Hearing Ron Huberman

As The Dad says, I have become my own version of CPS-obsessed these days. I'm generally less interested in the aggregate as how things affect my own children's school, but the education budget crisis (called by Sara Feigenholtz as the worst she's seen in 20-30 years in state government [she started working for John Cullerton in 1982]) has made me re-examine that. And in the past three or four months, as the budget crisis has caused me to become re-engaged in the political process, I've become more interested in how we can work together to improve the system.

In April, I became involved with the Raise Your Hand coalition. I am seriously in awe at the power and dedication of the men and women spearheading this effort. They are committed city-dwellers, passionate activists, and deeply networked. They ask the hard questions, and are not afraid to push the envelope to varying degrees.

Over the past six to nine months, since my friend Ami asked me to attend a “Friends of CPS” meeting and take notes on her behalf, I've become more interested in what is happening at other schools. Although my children's school is in a unique position (really!) in terms of size, funding, seed money, history, etc., we still have so much to learn in terms of not only funding, but community-building.

It is because of this that I gave up my wedding anniversary, first Saturday of summer vacation, to spend 8 hours sweating in an elementary school (though admittedly fabulous) auditorium and learning parent-led school improvement best practices at the CPS Symposium.

It was such an interesting day. I walked away energized and ready to tackle some stuff. The reality is that it's summer and my affiliated group has no elected leadership, but I will get to that later. For now, I'd like to share what would probably be most interesting to the casual reader interested in CPS:

Ron Huberman made a special appearance, showing up to speak to the crowd and take questions from the audience (note: if you are sitting in the middle of the row, you won't get the mic). At this point, I am going to report directly from my notes, without my own analysis of Ron Huberman's comments. He first said that his office studied “great” schools the world over to determine what they have in common

1. A great leader.
Without a great leader, you don't have a great school. To that end, CPS will “exit” (his term) 150 principals this year. He said that these were “tough decisions.”

2. Great teachers.
In Chicago, great principals hire great teachers. Great teachers are engaged with their students. In the context of this point, he also said that his office is planning to institute a teacher evaluation process based partially on principal review. He noted that they are "empowering" principals to evaluate teachers, and that they want to make the process as transparent as possible.

3. Data for analysis.
Great schools report and measure data to ask questions: are kids learning? Are they learning what we want them to learn? If not, why not? Is it the teacher? Is it a professional development issue? Is it the curriculum? He noted that some great schools in Chicago already practice this data measurement and analysis, but CPS plans to implement this method district-wide next year. He also said that states are under pressure from the federal government to show improvement every year, and intimated that the way they do that in Illinois is to change the ISAT. He wants CPS to have its own assessments outside of the ISATs.

4. Meaningful parent involvement.
He said that they found that even when schools have the first three, they will not become truly great, their improvement will flatline, if they do not have a committed and involved parent community. He suggested that parents can achieve that in a few simple ways: physically taking your child to school in the morning when you can, showing up to school on report-card pick-up day, knowing your child's teacher by name and giving him/her your number and asking that s/he calls you when/if there is a problem. He did say that there were really two things surrounding this, but he never got back to the second point.

After he reviewed what makes schools great, he addressed the budget issue, saying that CPS is “fundamentally a state-funded agency.” CPS does not have a budget yet. They've delayed releasing it in the hope that the state legislature will reconvene to pass a budget. They have a “best case” and “worst case” scenario that they've been considering. He said that every day, it's literally a white board exercise trying to figure out the budget. In the “best case” scenario, there will be a $427 million budget deficit. In this scenario, they'll restore full-day K, junior varsity sports, and “lower” class sizes. However, they have no idea when they'll get a budget from the state, and they may have to pick an arbitrary number upon which to base their budget for FY11.

Historically speaking, Huberman said, when the state of Illinois said it would fund something, they'd do it. But Illinois has stopped paying its bills. They owe CPS ½ billion dollars....which is why CPS (got permission to) took out an $800 million line of credit last week.

What has Huberman done to fix the budget? He said he's laid off 1,000 classroom positions, cut $165 million in contracts, depleted CPS's cash reserves, cut capital projects, and reduced the number of administrators – all to preserve spending at schools. Also, non-union staff and administrators have taken furlough days that equate to a 6% pay cut. They've made non-school based cuts across the system.

Sonia Kwon and Jill Wohl from the Raise Your Hand coalition asked him questions about what the city is going to fix the budget deficit, mentioning TIFs. Huberman said that the mayor has raised taxes to the cap allowed every year that he has been able to do so, but it creates a massive inequity in funding when the state doesn't fund what it is supposed to fund. He said that TIF funds have actually funded a couple of schools on the northwest side and funded capital projects at schools that would otherwise not be possible without CPS bonding off its operating budget.

He also took questions about general school process issues, specifically the changed admissions policy for magnets and selective enrollment schools, and selective enrollment schools. He said that there is no plan to de-magnetize the magnets. They did go back to 5% principal discretion at the SE schools, but not at the magnets. The reason for this is that SE schools have objective criteria against which they can measure candidates, but magnets don't have any such criteria: they are a pure lottery. He said that what is the on the table now is not the existence of magnets or SE schools, but the enrollment process.

More PFA News

This morning, a friend told me that Ebinger and Edison Park canceled their PFA programs for Fall 2009. After a round of half-informed conjecture among 3 interested would-be PFA parents this morning, and a thorough review of posts on NPN about the subject, I called the Office of Early Childhood Education (773-553-2010) for the real scoop.

I spoke with a very nice man, Christopher Rosine, who directs the PFA program for CPS. He clearly (and very patiently, I might add!) answered all of my questions -- and there were a lot, as would be true of anyone with a vested interest and/or a journalistic background.

