The following story is fictional, set in a third Trump term. The President has recently alluded to the idea of seeking a third term, and as imagined in this story, that could lead to deep-rooted changes for children in schools. In the story, a single mother and her son Jamaal struggle with finding a proper school fit. To many, this will be a recognizable condition in today’s school climate. However, with the potential closure of the Department of Education, which oversees and enforces IDEA protections for inclusivity, this environment will be a little less familiar. There is already a webpage at the new US Department of Education website, where one can, for example, report cases of “DEI.” Our new Secretary of Education is a former wrestling business co-founder, working actively to privatize education, making the idea of a “Macho School” or a “Make America Greater Academically School” not so hard to envision. For families across the US who worry about their child with special needs or physical needs, this story is for you. It is also a warning to others. If we eliminate public schools completely, the school choice environment we currently exist in will not remain within the guardrails that we currently have. A new privatization era for schools, without federal oversight, could look far more like countries that currently do not have the protections US citizens have relied on since the birth of Title 1, Title 9, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, just to name a few. This will undoubtedly disenfranchise many students in disproportionate ways, and it can be imagined, many of those children will be like the incredibly bright and unique Jamaal in the story.
My son Jamaal and I have this tradition. I’ve got a bad hip from driving a school bus for twenty years. Jamaal is a nine-year-old kid with a motor in his mind. So, mornings start fast in our home. To counter my hip tightening up and his motor turning on, we take a walk down to check the mail first thing. Our mailman begins his route with the P.O. boxes in the mail center on the corner of 37th and Maple. The mail center is next to the 7-11, so that means that our morning walk gets me some coffee, Jamaal a treat, and it gets our wiggles out-as Jamaal likes to say.
We also get our mail early.
I’ve just paid for a coffee and a danish for Jamaal when I see his little legs sprinting back over the cracked pavement. He’s gripping a few letters and something that looks a bit larger. He shoves a flyer in my face, nearly spilling my coffee.
“Jamaal, what are you doing? You know you can’t be running like that–”
“Mama, I knew it!” He shouts at me. I can’t see his face because all I can see is a half-naked man flexing on the flyer before me. “Macho Grad Brick Brewster is going to be at the school choice fair this year!”
“Macho Grad who—”
“Macho Grad Brick Brewster! Macho Grad, Mama!”
I offer the Danish to Jamaal, hoping to settle him down. My son is autistic, with a heart condition thrown in for good measure. Even so, there are moments where the whole “on-the-spectrum thing” really kicks in a little something extra.
“And who is Macho Grad…Brick–”
“Brewster?” Jamaal spits out, ignoring the Danish. He’s tapping the flyer again and again. “Mama, he’s the coolest. He wins all his cage matches on WWS, and he’s always telling kids that his schools are the best.”
“Huh?” I decide to sit on the curb in front of the 7-11, which takes some doing. We don’t have to walk far to get home, but the road is busy. I don’t need a child with his energy getting carried away while I hold the only cup of coffee I’ll have time for all day. Like I’ve done a million times before, I pat the concrete next to me, watching Jamaal spin in circles. Then, I look away like I don’t care. After a few more spins, Jamaal hops over, hops up and down a couple of times, and then he sits next to me, careful that we don’t touch one another. I over-emphasize my own inhaling and exhaling, hoping he’ll follow suit. He does, and I’m relieved as always.
“Mama, you said we could go to the school fair this year. The one they are holding in downtown Phoenix, remember?”
“Well, yeah, baby. I did. But you know it doesn’t look good for–”
“I know. I know Mama. But this time, Macho Grad will be there. I can wear my Macho Grad cape, and he’s going to pick me. I know he will. He’s got to Mama!”
“Baby,” I take a sip of my coffee before I sigh. There’s a tightening in my chest that is always there, having a child with special needs. The kind of kid you worry about like I do with Jamaal. But at moments like this, it feels like the rubber band of worry strapped over my ribcage has just been wound another loop or two. I can’t let Jamaal see me cry. And even though he won’t show it, I know he’ll pick up on anything on my face.
“Baby, we’ve been over this. It’s different now in Arizona. Schools don’t have to take…all kids…like they used to.”
“It’s not going to matter, Mama.” Jamaal points to the flyer. There’s a red and yellow school building displayed prominently. A huge sign at the top reads, “MACHO SCHOOL: For Kids Who Believe in Themselves.”
