The Benefit of the Doubt
The Issues with Democracy Builder’s Degrees of Freedom Program that No One is Talking About
One of the things that white privilege affords is the Benefit of the Doubt. To have faith that a white man with a history of founding and leading a charter network that caused harm to Black and Brown communities can once again target this same community and it will lead to different results.
When Democracy Prep Public Schools was founded in 2005, Seth Andrew had limited, at best, experience in American education, but had a dream to replicate a Korean education system in predominantly Black and Latinx communities in New York. Backed by his Ivy league network and media connections as well as ties to organizations like Building Excellent Schools, Seth managed to convince hundreds of community leaders, parents, staff and students that he was the right person to lead the charge in creating innovative educational spaces for students of color. Years later, we are all starting to become aware of the toxicity of Democracy Prep behind closed doors.
Fifteen years later, Seth Andrew is once again asking for the Benefit of the Doubt with his latest project Degrees of Freedom, a hybrid college program geared towards students of color. After receiving backlash from many in the greater Marlboro community, Seth and his team of “designers/board members” have asked that we have faith that Democracy Builders can fix the mistakes of Democracy Prep’s past. His team, after an extended period of silence, finally came forward on July 20th to speak in depth about their plans for the former Marlboro College.
Marlboro Select Board Meeting
It was a packed house for the Marlboro Select Board meeting. Unsurprisingly, because Seth Andrew deals in making sure there is visible “support”, similar to how Democracy Prep runs their “I Can’t Vote, But You Can” campaigns with students and parents bussed in yellow hats and shirts to lobby in Albany in support of charters, there were at least 30 Degrees of Freedom supporters in the Zoom meeting room. With “Freedom to Choose Freedom” virtual backgrounds and the “I Support DOF” usernames making it easy to identify which side of the debate they were on.
As the meeting commenced, the agenda became pretty apparent. Despite being asked questions explicitly directed at him, Seth barely spoke during this meeting, and instead largely remained silent as he chose to use Black Women to step out in front of him to answer for the brunt of critique levied at him. It wasn’t lost on anyone in the meeting that this was an intentional choice. We DO NOT give the benefit of the doubt that this was an act of truly sharing power, but more one of cowardice and manipulation with the hopes that the predominately white Marlboro residents would remain silent or be swayed by these tactics.
While Seth’s behavior in the meeting was troubling, it was predictable. The Current CEO of Democracy Prep, a Black Woman, Natasha Trivers is presently trying to clean up the mess that Seth left behind, including distancing herself from his destructive legacy. Black N Brown at Democracy Prep has been clear in our stance that neither Seth Andrew, nor his Democracy Builders organization are fit to run a secondary education experience for students of color. However, we listened to Seth’s team with open ears with the hopes that they could prove us wrong.
After a three and a half hour meeting, our collective was more disturbed with the plans, or lack thereof, laid out for Degrees of Freedom by the team. Most of the Degrees of Freedom presentation was spent either identifying the need for the institution or deflecting questions on the school’s format and structure.
The Degrees of Freedom Team has much work to be done and can start their planning by addressing the below questions that were left unanswered or vaguely answered at the select board meeting. We’ll note that this is a fraction of the concerns that the collective had and we encourage those interested to listen to the Marlboro Select Board Meeting below.
Start Date
When is the school actually opening? During the special select board meeting, Chandell, a member of the Degrees of Freedom planning team, mentioned both September 2022 AND September 2021 as a start date. As of this writing there is now a “Winter Pilot” starting January 2021 for 300 students listed on the website. Is this program actually slated to receive 300 students in the next 5 short months? Given the dearth of post secondary experience in the planning team (more on that below) how exactly will you be ready to receive these students from these vulnerable communities?
Leadership and Planning Committees
During the meeting, there seemed to be a lot of confusion over what everyone’s role was within the Degrees of Freedom team. We were initially introduced, through the media, to Seth’s design team: Jamie McCoy, a Democracy Prep alumni and current Democracy Prep teacher; Jay Smith, a Democracy Prep alumni; Marcelina Cummings, a Democracy Prep parent, and Stacey Birdsell, a former Democracy Prep staff member. Jay Smith later indicated that the Board of Trustees actually only includes herself (Replacing current Democracy Prep VP Princess Lyles, who left to handle the “attack” Democracy Prep is facing via Black N Brown at DP), Seth, Marcelina and Stacey. Those named also appear to make up the Board of Democracy Builders as well. Throughout the meeting, the core group seemed to switch back and forth between designers and board members. So the question remains who is actually leading the creation, implementation and oversight of Degrees of Freedom?
