[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]
Due to my daughters’ current obsession with the Pocahontas soundtrack (we watched the movie a couple of weeks ago), combined with the heated local controversy over Park Hill and Stapleton kids effectively competing for admission to McAuliffe International School, I recently found myself imagining wealthy parents from the two neighborhoods shouting “Savages! Savages! Barely even human!” at each other across Quebec Street. It was a funny mental image.
When a co-worker suggested that the McAullife fight is essentially an argument between Denver’s “old money and new money,” I was inspired to go ahead and write a new version of the song…
PARK HILL:
What can you expect
From Denver’s nouveau riche?
Their faux-“New Urban” neighborhood’s a curse
They think their tower’s so cool
They breed like horny fools
And now they want our school! Perverse!
They’re savages! Savages!
Barely even human!
Savages! Savages!
Drive them from our school!
Re-close the boundary
This takeover is evil
We must sound the drums of war!
They’re savages! Savages!
Smiley-stealing devils!
We must sound the drums of war!
STAPLETON:
This is what we feared
The old money’s ungrateful
McAuliffe saved their campus, yet they bitch
They took our school, the louts
And now they want us out!
I wonder if they’re even rich!
They’re savages! Savages!
Barely even human!
Savages! Savages!
Ingrates at the core
They’re less fertile than us
Which means they can’t be trusted
We must sound the drums of war!
They’re savages! Savages!
Keep the boundary open
Or we’ll sound the drums of war!
* * * * *
Obligatory humor-killing caveat: I’m just kidding around here, folks. Just like with the “Stapleton Civil War,” I’m simply having some fun with the intensity of the fights about this stuff.
(Quick primer for the uninitiated: McAuliffe originally opened in Stapleton, and built a highly successful program there. Then, last fall, the school up and moved – lock, stock and barrel, with existing (Stapleton) students and staff – to the campus of Park Hill’s old failing middle school, Smiley, which closed down. At that point, the middle school “boundary” was “opened,” so that both neighborhoods have an equal chance of admission to McAuliffe, or to any other middle school in the Stapleton/Park Hill “shared boundary.” Now, because McAuliffe-at-Smiley is so wildly popular, over 100 students—some from each neighborhood—were unable to get in, and so Park Hill parents are upset that some of their kids are getting “bumped” into other high-performing middle schools located in Stapleton. Some of those angry parents want the boundary “closed,” so that Park Hill kids will have priority at McAuliffe, even though McAullife started as a Stapleton school with Stapleton kids, and only moved Park Hill—thus rejuvenating the Smiley campus—based on the shared-boundary premise.)