“I believe, Mama. Don’t you believe in me, too?”
***
When you have a kid on the spectrum, and that kid has something in their mind, well, it’s in your head, too. There is no avoiding the school fair, no matter what I think about it. I try not to think about what happened last time. Or the time before that.
I have to drop some paperwork off at the Department of Online Employment. I’ve been working from home so I can homeschool Jamaal for the last three years, but I still have to earn a living. I like to think of it as having two jobs, just I have them at the same time.
So, next month, Jamaal and I take the city bus downtown, I drop off my proof of online productivity, and we attend the school choice fair again. It’s in Papago Park, on the north side of the big lake. Jamaal and I have been there many times.
The event is huge every year—media trucks and whatnot. Lots of people go just for the free swag- everything from hotdogs to t-shirts, hats to computer raffles. But this year, the fair is bigger than I’ve ever seen it. There’s a tower booth at the center, colorful banners stacked on top of each other, each with arrows pointing to the four cardinal directions, to the different schools who’ve shilled out the most for the advert. We pass a clown putting on her makeup from the trunk of her car. This year, a few other boys, like Jamaal, are dressed up like Macho Grad.
“Mama, look!” Jamaal shouts.
Whenever he sees one of the other children in their red and yellow Macho Suit, complete with red cape and knee-high plastic boots, he squeezes my hand a little more. By the time we get to the center, where most of the largest school booths are located, he’s practically dragging me across the grass, squeezing my fingers with a deathgrip.
I start slowly and with a plan. If we hit up this new school booth, like Jamaal wants, it’s going to be a disaster- one that I’m going to hear about every day for a year. Instead of going direct, I’ve decided to ease him into the disappointment.
Leading Jamaal by his little hand, I navigate the crowds of happy kids and parents in full shopping mode. No matter how many years go by since the last secretary of US education ordered all public schools closed, I just can’t stop comparing the whole thing to shopping at a mall. I remember when Betsy Devos, Trump’s first education secretary, thought this whole process would look like a line of taco trucks. I figured you’d sort of just wander along, reading signs, until you found the “taco” you wanted. Ask somebody who just finished their plate if it was any good, and if you got a yes, you could give the truck a try.
But the great privatization industry that’s risen since then doesn’t look anything like that to me now. Now, the whole thing looks like a circus filled with more and more gimmicky acts. I’ve seen them all. The AI and virtual programs were a big hit initially, but most of them are all gone now. I remember how they promised easy and science-based growth until parents realized that AI can’t teach a kid how to be a better human. There are always the schools with names that have prep in their title. Or discovery, or urban. Or all, which sometimes means diversity, but sometimes doesn’t. But I don’t think of their names much now, just what they can’t offer us. The school that has no bussing in our part of town, sorry. The school that requires parental volunteer hours I can’t give. The school that calls me the second day Jamaal acts up, because the teacher has three weeks of training and is fresh out of some ivy-league college. Each finds a way to keep us out, and they’re all here, looking for kids in the right part of town. The parents who can volunteer. The kid who can sit still for an hour-long assembly without needing a break outside. That isn’t me, and it isn’t Jamaal.
There are many new booths and tables set up and that at least gives me some hope. Each is colorful, with bright, happy educators in professional or sporty attire. These young men and women stand with clipboards, vendor badges around their necks. They are ready to share school data and testimonials, ready to engage, to sell. One red, white, blue and gold accented booth named Liberty First Charter seems very popular, and it doesn’t surprise me. After the anti-indoctrination laws, which the Arizona state supreme court upheld, many parents flooded schools that established a “patriotic” form of education. At the Liberty First table, there is a couple and their son filling out paperwork. A lady in a white blouse and skirt brings them each a red hat. I decide again that this one isn’t really for us.
Instead, I steer Jamaal to one I haven’t heard of. Why not? The booth is decked out in a blue and white patterned motif, and there’s someone in a shark costume. A smiling man next to the shark is in his early 20s, perhaps. He points to Jamaal, then to the shark.
“Hey there, young scholar! Would you like to shake Finny’s flipper?”
The shark extends its flipper to Jamaal.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “But my son, Jamaal, doesn’t often touch others. He’s–”
“Oh,-” the man says. His smile stays plastered across his face anyway.
