Ever have the best news and no one to share it with? Ever have months of fighting for the rights of your children only to win in a zoning hearing and not quite believe it? Ever face eight vicious months of unprompted and intense attacks on your community, your person, and your school district?

I hope you never have to. I hope you never have to know the pressure and devastation of what we’ve faced this last year. I hope you never have a natural disaster that brings out the worst in some people while also bringing out the very best in others.

Last night, at 11:30 p.m., long after the rest of my family was in bed, I was still sitting in our school’s auditorium at the zoning hearing board meeting, waiting for a verdict.

Last night, our kids won.

After months of attacks on our children, our teachers, our school board, and our administration by residents whose solution to everything is to tell others, “You should move,” we finally have school buildings for our middle and high school students.

On Monday, I sat through three hours of a zoning board hearing that determined our elementary school could be reconfigured to be used for grades 3-8. Last night, I sat through four and a half hours of a second zoning board hearing that determined the building that houses K-3 could be switched to use for grades 9-12 next year. (Yes, we have a plan for K-2, it’s just not set in stone yet. One step at a time, please.)

So what’s the big deal? Why is this a victory so worthy of tears of relief? Because in the time since the school district announced its plans, it has been faced with constant challenges by the borough council and by residents who live near the schools, who bought or rented houses on the same block as schools, in neighborhoods that house schools. Why the adversity? They say don’t want students and traffic on their blocks, in front of their homes. The houses…already on the same blocks as schools that have been in-use for decades and have daily traffic at drop-off and pick-up times? Those houses?

Yes, friends. I, too, am stunned. I certainly wouldn’t purchase a home next to a cow farm and then complain about the smell of manure and try to get the farm shut down. I wouldn’t purchase a house across from a factory, where tractor trailers may come in and out at all hours with goods being picked up or delivered, then expect the factory to cease to operate because I live there. And I wouldn’t purchase a home next to a school and then be angry at traffic and children every day. This is part of life when you’re living in a mixed-use neighborhood. Indeed, that section of our neighborhood is more urban than suburban with regards to street layout and building structures. Both the automobile and foot traffic that exist there have always been there.

In the last eight months, I have seen dozens of people come to school board meetings and hundreds show up at town hall meetings. The school’s predicament has served as a source of division and unity all in one.

I listened to old men cry out in anger about the public parking spaces they felt entitled to. I listened to irate opportunists who thought this was their chance to get the state to step in, prompt the school to fold entirely, or force another school to take over—people who were more concerned with their taxes than they were with the education of our children. I listened to furious old women complaining about the test scores, as though the value of our children is determined by a number printed on a standardized test score sheet.

These are human beings! I wanted to scream. These are children. Babies! Yes, even the sixteen-year-olds, the seventeen-year-olds. These are children. The mama bear I didn’t know I had inside came out of hibernation in full force. I have never been more glad to have been elected to the school board. I have never been so relieved to be in a position to say, “No. I will NOT let you force our children into a virtual education just so you can have a convenient parking spot. I will not let you take their childhood.”

And I wasn’t alone.

Friends, I wasn’t alone and that is the most glorious part of this entire tragedy. I found a fierce group of community members who were willing to protect these students like I was. They reached out to the local government, sat down with the superintendent to have the hard conversations, they spoke with local news stations, and they wrote and met with state lawmakers. These are the people who organized, created an informative and supportive website, made easily-sharable graphics, and rang the warning bells far and wide. They fought for our children the way no one else would. And the kids? Well, the graduating seniors made a documentary. The last few months has been like watching a Lifetime movie…in real life. And these are the people I am proud to call my neighbors and my friends.

I wish none of this had been necessary. I wish the state and federal governments had delivered when they promised help and financial aid. I wish the angry, isolated residents who want our children to cease to be part of this community hadn’t been given the opportunity to spread hate in the echo chamber of their community Facebook pages. I wish these people never heartily believed they could challenge the right of a school to exist in a neighborhood and win. I wish I hadn’t spent months terrified they might…but there was definitely a piece of me that wondered, “What if? What if they win and we have no school to send our children to? What if the opinions of 3 or 4 people on a zoning hearing board side with angry residents over our community’s children? What will we do?”

There are so many ugly pieces to this story that it’s hard to encompass them in one blogpost. Suffice it to say, many of the issues brought up by residents might not have been brought up at all if our neighborhood wasn’t one of mixed races and ethnicities. One resident who spoke last night made sure the audience understood just what he meant when he said the school district “didn’t used to be like this. In the sixties, it was better.*” Unironically, this was the same resident who openly admitted to hitting a kid with his car. (Even though no such report ever made it into the public eye or to the school board.)

*whiter

I’m appalled that anyone feels expressing such a sentiment is okay. I’m appalled that anyone believes feeling such a sentiment is okay. It’s not. It never has been. And it never will be. Not on my watch. And not on the watch of the hundreds of community members who fiercely bonded over this terrible shared experience and refused to let our children be placed second to the whims of the small portion of the community who are angry, racist, and misogynistic.

In the months leading up to this weeks zoning hearings, death threats were made against the school’s superintendent. Board members were bullied, threatened, and insulted online and in person. I was called a lapdog, a witch, and a ho. All because the school district needed a temporary plan to get our children learning in-person this year and a longterm plan to get our children learning in their own buildings next year and beyond. All because the school district was unwilling to view our children as test scores and a tax burden.

In this, I have at least found one beautiful silver lining. The parents, grandparents, neighbors, friends, students, and community members who came together to save this district and get our children in schools next year embody the words “We are the heroes we’ve been waiting for.” They lined up by the dozens last night, signing up as parties of interest, meaning they could actively be involved in the zoning hearing and participate in an appeal should one be necessary. Dozens. The line to sign up as a party of interest stretched down the aisle of the auditorium all the way to the back and beyond. I choked up, my heart swelling with hope that our school district and our students would emerge victorious, with love for so many of my new friends.

The children are children, and last night, they won. But it will take years, maybe decades to undo the damage caused by select residents of our community. The kids likely won’t forget. I only hope they also remember how many in our community truly believed in them and fought for them.

That belief will be the legacy of our generation.