It was a four-mile long peninsula.  Then it was an island.  Then it was nothing.  The last house on Bayocean, Oregon fell into the sea sometime in 1960.  Most could see it coming decades prior, but privilege and wealth are blinding, so residents carried on as they always had, unwilling to surrender so easily.  At one point early on they appealed to the Army Corps of Engineers to fund and build jetties.  When funding dried and the solitary jetty they’d built failed, the wealthiest residents simply moved their mansions farther back.  

 

But the sea continued to come. 

By 1960, the vestiges of their lives had been safely if grudgingly relocated to the mainland.  The gorgeous hotel with its orchestra and the heated natatorium with its wave-maker — emptied.  The rail and telephone systems — luxuries at that time of the 20th century — silent and useless. 

 

Thomas Irving Potter had sighted Bayocean in 1906.  He said he’d make it the envy of the entire Pacific, whose waters were even stronger and more unforgiving than the Atlantic’s.  And like the mighty waves of the Pacific, he thought, Bayocean life would not be tamed.

 

Until it was.  

 

*

 

In 1842, a hodgepodge of commissioners, trustees, and inspectors were pulled from their 17 locally elected school wards to comprise the first New York City Board of Education.  The wards worked as interconnected bodies who oversaw their respective schools and who in theory affixed themselves to this central board — their “mainland” — but who in practice, could move and shake as they pleased. As the century chugged forward, a predictable tension arose between those who wanted to keep school management centralized within the BOE and those who felt that doing so tugged at the very spirit of a democratic public school system.  NYC’s density combined with its ethnically and economically diverse student body complicated this already frustrating design, and even though by 1900 the BOE’s centralized control was ultimately decided (for the moment, at least), that student body needed more space, and problems continued to arise.

 

From the turn of the century until 1922, NYC exploded with upwards of 400 new schools, thanks to its Superintendent of School Buildings Charles B. J. Snyder:  “It was not uncommon for him to open more schools in a single year than existed in most other American cities. His buildings were big enough to hold the waves of immigrants flooding into the city, to have indoor play areas for the kids and auditoriums for the community, and light and air, the values of an age made real in brick, mortar and steel.”

 

But by 1930, the Board of Education was overseeing 810 schools in five boroughs.  The waves were becoming too powerful for even Snyder’s constructions, and by the 1960’s NYC had the most eroded schools in the nation.  On February 3rd, 1964, half of all public school children boycotted, and though this prompted pontifications and promises, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, more was said than was done in response.  The Board of Education limped on as it always had, despite limited progress in the 1980s with its “small schools” movement and in the late 90’s with charters.  By 2002, it was over.  The local boards broke from the mainland, and total school control was handed to the mayor.  

 

NYC public schools were now an island. 

 

*

 

Maybe the Native Tillamooks warned Potter of the sandspit’s devout dance throughout history between erosion and accretion.  Even so, it’s doubtful the esteemed businessman would have listened.  It’s also possible residents got wind of one of the Tillamook allegories — the one that when split open, exposes the sandspit as an island.  But history is more believable when it is written down.  So both are possible.  But highly unlikely.

 

And so land was purchased.  Houses were built.  Streets were paved, and a quarter-mile pier was constructed.  Into the second decade of the 20th century, families were arriving to Bayocean in droves for their slice of the American dream.  But below their dancing feet, the hotel was slipping away.  And underneath their swimming bodies, the natatorium was sinking.  See, the jetty created years earlier to slow the erosion instead exacerbated it — the cost of not having made the hard and expensive decision initially to invest in two of them.  Instead, they thought they could get away with building only one. 

 

And in fact, for a minute during World War II, it looked like Bayocean might survive:  the newly built Naval Air Station Tillamook brought to its neighbor Bayocean a new wave of workers who appreciated the cheap rent.  And the solitary jetty had calmed the dangerous waters of the bay just enough to encourage more people to come.  But eventually, that one jetty changed the coastline enough so that when a big storm in 1948 and an even bigger one in 1952 arrived,  it carved a huge gap that had already been forming thanks to the jetty having changed the coastline on the peninsula’s end.

 

*

 

For a short period during the 1940s, the NYC public school system experienced an upswing punctuated by an unaccustomed stability caused by three factors:  1. The incorporation of social work and psychological principles into school framework, 2. The appropriation of Great Depression Federal assistance, 3. The mitigation of immigration such so that most students were now 2nd and 3rd generation Americans.  After WWII however, disenfranchised Blacks and Puerto Ricans flocked to NYC, in need of the city’s public and private welfare services.  The school system was not equipped to support this influx, and over the ensuing decades, attempts at integration and equity failed, and the NYC public school system became one of the most segregated, inept education delivery systems in the entire country.

