bought our house eight years ago. We loved the leafy neighborhood not far from White Rock, and we dug the mid-century design of the house itself. We’ll ride bikes around the lake! The kitchen has a new Jenn-Air cooktop! We’ll take it!
But neither of us gave a single thought to the 2-year-old in our possession. Like, you know, where he might go to school. What can I say? We were new(ish) parents. My wife was working downtown at the time. The boy was going to day care at First Baptist. It didn’t occur to us that one day he’d outgrow not only day care but preschool, too, and that the Baptists don’t mess around when it comes to the Bible. I’ll never forget the look on the woman’s face when, in our kindergarten interview, I asked if the teachers took Genesis literally.
Thus did the time come for us to find a suitable class setting for our 5-year-old. Having myself graduated from Cistercian (Go, Hawks!), I was inclined to go the private route. But prior to freshman year, I did DISD all the way (Lipscomb, Polk, Spence). So I was—I was conflicted.
Then my wife and I visited our neighborhood elementary, Victor H. Hexter. And you know what? The halls were not bathed in golden light. A cherub did not alight on my shoulder and whisper into my ear that this was the ideal place for my son. But the place did feel welcoming. We dropped by unannounced, yet the principal offered to give us a tour. She knew the name of every student she passed. One sixth-grader actually gave her a hug.
That was five years ago. The boy is now in the fourth grade at Hexter. I could go on about how great the school has been for him, about how it’s now rated “exemplary” by the TEA, about how our math team will destroy Lakewood Elementary’s this year. But the best part of the whole experience has been the relationships we’ve formed with our neighbors. We lived across the alley from one family for three years before our sons finally became friends. It happened because they went to the same school.
We tell this story to anyone who has kids. Just the other evening, my wife got a call at home from a mother new to the neighborhood who’d found our information through the PTA. Hearing my wife’s side of the conversation made me laugh. From what I could gather, the concerned mother was inquiring about the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the school but doing so in a way that wasn’t generating the assurance she sought. Finally, my wife came out and said, “Look, there are plenty of middle-class white kids at Hexter.”
I was a little disappointed to hear that. I’ve always considered myself working-class Irish.
