Scrap Pickers

As you may know, Disney II faces a CPS school action. In our case, this is a positive thing. However, the process has not been without its challenges and roadblocks. We applied in August, and CPS announced its approval of our proposal in December 2012. Immediately the conversations turned to: "Where are they going to put this expansion? CPS is going to put it in Thurgood Marshall Middle School, right?"and an onslaught of conjecture-fueled upset from neighborhood groups, neighbors, other schools, school groups, the press, and watchdogs.

In late March, CPS announced its proposal to co-locate the Disney II expansion with nearby Thurgood Marshall Middle school. And immediately, the charge of the conversation was amplified. Suddenly, TMMS became a much-loved neighborhood gem upon which every stakeholder pinned his/her hopes and fears.

Hopes for a way to buck the system and gain automatic entry (GIPNA's proximity overlay proposal), hopes for a relief valve for an overcrowded neighboring school (Belding's request to redraw attendance boundaries), hopes for a different high school model (Murphy LSC's on-stage proposal), hopes for a renewed interest in a neighborhood middle-school model (TMMS teachers), hopes for re-election (Ald. Arena), and fears for the strength of current programming (Murphy parents). 

As a stakeholder myself, I've taken a keen interest in the process. I've attended many meetings about this, from poorly-communicated District-sponsored meetings to well-publicized community meetings on the network level to legal-compliance meetings within the community and downtown. I have attended LSC meetings and LSC meetings, and community-led meetings. I've had innumerable conversations with neighbors, friends, and classmates' parents about the process and what each new development means. For the record, this details the process. It is an imperfect document, a reflection of the imperfect details provided to Disney II by the District. 

To be honest, the process from March 31 through today has stunk. Half of my neighbors won't talk to me or to the smattering of other Disney II families who share our neighborhood. I don't really blame them; envy is a powerful and difficult emotion. I wish every parent really had the options that the system has led us to believe that we have. Because choice in the context of elementary education is a fallacy. Choice is applicable to a select few--those with the means to pay for private or parochial school and the lucky souls whose names were chosen out of a hat.* 

The gradual dissolution of my relationships with my neighbors--especially because I have opted to engage them--bothers me. CPS's School Actions policies and the media have primed everyone for a fight. Although I am open to debate, I don't want to fight with anyone. I believe every one of the statements I made at every CPS public meeting. My intent, and the intentions of those intimately involved in the Disney II expansion project, are good.

But the part of this that bothers me the most is this feeling that we are all fighting for scraps. While listening to a handful of parents and teachers express outrage at CPS in the guise of rejecting Disney II at Monday's meeting, I was reminded of my earlier work with Raise Your Hand and its initial mission of equal funding for all. We banded together to show CPS that we want a bigger pie rather than fight each other to get a bigger slice. Unfortunately, fighting for scraps is exactly what has happened in the public comment portion of the expansion process.

This is, quite frankly, ridiculous. I am not part of a scheme to subjugate high-poverty, low-resources students and their families within the public school system.  Growing our school by 200 students next year is the best example of meeting our priorities that I can give. As I wrote last year, there is a difficulty in setting and funding to priorities within CPS. Antoinette Sea-Gerald wants equity for charter schools? Belding wants equity? I want equity too.  



* More on what that means for me later. 

Two Steps Forward, One Back

As Sonia Kwon of the Raise Your Hand coalition recently pointed out, a visit to the Chicago Board of Education is a logistical nightmare for many who wish to make their opinions known about their children's schools, or about the system in general. The process appears to be set up to frustrate those who are nearly most affected by the Board's decisions/actions. It downright excludes those who are arguably most affected by its decisions/actions. And the Board's practice of listening mutely (for the most part) by those who address it is enraging to anyone who has spent any amount of time preparing to address the Board.  

In the face of such apparent indifference--if not callousness--it's not surprising that many are calling for an elected school board to restore equity and accountability to the stewards of the third largest school district in the country.

But I am not sure that's really the answer either. WBEZ reported that 359 schools had parent candidate openings and 402 had community candidate openings on March 20th, just three days before the extended filing deadline. That's a lot of schools--more than 2/3 of the district total--without advocates.