“Well,” I add cheerfully. I pull Jamaal next to me as much he’ll let me. “Would you like to tell us about SHARKS Academy? We’ve never heard of it before.”
“Happily,” says the smiling man. While Finny continues to wave at passersbys, the man tells us about how SHARKS stands for Scholars of High Achievement and Rare Knowledge School. He doesn’t seem as into it as when he first met us. “We like to think of ourselves as a specialized private academy. But of course, with your universal Arizona educational voucher, you won’t have to pay most of the tuition. We offer one-on-one tutoring after school, college application preparation in secondary schools. Hey, if your scholar,” he goes to give Jamaal a fist bump, but of course Jamaal steps back. “If Jamaal here passes our aptitude entrance exams, he’ll be accepted into a most prestigious–”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupt, “Did you say most of the tuition? How can that be? We are citizens of Phoenix proper, we have a universal–”
“Oh,” says the man. “I’m very sorry. There’s been a change this year.”
“A change?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Arizona’s Senate confirmed SB 1241 this spring, which means that charters like ours can now extend their tuition services beyond the universal voucher. Well, up to thirty-five percent more, according to the bill, in order to attract–”
“And let me guess,” I ask without thinking, “Your tuition fee is thirty-five percent beyond the amount you collect from Arizona’s voucher?”
“Well, as a matter of–”
But the smiling man doesn’t finish, and I don’t wait to hear it anyway. Jamaal and I walk away while a cascade of other well-dressed children surround Finny. One asks his mother for a picture with whomever is in the shark costume. He says, “Mom, this is the school Tyler from church goes to! Can we check it out, Mom?”
My head is swimming to understand everything I am seeing around me. Jamaal and I stop by booth after booth. I deliberately avoid those specializing in “inclusive practices.” Whatever it used to mean, it doesn’t anymore. When the US Department of Education was eradicated, and the US government pushed states for vouchers, Arizona was one of the first to go all in. Back then, Jamaal’s IEP, or special education plan, could still require schools to provide services for him with taxpayer dollars. Even charters had to provide services too, and so we had a lot of decent choices. If we liked the public schools, we could stay; if not, we could try out a local charter. But now that there are no longer any public schools or teacher unions to push for inclusion models, charters have become highly competitive.
Parents just didn’t want their teacher’s time taken to work with kids with autism or down syndrome, not without specialized support staff that was way too costly for what schools had become, mostly smaller. The privatization lobby, which barely existed a decade ago, put pressure on the Arizona House of Representatives. People didn’t realize before they voted how much special education programs cost. They just didn’t want more than half their voucher money going for one-on-one aides or special education coordinators to help kids like Jamaal. State leaders argued it was the same wasteful spending that clogged the public schools before vouchers. After that, you had your schools that would take kids like Jamaal, and schools that wouldn’t.
I can smell the food court around the corner, and Jamaal can too. But just as we get there, I see the Every Kid Academy on our right, and I try to steer Jamaal away. But I’m too late. Jamaal wriggles from my grasp and runs to the table where his old teacher sits.
“Oh, hi, Jamaal!” It’s Mrs. Jessica, his old homeroom teacher. She makes a salute, and Jamaal returns it. I know this is her way of connecting with him. “Haven’t seen you in a while, big guy!”
I finally catch up and greet Mrs. Jessica. I’m a bit embarrassed, although I know she understands. Jamaal sure as hell doesn’t. It wasn’t that Mrs. Jessica or any of her teachers weren’t doing their jobs; It’s just that without the old IDEA protections, and with parental rights groups filing lawsuits about their voucher money, it had become a school for only special needs kids. Without the Department of Education and with only voucher money, the school could only do so much. Jamaal didn’t need to be in an all-day special education class, he needed inclusion into a class that was specialized for him.
“Still searching?” she asks me with a kind grin. She steers Jamaal to a set of large wooden building blocks where a few other kids play.
“Yeah,” I say.
She leans in to me and lowers her voice a bit. “Don’t blame you. Jamaal is so smart. He deserves more than we can offer.”
“Thanks,” I say. And I mean it.
“Keep searching,” says Mrs. Jessica. “You’ll get a fit this year, I feel it.”
It’s hard to get Jamaal going from the blocks, but when I mention lunch, he finally reaches back for my hand. We make our way from the table just as a couple and their son walk by. The boy is about Jamaal’s age, but he’s a lot taller. The father laughs, “Hey Hunter, you want to go to the retard school?” He pretends to steer his son towards Mrs. Jessica.
