Making Waves: Districts as Policy Mediators in the Flow of School Gentrification

Gentrification and Neighborhoods

Sociologists, urban planners, and geographers have conceptualized neighborhood gentrification as a process rife with non-linear stages and phases (Bates, 2013; Clay, 1979; Green, Germain et al., 2020; Moskowitz, 2017; Shaw, 2008). Here, we draw primarily on Clay’s (1979) and Moskowitz’s (2017) germinal models of neighborhood gentrification. We first acknowledge that gentrification can emerge from a number of origins within racial capitalism such as private investments, broader market forces, and racial-cultural shifts in residential preferences.

However, neighborhood gentrification can also start when governments create real estate opportunities to prepare traditionally racially segregated neighborhoods (e.g., Black neighborhoods) for gentrification through zoning policies and incentives to gain returns on investments in such neighborhoods (Moskowitz, 2017). In turn, this creates opportunities for the first group of gentrifiers, who are often white and middle class, to move into Black and other communities of color (Clay, 1979). As a result, additional gentrifiers are attracted to the neighborhood because of new investments in institutions and infrastructure. Knowledge of these new investments begins to spread and contributes to increasing housing prices. Then, gentrifiers start taking over critical positions in neighborhood organizations, and through these organizations, they start making demands for additional resources for the neighborhood (Clay, 1979). This starts to solidify local white and middle to upper middle class power interests in neighborhoods. As neighborhood gentrification continues to take hold, the gentrification starts to proliferate into adjacent, less gentrified neighborhoods. Finally, “glocal” gentrification occurs, which is when local neighborhoods start to attract global investments because of the rate of return that they can generate. These aspects of neighborhood gentrification are essential to understand because they can shape the institutions located within them, such as schools.

Gentrification and Schools

In connecting neighborhood gentrification and schools, Posey-Maddox et al. (2014) put forth an important conceptualization of school gentrification. According to these scholars, school gentrification describes (a) the influx of white middle and upper middle class families into schools of color, (b) the economic and material improvements that can be part of these families’ inclusion into the school, (c) the shifts in school culture, and (d) the exclusion of students and families of color who were traditionally part of the school community.

Moreover, prior research on gentrification and its effects on schools has commonly examined the decisions of individuals such as parents and consumers (DeSena, 2006; Posey-Maddox, 2014; Roda & Wells, 2013; Stillman, 2012). In a neoliberal, political economy framing of gentrification (which is still highly racialized), individual consumers are positioned as the primary drivers of economic trends—which translate into major waves of new investments—through their tastes and preferences (Shaw, 2008; Smith, 1979). As a result, a fair amount of research on school gentrification has importantly echoed this trend by prioritizing parents’ school choices as contributors of gentrification (Bischoff & Tach, 2018; Pearman & Swain, 2017; Posey-Maddox, 2014; Roda & Wells, 2013). Individuals’ decisions of where to live, where to enroll their students, and any tensions between the two certainly impact school gentrification. At the same time, district-level actors’ decisions within these increasingly racially marketized landscapes likewise influences the choices available to parents. Indeed, districts funnel different resources to campuses, and make decisions regarding school openings, closures and attendance boundaries.

Districts’ Roles as Mediators

Studies that examine school districts as actors argue that their institutional role provides a mediating and “sense-giving” structure for educators and families to understand how educational policies affect their schools (Foldy et al., 2008; Sutherland, 2020). Central office leaders and school board trustees, for example, make sense of policy information (e.g., federal mandates, demographic changes, etc.) as it relates to the school district. In turn, how new information affects district policies, conditions, and activities is translated to stakeholders through district “sense-giving” (Coburn, 2005; Latham Sikes, 2020; Spillane et al., 2002; Weick, 1995). Such sense-giving is not an a-racial process, rather it is one that is deeply shaped by contexts of racism, racialization, power, and oppression (e.g., Evans, 2007).