Board of Trustees/Design Team Experience
During public comments, Marlboro community member Katherine Hollander questioned what experience Seth and his board have to run a college program. The board has little to no working experience at the secondary education level. Again here we see the hubris and privilege of running headlong into a venture without proper planning or support. Just because you went to college, does not mean you know how to run a college. Two people of color with experience in higher education, Meg Guiliford and Basil Smikle did speak during the planning presentation and yet neither are actually included on the board. People with higher education experience need to be on the board and an integral part of the design team, and not just for public meetings.
Finances
During the course of the meeting, Marlboro community member Adrian Segar, publicly questioned the finances of Democracy Builders. It appeared that 990 information for the last 3 fiscal years have not been released publicly. In their last public 990, fiscal year 2016, Democracy Builders had a total revenue of $608,347. It allegedly costs $1,000,000 per year to maintain the campus. This is without other costs such as payroll, institutional programming, etc.
Based on publicly available data, it would appear on the surface that Democracy Builders cannot afford to keep the campus they fought for year over year. This problem may be compounded by the lack of accreditation, which means the school may not receive federal funding. Given Degrees of Freedom’s value proposition of being an affordable space for students, the lack of federal funding is concerning.
Accreditation
Will the Degrees of Freedom Program receive accreditation? During the meeting a question about accreditation was met with 20 seconds of silence followed by a non committal answer. Accreditation is a rigorous appraisal process initiated by colleges voluntarily to judge the overall educational quality provided to students. Schools must also be accredited to take advantage of federal aid programs. This is particularly important for the students that Degrees of Freedom intends to serve. If the school is not accredited, who is paying?
Discipline
A big question has been how will Degrees of Freedom look in terms of policing student behavior as this was a major driver of harm at Democracy Prep Public Schools. On the whole, the planning team noted that these are adults that they will be dealing with and that there are no need for infractions based on uniforms, sitting position, etc. However, during her portion of the presentation, Marcelina Cummings mentioned that while you might not get punished for not having a pencil, “if you don’t come to class prepared you might get a demerit.” So is Degrees of Freedom adopting a demerit-adjacent system? Most colleges wouldn’t give a demerit for not being prepared for class or doing work. Is this college also going to be founded from a paternalistic and deficit based perspective, like the founding of Democracy Prep Public Schools?
School Structure
There wasn’t much detail in the Marlboro meeting BUT media provides some clues into what the structure is supposed to look like. Trimesters instead of Semesters, those who attended DP will be familiar with this; cohorts, college credit while still in high school, apprenticeships and virtual reality technology have all been touted as what makes Degrees of Freedom “Innovative.” As an aside, many of this already exists in the P-Tech High Schools and Career and Technical Education High School Programs that exist around the country as well as the innovative models that already exist in the already affordable and accredited community colleges, like CUNY ASAP, across the country as well. Can the Degrees of Freedom team share what a student’s progress through two years at Degrees of Freedom actually looks like?What classes will be offered? Who are the apprenticeship partners? Where are the social and emotional learning supports?
Oversight
A large area of concern is how the Board of Directors will handle oversight for Degrees of Freedom. Currently, no faculty or staff have been publicly identified and the identified board make up is insufficient, made of only Seth Andrew loyalists, primarily connected to Democracy Prep. Degrees of Freedom will need systems in place so that students, staff and faculty feel comfortable coming forward about their experiences. Without this, there may very well be a day that we see a Black N Brown at DOF collective.
Regardless of where we stand with respect to whether or not Degrees of Freedom should exist, we all are aligned on the end goal: the enrichment and uplifting of black and brown people. As Meg Guilford, one of the Black Women, speaking on behalf of Degrees of Freedom pointed out during her portion of the presentation, most institutions of higher education do not adequately serve disenfranchised communities. People of color at predominantly white institutions, in particular, struggle to find the academic, financial and social support that is needed to thrive in college. For this reason, it is critical that any institution meant to serve people of color be executed with the community they serve in mind at the forefront with sufficient planning, not just in haphazard response to genuine queries with poorly thought out plans that will be executed on the backs of the same community it purports to serve.
The time to give Seth Andrew and Democracy Builders the benefit of the doubt to trust, to place black and brown bodies, hearts and minds in his hands once again as he “builds the plane while flying it” is over. The Degrees of Freedom Team needs to show and prove upfront, not use students as guinea pigs. The students they hope to serve deserve more than that, they deserve the care of proper planning and support, it’s what they are owed.