Kenneth K. Wong, a political science professor at Brown University, reported in 2007 that "a typical mayoral election receives a 45 percent to 55 percent voter turnout, which is several times more than a typical nonpartisan school board election." In fact, he reported that in Chicago, "Between the first LSC election in 1989 and 1993, the last one before mayoral takeover of the district, there was a 68 percent drop in parent turnout."

In 1993, I was a college freshman in Virginia, and Chicago public school politics did not enter into my consciousness. I've no idea what the political and cultural atmosphere of the early 1990s was like in Chicago, let alone how it compares with the current political atmosphere in Chicago.  

As anyone who has ever been "in charge" of anything will tell you, it's a lot easier to lampoon "leaders" than it is to lead the work yourself. I do not doubt that there is a group of committed people who are willing to do the work themselves, but I'm not sure that that is true for the majority of CPS parents. After all, how many people actually show up to vote for their LSC elections?


I've lived in the city for nearly a decade and I have never voted in an LSC election myself. In fact, until recently, I didn't even know that I could. Given the current interest level in CPS politics and frustrations with the Chicago BoE, it's entirely possible that individual Chicago citizens care enough about school issues to vote in elections that are little advertised, off-cycle, and decentralized. Are you planning to vote in LSC elections this April 18-19? Will you vote at your neighborhood school(s) or simply the one(s) your child attends?

Lincoln Park, the Suburbs and High School

On Sunday, I went to dinner for the first time at John's Place in Lincoln Park. I knew only that it was kid-friendly and had to have good food because Melissa has spoken about it. Our party of 9 adults and 3 kids was there for a little over 2 hours. The magician and balloon-blower who came to provide entertainment to The Boy, The Girl and The Tot (Who Isn't) was able to get in some real humor with our audience. He had just blown up balloons for the two kids, two dads and a pregnant mom at an adjacent table. In our time at the restaurant, that table turned over twice while the rest or the restaurant stayed fairly empty. Both times, the table was populated by babies and toddlers and their REI-clad parents.

I remarked upon this with a bit of surprise to my closest urban tablemate, The Dad's cousin's fiancée. She was not surprised, telling me that the neighborhood comprises her peers (mid-30s) with their young children. In fact, she said, one of her friends with two kids used to live in the area until she'd outgrown her condo and moved to the suburbs. 

Ah, the suburbs. I've been a Chicago resident since 2002. This Thanksgiving is the 9th I've spent in this house. I joke to my husband that he'll have to drag me kicking and screaming to the suburbs. And yet.

There it is. Always. Looming over me. Although it did surprise me to learn that the average demographic of Lincoln Park is now essentially a rolled back version of me, what follows doesn't particularly surprise me: Grown-up Trixies and Chads get married, buy condos, have babies and flee to the suburbs. Where the grass is always green and the schools are always good. Or so I'm led to believe. 

Sociologically, I find this phenomenon interesting. I was raised in the suburbs by two former urbanites (NYC). The Dad was raised in the suburbs by one suburbanite and one rural Hoosier. My father (Grandpa Texas) spent my son's first three years trying to convince me that I'd want to move the suburbs. That I should want to move to the suburbs. But, to quote my friend Sonia, I just don't want to.

And I do wonder: what's wrong with me that I don't? After all, it is what people with means do. Among the women of my moms' group, who are all like me: educated women with the means for mobility, whether upward or outward, there are more of us who have moved outside the city than who have retained residency. 

At the moment, I think my reluctance to leave the city has much to do with both luck and a deeply ingrained stubborn streak. In 2008, The Boy won the CPS lottery, gaining admission into what is turning out to be a great public elementary school. By luck again, CPS changed the policy for sibling admissions and The Girl also attends the same great school. Luckily for me, The Dad talked me into a single-family house in what is a really great neighborhood, so I have a garage, patch of grass and three floors upon which we can scatter our stuff. 

The big unknown, of course, is high school. We're still five to six years away from the high school decision, but if time flows at the same rate as it has since 2003, it will be here before we know it. My biggest concern is academics: Will The Boy get into one of the six current selective-enrollment schools in the city? And whether he does or doesn't, how can we hold our schools accountable to meet a high academic standard? What is the formula in the suburbs that makes suburban schools regarded as universally better than Chicago public schools? And can we replicate it? Is there a way to solve the fundamental barriers to success for some CPS students?