A primary example of this is how school districts make and give sense about race and racial segregation in schools (Diamond et al., 2021; Diem et al., 2016). Under federal mandates to desegregate schools, school boards and district administrators interpreted court decisions to create new policies for districts to either comply or strategically avoid desegregation orders (Anderson, 2016). District racialized sense-giving and responses to desegregation remapped how schools serving Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, and white students were perceived, valued, and resourced (Diamond et al., 2021; Horsford, 2010; Patterson, 2001). Today, the legacy of this sense-giving appears in the racial logics mapped across districts concerning academic tracking and opportunity hoarding (Lewis & Diamond, 2015), school discipline (Irby, 2018), and student achievement outcomes (Turner, 2015, 2020).

To this end, in education policy contexts, district-level actors, including principals, serve a dual role as both sense-makers and sense-givers by developing policies in order to respond to racial, socio-political changes in and around school districts (Evans, 2007; Holme et al., 2014; Turner, 2015, 2020). Indeed, gentrification is an important racial, socio-political change that school districts make meaning about (Cucchiara, 2013; Diem et al., 2019). School districts as institutional actors frequently become a primary sense-maker that issue policies and adjust educational practices to respond to racial demographic change (Cooper, 2009; Evans, 2007; Turner, 2020). This is also the case for gentrification. For example, Cucchiara (2013) details how the School District of Philadelphia was an active institutional actor of gentrification. The district used a “marketing campaign, changes to school district administrative and admissions procedures, and increased resources” to attract and offer gentry parents increased school choice options (Cucchiara, 2008, p. 165). Moreover, because public schools serve all students within their boundaries, demographic changes in a community are often felt in school districts which can affect campus enrollment, demands for certain educational programs, and alter historic racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic compositions of neighborhood schools (Evans, 2007; Irby, 2018; Pearman, 2019).

In addition, school districts make major local policy decisions that affect their surrounding communities. For example, districts levy property taxes, determine the opening, consolidation, and closing of school campuses (Ewing & Green, 2022), and account for housing developments (Erickson, 2016; Rothstein, 2017). These decisions shape the local educational landscape by affecting housing affordability, development projects, and how special programs or campuses are accessible to students in the district (Jordan & Gallagher, 2015; Posey-Maddox, 2014), especially in contexts of neighborhood gentrification. It follows that these decisions influence and respond to mounting pressures of school gentrification as the educational landscape undergoes demographic changes.

In sum, from these bodies of research we know that school districts function as institutional actors who make sense of and respond to larger community changes like gentrification. Principals’ perceptions of these district dynamics are essential because they implement policy decisions that are handed down from the district level. In doing so, these responses can impact gentrification in schools. We also know that schools can experience gentrification, and that the process can be related to, yet distinct, from the process that affects neighborhoods.

Collective Case Study

This collective case study examined two district sites to interrogate the process of school gentrification amidst city-wide gentrification. As a collective case study, the sites each are undergoing school gentrification as determined by gentrification metrics explained further below (Miles et al., 2014). Yet, each site also offers distinct features in how the district experiences school gentrification, and how principals mediate that process in their respective contexts. This design yields a richer understanding of how school-level leaders mediate specific policy decisions by their districts related to school gentrification pressures.

Sampling Procedures

Given the purpose of this study, we wanted to identify school districts and cities that were experiencing gentrification. As such, we used purposive sampling to include school districts and cities in this study that adhered to the following: (a) located in one of ten most gentrified cities in the U.S. according to the number of neighborhoods that have experienced gentrification since 2000 (Brummet & Reed, 2019; Maciag, 2015) and (b) the local school district has publicly acknowledged that gentrification is influencing their district and concerned about addressing it (e.g., through school board minutes, district announcements, district billboards, news interviews, online or print articles, etc.). In identifying these locations, our aim was not to generalize our findings. Instead, we set out to develop rich and nuanced understandings of the role of school districts within the context of highly gentrified cities.

We used several indicators to identify two gentrified cities based on census data (Bates, 2013; Freeman, 2005, 2016; Maciag, 2015 see Green, Germain et al., 2020 for detail). We first identified racial change by census tracts as a primary indicator because this is commonly used as a stand-in to classify “gentrified neighborhoods” (e.g., Bates, 2013; Choi et al., 2018; Freeman, 2005). We also drew on other metrics used in prior research to identify “gentrified neighborhoods” like median household income, net changes in population, racial demographics shifts, median household values, percentage of individuals with a bachelor’s degree and population to identify gentrification eligible tracts (i.e., those that fall in the bottom 40th percentile compared to the metropolitan statistical area) (Bates, 2013; Maciag, 2015 see Green, Germain et al., 2020 for details). From these criteria, 10 cities met our criteria. We selected Garveyville and Hamerville (pseudonyms) for this study because they met our selection criteria (mentioned above) also had public school systems that actively working to address the impacts of gentrification on each district.