First, he said that it his office's goal to keep all of their current PFA programs open in the fall (which, for those of you keeping track at home, is in 6 weeks). He mentioned this point several times during our conversation.

He reiterated what I already knew: that the State Board of Education met on Tuesday and cut 32% of the funding stream for early childhood programs. But what I didn't know was that this cut affects not only PFA, but birth to 3 programs, and Early Intervention, the social service that evaluates and works to correct children's behavioral, speech, gross motor, fine motor and other skills delays. CPS and the Office of Early Childhood Education does not yet know what percentage of the Early Childhood Block Grant will be for Chicago's PFA program versus these other programs. If there are insufficient funds, they will either find resources within CPS to keep the program, or go outside for alternate funding options. Unfortunately, Mr. Rosine said, his office does not yet know what, if any, the shortfall will be, and therefore cannot go shopping for funds. He expects Springfield to notify his office within the next 2 weeks.

If they have enough funding, no programs will be cut. As it stands now, the program pays for a teacher and assistant for each school's PFA, plus room supplies and furnishings when a preschool first opens. If they do not have enough money, cannot reallocate funds from within CPS, or cannot find an outside source of funds, two things can happen:

1. Schools can choose to convert their programs to a 1/2 day tuition-based preschool. In this scenario, each school would administer the program at the school-level, collecting annual tuition of $3500-$4000 from parents. According to posts on NPN, Audubon is considering such a program; per Mrs. Stone, Disney II has said that it does not have the resources to do so.

2. They will cut PFA programs. Mr. Rosine said that they'll use the overall school community statistics to determine which programs to cut. Because the state has mandated that PFA serves at-risk for school failure children first, and a significant indicator of at-risk children is economic status, those programs that serve a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged children are more likely to retain their programs, whether they offer 8 PFA classes (like Belding) or 2 (like Disney II). His office uses the percentage of free and reduced lunch participants at a school to determine at-risk status. However, he said that a number of schools with a 100% free/reduced meal rate have already been converted to Head Start programs (which are federally funded -- and they have money) and they have plans to convert another 1000 slots to Head Start before the fall.

Fingers crossed that the Office of Early Education makes its goal for Fall 2009.

We'd Like to Thank You Rod Blagojevich

...for screwing up our state's budget. OK, it probably was already screwed up when you got it, but you did nothing to improve matters. And neither has your successor. I am thankful to you myself for creating a statewide program (preschool for all), upon which my family has come to depend, but which our state can no longer afford (assuming it ever could). The IL Board of Education announced earlier this week that the early childhood education budget took a 33% hit. What that means for The Girl (and me) remains to be seen. But I'm thinking that the program will probably get the axe at the 11th hour, leaving me and about 12,000 other parents citywide scrambling for alternate preschool for our children. That is, assuming we see the value in early childhood education and/or can afford it.

At this point, CPS has not disseminated any information to PFA parents about the near future of their children's education. I've got my ear to the ground on this issue and I still don't know a damn thing.

I talked to State rep Deb Mell last week, who first told me that I'd have to call the governor's office to find out what was happening with the education budget and PFA, and then asked me what people did for preschool before PFA. The Boy is 6 and The Girl is 4; I don't know what "people" did for preschool before PFA, I was not among them then. Presumably, they sent their children to daycare, private schools, parochial schools, or park district programs, at varying levels of affordability. The Boy spent a year in parochial preschool, an experience I do not care to repeat. I have no problem sending The Girl to the park district, but fear that the Web site will lock up at 9 a.m. on August 17th as thousands of parents attempt to register their children for the already limited spaces in these programs.

Today, I spoke to the lovely Mrs. Santiago at Disney II, who also had no news. At last week's IAC meeting, a member proposed a 1/2-day TBPK. However, besides being problematic in terms of tuition amounts and teacher fee structure, such a program would have to be administered by the school, which does not have the resources to support it. I wonder if D2 has enough interest to open a second TBPK classroom?

Scuttlebutt from CPS teachers, friends in-the-know and other interested parties suggests that I -- and any other would-be PFA parent -- would do well to have a back-up plan for preschooling our children. Where will your children attend preschool next year?

Legalizing the Loophole?

I read this morning on NPN's site that Mike Fortner and Mary Flowers have introduced a bill into the Illinois legislature to change the cut-off age/date for entry into first grade. This attempts to legalize the loophole that many parents now use (or try to use) to get around Illinois's kindergarten entry cut-off date. CPS does not honor the year, and will make young kids repeat the kindergarten year if they come into the system in 1st grade after attending a private school for kindergarten and they were born after the September 1st cut-off date for that academic year.

I think it's a dumb bill and I disagree with it.

When I was a kid, Illinois's cut off for kindergarten was December 1st. I know someone with that birthdate and her mother held her back so that she entered kindergarten a few months before she turned 6. They changed the law soon after that in Illinois. I don't know why the cut-off date was changed in the early 1980s, but I think it's a waste of time and resources to argue the point in the Illinois legislature. That said, given the academically rigorous program of many kindergartens in Illinois, I can see why educators want kids to be older and more mature than they were in the 1970s. That whole kids getting older, younger thing.

When I was in high school, my after-school job boss, Jean, had grown up in Chicago in the 1920s. She told me that Chicago schools used to have 2 entry dates/classes. One class started in February and another stated in September, so they started all the kids at a developmentally appropriate age. I think they evened out the academic years sometime in the upper elementary grades. I can't imagine such a thing flying now with the educational resources we have now, but it is an interesting concept.