The Dad's biggest concern in the high school picture is the social influence: how to keep The Boy out of trouble? Will we hurt our child's overall chances for success if we keep him in an urban school environment? Can you make a "good" kid bad? And how far are we willing to take the social experiment of trying to even the playing field when it comes to our own children's future success or failure, happiness or misery? 

The statistics about high school students' success released by the Chicago Public Schools are grim. These statistics report that only 30 of 100 H.S. freshmen will go on to enter college; only 6 will go to highly selective schools. They consider the University of Illinois one such highly selective school. Yikes! Twenty percent of my suburban high school went to the University of Illinois -- and most of us considered it "slumming it" because we weren't headed for an Ivy. These stats were drawn in part from a 2006 University of Chicago study that suggests that, once again, luck will be on our side in the high school and college admissions process. This reassures me on an academic level, but does nothing to relieve The Dad's concerns about the potential for bad influence.

And it doesn't discount that staying in the city surely promises a lot of work in our future. I'm not sure I have it in me to dig into turning around the local high school.

What about you? Are you planning to stay in the city for the long haul? Do you plan to move to the suburbs? Have you already moved to the suburbs? Do you think there's a way for CPS to turn it around? Are you involved in the CPS process at any level?

Chicago Forward: Education

Last night, I met both Karen Lewis and Ron Huberman. They were two of five panelists at a discussion on education put on by the Chicago Tribune and PNC Bank. Admittedly, I can be easily impressed by power--or the perception of it.  I'm not sure whether Ms. Lewis and Mr. Huberman have real power or give people that perception. I suppose only time (like 10-15 years) will tell. The other panelists were Rev. James Meeks, Harriet Meyer and Sister Mary Paul McCaughey.

The event was the first in a series of four, designed to increase public awareness of and find possible solutions for issues in Chicago, according to the Trib's editor, Gerould Kern. It was an interesting discussion, but I didn't really learn anything new, unfortunately. There was a lot of sparring between Ms. Lewis and Mr. Huberman, and Ms. Meyer reported some interesting facts about early childhood education gaps. I'm permanently annoyed with Roman Catholic* education after The Boy's year at St. Bartholomew. The Rev. Meeks provided comic relief, but no real contribution to the conversation. 

And here's where the perception of power comes in.... I realized after a 90-minute discussion that the people in charge don't know the answers either. They have no solutions to the educational mess that is Chicago Public Schools, despite modest gains in the past 20 years (Mr. Huberman called them "substantial," even after admitting that 48 percent of district elementary schools received a district grade of D or below [based on 2008 test data]). I'm not quite ready to give up on CPS, but come on. I felt like I did after reading Sudir Venkatesh's Gangleader for a Day: that was an interesting read, but where's the solution to the problem you've spent 300 pages identifying? 

I went to the event with Amy, Wendy and Patricia from the Raise Your Hand coalition. Over 700 people filled the auditorium. It was a Trib Nation event, which Gerould Kern said was the Tribune's attempt to engage people in their city's issues and newspaper. Given the branding, I think it's an attempt to introduce 20somethings to the idea of a newspaper. I don't think it's working, given the age and consumer tastes of the audience last night.


That said, they had a lovely reception afterward, with wine and hors d'oeuvres. The reception is where I met Ms. Lewis (and her husband!) and Mr. Huberman, and a bunch of Burley parents. I don't know if things will be that fancy for every event or if it was for the benefit/pleasure of Gerry Rohr, the president of PNC Bank, and Gary Knell, CEO of Sesame Street Workshop, who were in attendance. But it was not a bad way to spend $10 of an evening. 

The next events are Economy in Recovery on November 17, Health Care on January 18 and Philanthropy/Giving Back on March 15.  

* I anticipate that this will not be a popular opinion. 

No to 37

How many kids is too many in a classroom? How many can one teacher handle? Shouldn't the focus of a teacher's attention be on teaching his or her students over merely handling them? 

If we thought the threat to PFA last year was bad, this is a million times worse. Thanks to Blago, and before him George Ryan and Jim Edgar, the Illinois budget is a mess.  And if our politicians don't approve a new budget that keeps education funding at its current level before Friday, we are going to be in trouble.  

But: Illinoisians are speaking up and speaking out via NOto37.org. CPS parents are speaking up via the Raise Your Hand coalition.