The mother hits her husband playfully on the chest and hangs her head in something that looks like shame. The moment is fleeting. Once past the booth, the family walks on, pointing to something at the food court.
***
We’re having one of the plates of food sponsored by Making America the Greatest Academy when Jamaal screams out something through a mouth full of hotdog. Before I can reach out and grab him, he dashes away from me. His little red Macho cape flutters behind him. Jamaal weaves between families coming and going. I nearly drop my purse chasing after him, screaming his name.
“Jamaal! Jamaal!!!! Boy, you stop right–”
But he hasn’t gone far. Thank the Lord. After maybe 30 yards, I stop and grip my knees with my hands, trying to catch at least part of my breath. But I’m not thinking of mine. I’m not used to this kind of thing, and Jamaal can’t be either. God help me forgive this foolishness. I finally get him back in my sights.
Jamaal, in his red and yellow outfit, has almost disappeared into a booth of the exact same colors. A big sign above the booth in large letters reads, “MACHO GRADS, ARE YOU A BELIEVER?” A line of parents and kids stretches outward from the booth and runs past several others.
I can hear Jamaal yelling at the top of his voice. I can see him bending over, screaming into the booth- with what breath, I don’t know. I round the corner, trying to grab his inhaler from my purse at the same time.
“I’m a believer, Macho Grad! Macho Grad, I’m a believer!” Before him, a gigantic man with rippling muscles, long blonde hair in a ponytail, and a handlebar mustache is lifting a kid into the air. The man has on the same outfit as Jamaal, the same as the boy he is lifting. The child cries with joy. I see what must be his parents sitting at a table filling out paperwork. A young college-aged woman in a summer dress and badge bends over to Jamaal.
“Hey there, big guy. So we actually have a line to meet Macho–”
But Jamaal isn’t listening. He just keeps shouting, I believe, over and over.
Macho Grad puts the little child down, and he turns to Jamaal. He speaks in a hoarse voice, as if he were in one of the wrestling interviews Jamaal makes me watch.
“Hey, Scholar! Macho Grads like us always wait in line. It’s in the Macho Code, bro.”
Jamaal stops. The two are face to face. One big blonde Macho Grad, one little black Macho Grad.
Macho Grad looks at the young lady with the badge. “I kinda like this kid,” he grunts at her.
She smiles. Macho Grad turns back to Jamaal.
“Say, Scholar, do you believe in yourself?”
“I believe, Macho Grad! I believe!” Shouts Jamaal.
“Well,” says Macho Grad. He smooths the sides of his mustache. ‘Then let’s get you signed up for Macho School. Once–” He points to the back of the line. “Once you’ve waited your turn.”
***
It takes just twenty minutes to fill out the paperwork for Macho School, although we have to wait over an hour to get through the line. It turns out to be a good thing, as my boy’s fingers were turning blue by the time we make it to the end of the line. Macho School may be new, but they’ll have all their classrooms filled, says the lady with the badge to a family in front of us. As we wait, I hear families ask many of the same questions I have. And each answer is exactly the one I’m hoping for. I can’t believe we found a school that Jamaal loves, one where he can learn something in a regular classroom. I can’t believe we got in, on time. With Jamaal accepted into an actual brick-and-mortar school program, where he can learn something, maybe I can get back to some physical work, too. I’d love to quit the online stuff I’ve been pulling to make ends meet. It’s been all I could do with the time I needed to homeschool the last few years.
Once its our turn, I hand my application to the lady with the badge. She seems genuinely happy for us.
“Oh, hey,” she says, “I forgot to give you this physician’s form. Small thing. Just get it signed by a family doctor, and bring it back before school starts in August, okay?”
“Physician’s form?” I ask. Jamaal is already acting out some of Macho Grad’s wrestling moves. Like always, I have to remind him to spin around. Slow, Jamaal. Three times. Slow. Now inhale. When Jamaal was born, he had an enlarged heart. We didn’t even learn about his autism diagnosis, or his hearing loss, until after his first open heart surgery.
“Yes, Macho School’s physical program is mandatory. Our Scholars are athletes, too, as Macho Grad likes to say.” She smiles. “It’s a mandatory part of our program, but no doubt little Jamaal here, with all his energy, is going to love it.”
