Last year The Kirkwood Call made an appeal to students to submit issues of concern to its publications staff. The following questions haunt me on a daily basis as I walk through the halls of KHS. Although I don’t have the courage to attach my name to this piece, I’m hopeful you will have the courage to publish these questions. I can’t be alone in asking them:

* Why must black history be confined to a month? Why can’t it last for a year?

* Why is black history reserved to the shortest and most dreary month of the year?

* Where are the black math teachers at KHS?

* Why must the black community shoulder the burden of bus desegregation?

* How does bus desegregation benefit the black community?

* Where are the black social studies teachers?

* What does it say about the black community and its neighborhoods in the city when the best and brightest of a black generation are evacuated to be educated in mostly white, middle class suburban schools?

* Why don’t white students from the suburbs leave for school on a daily basis as early as 6 a.m. and endure the 45-minute to an hour bus ride to a city school?

* Where are the black world language teachers at KHS?

* How often do white athletes ride alone with a virtual stranger in a taxicab late on a school night?

* Where are the black English teachers at KHS?

* Do you think more people would care about the quality of education in St. Louis city schools if more suburban white students walked the halls of Vashon and/or Beaumont?

* Where are the black science teachers at KHS?

* Will my Kirkwood diploma allow me to become more than…

a walking counselor?

a cafeteria worker?

a custodian?

I see plenty of black faces performing these jobs on a daily basis at KHS!

* Why do so many black students populate ATLAS classes at KHS?

* Why do so few black students populate Advanced Placement classes at KHS?

* Will a black student’s picture ever be depicted on the plaques hanging in the senior hallway recognizing KHS valedictorians and salutatorians?

* Why was the black-inspired play, consisting of a black-dominated cast, A Raisin in the Sun, reserved in the 110-seat Black Box theatre? Was this play not worthy of the 400+ seat Keating Theatre?

* Will these questions actually get published? Uncensored???

*  Will anyone take these questions seriously?

*  Will the ‘status quo’ at KHS ever change?

The Kirkwood community seems to take great pride in being the first suburban school district to integrate within the St. Louis region shortly after the famous Brown vs. Board Education Supreme Court decision of 1954. How much progress has truly been made at KHS since then, or from when Ms. Lorraine Hansberry first penned her award-winning play?

* When will Dr. King’s dream cease to be a dream and become a reality?

Sincerely,

A student with questions