Data Collection

We used interviews as our primary source of data. To identify participants for this study, we emailed the principals of every school located in gentrified census tracts in both districts, which included over 67 participants. Of those that we contacted, only 26 responded and/or were identified through snowball sampling. As such, we conducted interviews with 26 principals across both research sites. All of the interviews were open-ended, semi-structured, and lasted between 60 and 90 minutes each (Creswell, 2013). We conducted all of the interviews in person. Our interviews covered a range of topics related to schools and gentrification, including questions about how they understood gentrification, its impacts on their respective cities, districts, schools, and the neighborhoods where the schools were located, and what, if anything, they and their districts were doing to address the impacts of gentrification on the schools where they worked. We also drew on field notes and analytic memos about each interview participant. In addition, we followed up with participants via email when questions emerged during our analysis of the interviews.

Of our 26 participants, 14 were white, six Latino/a/x, five Black and one principal did not racially identify themselves. Twenty-two of the participants identified as women and four as men. Across grade levels, over 80% were principals at elementary schools, about 8% were middle school principals, and the remaining were principals at either a K-8 building or high school. We also examined documents such as longitudinal district enrollment data, district transfer policies, bond proposals, newspaper and online articles about the cities and districts, and national publications about the school districts. This allowed us to analyze interview data alongside historical and demographic trends to better understand the context of each site.

Data Analysis

The research team analyzed all of the interviews employing a hybrid coding method (Miles et al., 2014). Our first round of coding focused on finding broad themes about gentrification and pressures on schools. During this process, we added additional inductive codes after several conversations as a research team and after re-examining the scholarly literature and the data that we collected (e.g., we added codes about the racial-political contexts). These included codes that inform this paper’s analysis related to the principals’ descriptions of the local policy context and the school districts’ responses to gentrification pressures.

We next created matrices for each participant that included their demographics, years at their school and as a principal, previous job experience, and their responses to the main research questions for this study. We then wrote detailed memos for each participant to understand thematically how they described the impacts of neighborhood gentrification on the schools where they worked. Next, we analyzed our developing findings through the theoretical framing for this study. Using the constant comparative method, we met regularly to discuss the emerging themes and to look for disconfirming evidence in the data as we developed our major findings.

Research Settings: Waves of District-Level Gentrification

Both Garveyville and Hamerville are some of the most gentrified cities in the U.S. (Brummet & Reed, 2019; Maciag, 2015). Given the relationship between cities and local school districts within the context of gentrification (e.g., Cucchiara, 2013), here, we briefly explain how the districts have experienced waves of investment and disinvestment, both as consumers and producers.

For the districts, the disinvestment side of gentrification is characterized by declining student enrollment, more liberal inter- and intra- transfer policies (to keep families from leaving the district so families could easily leave their neighborhood schools and attend schools that were perceived to be “better” in other parts of the district), and school closing and consolidations. Both school districts experienced a period of declining enrollment, although during different time periods. In Hamerville, the public school district experienced sustained declines in student enrollment during the early 2000s. During this time, Hamerville Public Schools lost almost 20% of their student population. Similarly, in the 2010s, the Garveyville public school district has continued to lose students. In fact, between 2013 and 2017, the district lost nearly 20,000 students, mainly to nearby school districts. While Garveyville experienced a slight increase in enrollment during the 2018 school year, by the 2019 to 2020, there were nearly 20,000 students zoned for Garveyville schools that did not attend them.

