My Why: Casandra's School Choice Story
Casandra Meguiar, Development Manager, shares why she supports school choice for all Alabama families.
In high school, I started each morning walking through a metal detector and being sniffed by K-9 units before heading to homeroom. Teachers sat at their desks in silence while the class erupted in chatter. Other times, teachers gave us 50-page worksheet packets and sat in the back of the classroom reading a book. With nearly 30+ students in each class, we were lucky if we got through roll call without disruptions. Lunch was the worst, as the entire school went on lunch for an entire hour—an hour of courtyard brawls, lunches being stolen, classrooms defaced, and gun threats.
I had always loved school, but I began to dread it. I needed smaller class sizes. I needed teachers who cared. I went to my school counselors to see if I could be switched to the IB program. Those students had smaller class sizes and seemed to be a community. Despite my A/B honor roll grades, my counselor insisted that it would be too challenging for me and to stick with standard classes.
Stuck in disruptive classrooms, I worked diligently to ensure that my grades didn’t slip, but they slowly fell from A/B honor roll to average. Determined to get out of the school that didn’t serve my needs, I begged my dad to put me in a different school. My school wasn’t working for me. Private school was not an option for us as a low-income family of six. Magnet schools were either full or had a waitlist. Taking my pleas seriously, my father found a solution. It wasn’t ideal, but it would get me into a better school.
My father gave my grandparents Power of Attorney over me, and I moved into their home. This bittersweet solution allowed me to receive a better education at the public school in their school district, where I graduated cum laude with 12 college credits. I know that it was the right choice for my education, but the system was broken. My education may have been free, but there was a cost. I missed my siblings, and even though blood isn’t a bond that distance can erase, the distance has never seemed to heal itself, even now.
On a nearly weekly basis, families call with stories that remind me of my own. Parents searching for opportunities to help their children escape a failing school district. Whether the child is being bullied, not able to learn in an over-crowded classroom, or isn’t receiving the help they need, there should be an option for these families to go somewhere—an option that can help their child thrive in school instead of passively floating through the system. That’s why I do this work. I do it for the families that need this, who wouldn’t likely have this opportunity without our work. If there had been a program like AOSF when I was in school, maybe we could have found a different solution. A solution that didn’t cost so much. One that could have kept a family under the same roof.
