Rebuilding Solidarity Through Advocacy Leadership: Principals Building Coalitions to Fight Exclusion and Displacement in Gentrifying Communities

Abstract

Background

School leader decision making can be complicated by the enrollment of affluent, and often white families in educational spaces that have served low-income, Black, and Brown families post-Brown. Principals’ behaviors influence whose power is coalesced and wielded to make school-wide curricular, budgetary, and personnel decisions.

Methods

This collaborative study used interviews as the primary method to capture two elementary, two middle, and two high school principals’ attempts to build coalitions with low-income families of color in their schools. Data was drawn from two separate studies analyzing school gentrification in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Using micropolitical theories and drawing on studies promoting a more community-centric approach to school leadership, the data was coded and organized into broad themes. These themes relate to coalition-building’s power in resisting the exclusion and marginalization of families most impacted by inequity in gentrifying schools and their neighborhoods.

Findings

Findings reveal that principals implemented strategies ranging from engaging in deliberate partnerships with Black and Brown families, implementing anti-racist curricula, and other means of centering Black and Brown communities.

Implications

Although principals can buffer long-standing families from gentrification’s deleterious consequences, there is a need for principals to unite with families and other school principals for a broader and more targeted and formalized dissent and policy strategy to ensure low-income Black and Brown families drive decision-making in schools and their districts.