Across both districts, the loss of students is attributed to a series of factors. In Garveyville, declining enrollment has been attributed to the present manifestation of an early 20th century racist city plan that divested from Black neighborhoods and regulated Black people to live in a certain part of Garveyville, unaffordable housing costs, the growth of charter schools—primarily in North Garveyville—that creates competition for students, and the displacement of families through gentrification. However, the loss of students has most adversely impacted Black students. In the early 1990s, Black students comprised almost 20% of the district, but by 2020 they were less than 10%, which meant that Black student enrollment had decreased over 50% over a 3 decade period. As Black families have left and been displaced from the Garveyville public schools, charter school enrollment has grown nearly 800% between 2010 and 2020 in metro Garveyville.

Moreover, some may also contend that declining enrollment is associated with the increased school choice options in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently, rising costs of housing in Hamerville with the concurrent development of affordable housing in nearby cities may also be contributing factors to declining enrollment. During these periods of declining enrollment, both districts took many actions to retain students, including more liberal transfer policies. At various times, both districts allowed for students from other schools within the district and students from other districts to transfer into both districts. Indeed, this was done in part to stop families from leaving the districts. Additionally, the disinvestment in both districts included school closures. In Hamerville, between 2002 and 2012, the Hamerville school board closed slightly under 20 schools. In 2019, the Garveyville school board voted to close about five schools.

Waves of Investment

In an effort to offset the loss of enrollment and to attract families, both districts engaged in a series of investments that coincided with neighborhood gentrification. On the investment side, both schools passed bonds to offset fiscal declines, increased student enrollment, and reopened and/or modernized closed schools (this had not happened in Garveyville just yet). Throughout out the 2010s, the Hamerville schools passed several bonds, with the most recent bond proposed for over $ 1 billion. In Garveyville, voters also passed a $1 billion bond in the late 2010s. These investments included passing bonds to upgrade facilities and provide additional resources to districts and reopening schools. However, in Hamerville a few schools that were closed have been reopened as student enrollments have continued to increase in Hamerville.

Special Programs

Our findings also suggest that the movement of racialized bodies manifested in multiple ways. In one instance, families and students were pushed out of their neighborhoods because of the rising housing costs due to gentrification. On the other hand, the districts and some schools made investments into programs such as language, afterschool, and gifted programs, which in some cases, helped to bring children to “under-enrolled” schools in gentrified neighborhoods. The use of programs to attract families was something that was more prevalent in Garveyville, however.

As such, our data indicate that special programs located at certain schools helped attract, and thus move, families across the districts’ campuses. This had the effect of making certain campuses more desirable than others because of their special program offerings. A principal in Garveyville noted how the implementation of a new Pre-K program helped to attract new families to the school and thereby increase their enrollment. The principal noted:

Two years ago, we piloted a Pre-K Program. We have two sections of Pre-K and this year for the first time since I’ve been here we actually grew to four Pre-K sections. We are hoping those kids will stay. And we are open to transfers because we’re probably at about 70% capacity in terms of space.

If schools could get families to attend district schools in earlier grades, then the hope was that they would stick around for several years. Similarly, another principal in Garveyville described how her school could “encourage more folks to come if we had a two-way dual language” program, which they were working on so they could get more families to the school.

Interestingly, in Hamerville, following the district’s course of action, some principals also used programs to attract families, however, their aims seemed different. Instead of using programs, specifically language programs, to attract “all students” (in Garveyville this was more of a proxy for white gentry students), they used programs to support students of color who lived in local neighborhoods. A principal described:

I’m really careful about accepting transfers just because the bilingual programs are really popular amongst people of privilege. And so, if we actually allowed transfers to come in, it wouldn’t be a dual program serving the goals that we serve, which are about closing the achievement gap and giving students from this community skills that they can use all throughout their lives. So, it is reflective because the whole community is gentrifying.

Another principal discussed their perception of the district’s need to respond to gentrification through special programs that create more equitable and differentiated instruction. The principal said:

Gentrification’s happening whether we like it or not. And so, the charge would be how do you respond to that, and make sure that the things that we’re doing are not detrimental to students and the education of the students that we serve, and the families, as well. . . So, at some point, someone had to say, yes, campuses should teach the core subjects and these enrichment classes with electives and all that good stuff. . . And so, I would say that in order to deal with this issue of gentrification, the next out of the box thinking should be the issue of equity and differentiation.

New programs, such as social-emotional learning as an enrichment initiative, were part of the first wave of the district’s response to gentrification. Yet, as this principal stated, considerations for “equity and differentiation” needed to be elevated in district decision-making about gentrification’s impacts.