 

In 2002 wealthy business mogul Mike Bloomberg took one look at the NYC public school system and envisioned reshaping it into the envy of the entire Eastern seaboard.  He’d single-handedly tame its crashing waters and restore the system to its former glory.  That the system had never experienced real glory in its 150 years didn’t matter.  That a business man taming education seems counterintuitive was not important.  In just over ten years, NYC schools became an island, and unless you were already on it, you didn’t want to brave the waves to seek it out.  Some didn’t have the choice, of course, and had to take the journey regardless.  

 

*

 

Francis Mitchell from Kansas City never gave up on Bayocean.  He’d invested all his money, anchored all his dreams, to that place.  Day after day in 1949, 1950, 1951, and 1952 he and his wife Ida would head out of their grocery store to patch the roads that the waves had destroyed the night before. He had faith that human hands could withstand nature and yet there he was, one of only eight people left on the island, peeking from his two-story window, watching the breakwater fail to patch their broken isthmus.  Tillamook bar was one of the most unforgiving bars on the west coast, he was told back in 1908 when he was the first to purchase and rent out land.  But once you learned how the waves broke, Potter had said, you can get here in no time.

 

By the time WWII ended, Ida’s soft, gentle smile hid her secret:  please let’s leave this place.  

 

A stroke in 1953 finally let them.  She was taken to recover on the mainland, and Francis went with her.  But watching her was watching that breakwater from his window all over again, and slowly, methodically, he lost his battle with reality, a reality from which the love of his life disappeared completely.  She died two months after he was committed to Oregon State Hospital, and he was dead, himself, a decade later.

 

*

 

I first heard about Bayocean in Nat Demeo’s podcast, The Memory Palace.  Demeo’s storytelling is poetic and cinematic, but as I listened to him tell the story of Bayocean slipping into the sea, it wasn’t water, waves, or tides that I saw.  It was the tired brick, mortar, and steel of NYC school buildings.  And weeks later when I landed on Francis and Ida Mitchell’s story, it wasn’t their bare hands that I saw. It was ours.

 

Are we NYC educators trying to patch a breakwater doomed for failure?

 

What strikes me about Bayocean is that the experts knew how to solve the problem — build two jetties.  It would be expensive, but two jetties would provide a buffer for the powerful waters, redirecting the current and protecting the beautiful Bayocean shoreline, homes, hotels, and habitants.  But they were cheap and stubborn and short-sighted and built only one. According to Kristian Foden-Vencil in “Bayocean: The lost resort town that Oregon forgot”:  “The $2 million price tag was a lot of money in turn-of-the-century Tillamook. When it came time to vote on the idea, there was only enough political will to build one jetty … So despite the Corps’ misgivings, it went with the plan to build only a north jetty.”  And it was this — this decision to half-fix the problem — which ultimately exacerbated it.  One jetty was worse than no jetty at all, and by the time they corrected the problem — by the time the Army Corps of Engineers finished a second jetty in 1979 and the western shore immediately began to rebuild — the island had already been abandoned for decades.

 

Today none of the coastline looks like it used to; the hotel site can only be reached when tides are at their lowest.  Today, Bayocean is a recreation area with walking trails and landmark signage and a beach that tells a story most people are too busy to hear.  I don’t know if Bayocean hides a tale about our schools.  I don’t know if it teaches a lesson. 

 

But I want it to.  I want insight so badly I’m looking for lessons in a story so remote, it’s barely there.  Does the only hope for NYC public schools lie in a metaphor? 

 

Families are moving away.  Opting out.  Enrollment is down and schools which rely on filled seats to fiscally operate are spiraling.  Principals are having to make impossible decisions none of us can fathom but all of us are so quick to judge.  Do you know what happens inside a NYC public school building?

 

Monday dozens of community leaders and educators showed up outside one of them.  The school had recently been maligned in the papers, and students were being harassed by intermittent waves of press who lingered and then tracked the quick and confused bodies as they hurried towards their school.  Their safety zone in an unforgiving city.  The community leaders and educators wanted to create a breakwater to curb the crashing of the debilitating tides.  They played music.  Waved purple and blue pompoms.  Clapped.  I don’t know if it helped (it seemed to), and I’m even less certain that the message landed (some message certainly did).  But as pairs and triads of students walked by – some dancing, some deferring – the question that started to arise (for me at least) was:  Do you know what happens inside a NYC public school student’s mind? 

 

The sea came for Bayocean the way we come for our schools and students.  We are responsive yet indifferent.  Encouraging yet unforgiving.  We are slow yet constant.  Constancy hurts the most, too, because while we’re busy trying to solve problems, the kids inside those buildings are busy trying to endure them.  Yesterday’s breakwater smoothened our students’ endurance.  It did.  You could see it on their masked faces.  But the smiles that succeeded in shining through simultaneously struggled to hide the secret within:  please, it said, let us leave this place.