I was raised by two parents who ensured that “choice” would never sound foreign to my brother and me.
My mother, who has been in education for almost three decades, took me shopping for middle schools like most people shop for prom dresses. We looked for only the best fit and design. It had to be academically rigorous enough for her and quirky enough for me to fall in love with it. My mom lined up two or three schools for me to shadow, and I began my fifth-grade career at the school where she was principal in southwest Washington, DC., as we waited to learn whether I would be selected through the school’s lottery system.
About two weeks into the school year, I went to my mom’s office, and she told me she received a call from BASIS charter school and that the school had a seat open for me. As we walked down to the car, she left the most consequential decision of my academic career in a fifth-grader’s hand by asking me, “What do you want to do?”
Naturally, I weighed the pros and cons—leaving the comfort of being the principal’s daughter or spreading my wings to be Ashari—and knew whatever the answer was, the choice was mine. As we got into the car, I told my mother I wanted to go to BASIS and then triple-checked that it was also the school with no uniform. It was.
I soon fell in love with the school at 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. BASIS played a large role in turning me into the nerdy, political, articulate woman I am today—a Junior Political Science major at Howard University. I, who find beauty in all nuances of education, explores the world, and fulfills my curiosities as a political theorist on race, identities, ethnicities, and intersections at Howard University, Universidad Autónoma de Occidente in Cali, Colombia, and Universidad Anáhuac in Oaxaca, Mexico.
If my mother, an educator for years, a principal then and now Co-founder and CEO of her own public charter school, could trust a fifth grader to make this choice, why shouldn’t lawmakers trust parents to do what’s best for their kids?
While my story began with the options my parents made sure my brother and I could have, which is indicative of the freedom my ancestors fought for, I owe it to them that choice is the foundation for all. This legacy of education ought to survive us all.