Still, above all, both districts used language programs to attract and retain families at specific campuses across the district. Choices about special program placement mediated the racial dynamics within the district. A principal in Hamerville explained:

. . . There was also this fear of like white flight and [transferring] freely, you know, all that, right? So, all these special programs popped up around here. And so, all the families go there. As a matter of fact, the district still pays for a bus to pick up a whole bus load of white kids right outside my front door and drive them to a language immersion program. So, they’re all kind of veiled in these different opportunities.

Likewise, a principal in Garveyville felt that the district’s decisions to respond to gentrification encouraged her to sustain her language immersion program at her school that served a large proportion of emerging bilingual students. The principal did this even though there was impending pressure to transition to a dual language program:

I would have [had to change my one-way language program] because I would have had no choice . . . Everybody wants dual language. That’s the piece that’s exciting and people want their children to be part of dual language programming in elementary school, who wouldn’t? I mean that’s great. Um, so I think that keeps us for sure in there as long as we have the kids to maintain it.

In sum, dual language immersion programs, which enroll both emergent bilingual students and students for whom English is their native language, also reflected part of a wave of enrichment program investments to attract gentry families to the public schools in both districts. In implementing these programs on their campuses, principals referenced pressure or targeted planning from the district.

Unaffordability

Our findings also indicate the districts’ inactions or failure to respond to urgent pressures from gentrification, contributed to students being displaced from the district (i.e., movement of bodies). Inaction had sometimes an even more profound effect on students’ displacement than other interventions. A principal described how the rising cost of housing, due to gentrification, was displacing families. The principal commented:

I’m sure the declining enrollment is due to the fact that nobody can afford to live here and nobody, if you’re not getting section eight apartments, nobody can even afford an apartment around here. That’s what happens with our refugee families . . . at this apartment complex that is over here . . . If they want to stay or they have to transfer out, then they have to provide their own transportation. They can’t afford the apartments. The apartments are expensive. And they tear down the little houses and rebuild them into these ones that are like that one right across from us. They’re beautiful and they look nice, but nobody can afford to live in it. Nobody that has a regular job and a few kids and definitely can’t.

As housing becomes more expensive, school districts as institutional actors experience the impacts of gentrification, as described here.

Several of the principals attributed the movement of bodies across the districts to institutionalized racism. One principal in explained it as such:

As our enrollment declines, the question is, why should we [the district] keep a campus that has a declining enrollment when we could just use this space for something else that’s flashier, more attractive? So, I think that this is very strong phrase, but this is an example of institutionalized racism because you have people that have little resources, people of color like we have a white kid sprinkled out here or there, and other kids sprinkled out here or there, but these are Brown and Black children that are going to be shuffled around.

Like this principal, another school leader summed it up as racism being the problem more than gentrification. Moreover, a principal in Garveyville described a conversation that she had with a parent about this. The principal explained:

A parent said “I used to live in the [name of community], and when they tore down that apartment complex, the rent everywhere around also went up.” It kind of had like this ripple effect. So, she had to move out. And she is now actually in the Carmen School District attendance zone. But she’s requested a transfer [back here] because she wants her children to continue to attend our schools. So, she said “what the district needs to understand is that they need to improve and make the transfer process easier, because you have declining enrollment not because of the schools or anything, but because we’re being pushed out. We just cannot afford to stay. And so just because I’m being pushed out doesn’t mean I’m not here. So, I’m further out, but I’m still here.”

Despite the integral relationship between schools and housing, the districts had not centrally addressed this aspect of how gentrification was impacting families and students.

Through the school districts’ decisions to open, consolidate, and in some cases, rezone schools, and to institute special programs in certain campuses, the district mediated how racial dynamics unfolded through school gentrification. The addition of new programs and the rising housing costs associated with gentrification were like attractions and repellants as they contributed to the movement of bodies into and out of the districts. Principals’ descriptions of this process reveal that the districts’ decisions were part of the sense-giving for how to respond to school gentrification: by attracting and appealing to white families, and altering the district according to their preferences. The next section examines how districts’ fiscal decisions also affected school gentrification.