A few more thoughts on STEM

Although I have not thought of myself as particularly mathy since about 7th grade, I want to be clear that my position on STEM education does not reflect a general dislike of math or science itself. The Dad is a software programmer. My father, Grandpa Texas, is a nuclear engineer. I get that having people with these skills is important and that people who have these skills often do important work.
But I don't think they are important to the level of core subject matter. I don't think they are important to the detriment of other subjects or interests in the elementary grades. And, unfortunately, in CPS, focusing on STEM will be to the detriment of other subjects. The reality of an underfunded system such as CPS means that a focus on STEM necessarily means a subtraction of other art, music, world language, or social studies. Because with $4400/student, schools can't hire a classroom teacher and an engineering teacher and an art teacher. And the reality of a heavily prescribed system such as CPS means that a focus on STEM means the detriment of other subjects because there isn't time in the day/week to include a block of literacy, a block of math, 30 minutes of P.E. and 40 minutes for lunch/recess.
And I want to be clear that I know that the perceived lack of qualified workers that is driving public policy on increased STEM education is fake. I went looking for the job growth statistic that CPS referenced in its press release. I could not find it within the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, but I did reference to a lower number--778,300. Said the report, “Computer and mathematical occupations are projected to add 778,300 new jobs between 2010-2020.” Incidentally, this job growth makes this area the 6th fastest growing major occupational group, but it’s ranked 12th out of 22 occupational groups because of it’s relatively small size.
The BLS also reported that heatlhcare support is projected to grow by 35.9% in 2020. The Boomer lobby is slacking on that one. Or perhaps even they are disgusted by the thought of their grandchildren sliding back into their own parents' job prospects. According to the same report, community and social service occupations are expected to grow at a rate of 24.2% by 2020. Where is the lobby of social workers? Oh wait….
My original guest-blogger post hit the Internet on Tuesday. I didn't realize it would be a primer to The Atlantic's "The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage," published the very next day. (In the fantasy world where print journalism still exists, I would make an ideal Atlantic writer.) As writer Michael Teitelbaum reported about the STEM shortage, "U.S. higher education produces far more science and engineering graduates annually than there are S&E job openings—the only disagreement is whether it is 100 percent or 200 percent more."

In light of this more factual reporting of the STEM landscape, it makes statements like Christopher Emdin's even more maddening. A recent PBS article quoted Emdin as saying, "Our STEM jobs continue to go unfilled, and our young people refuse to be scientists and engineers."
Emdin was speaking in response to last week's DoE release of civil rights data, a report that showed unequal education. From PBS: "Yet the department found that there was a “significant lack of access” to core classes like algebra, geometry, biology, and chemistry for many students. That lack of access was particularly striking when it came to minorities.." I think of these classes as foundational. They should be in the core curriculum at all schools. I think Emdin's assertion that there are unfilled STEM jobs is false, but the inequality in education offered to minorities is well-documented.

In fact, for those interested in the issue of segregation on science education and other subjects, there is an upcoming lecture at DePaul's College of Education. From the email: Lecture and Discussion with Richard Rothstein and Patricia Fron, Why Are Schools Still Segregated and What We Can Do About It, Monday, April 7 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Room (TBA)
Richard Rothstein is a Research Associate of the Economic Policy Institute and senior fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law, a widely published author and lecturer on education policy and the national education columnist for the New York Times from 1999 through 2002. 60 years after Brown v Board, our schools continue to be segregated. Rothstein looks at the intersection of school segregation and residential segregation. He argues that " Too quickly forgetting twentieth century history, we’ve persuaded ourselves that the hobbling residential isolation of low-income black children is only “de facto,” the accident of economic circumstance, personal preference, and private discrimination. But unless we re-learn how residential segregation is “de jure,” resulting from explicit, racially conscious and motivated public policies, implemented by federal, state, and local governments, we have little hope of remedying school segregation that flows from neighborhood racial isolation."

Patricia Fron, the co-chair of the policy committee of the Chicago Fair Housing Alliance will be a respondent to Rothstein, discussing some of the findings in their recent report, Chicago From Home to School: Why Segregation Persists and Current Reforms May Only Make Things Worse.
For more information, and to RSVP please contact Diane Horwitz at dhorwit1 at depaul.edu

Public Servitude

Before the September Board meeting, I ran into our school's contact in the Office of LSC Relations in the lobby of the Marquette Building. 

We spoke briefly about my ongoing request that the BoE include a teacher preference percentage into its admissions policies. Although he is a 20+-year veteran of CPS and his children went through the system under the previous policies, our contact told me that he doesn't support my request for several reasons, but chiefly because it is a requirement of public service that you don't give yourself perks. My changes, as proposed, would be "too much of keeping the best for ourselves."

We challenged each others' thinking for bit, exchanging ideas and beliefs about the issue, and then he went for coffee and I went up to attend the September BoE meeting. 

But the more I think about it, the more this particular stance ticks me off. As I said to our contact. if it were true that public servants should consider personal sacrifice as part of their job description, why is it only the rank and file teachers who must adhere to this mindset? 

Why does Tim Cawley get a residency pass to live in Winnetka? Why is there no outcry that the mayor sends his kids to Lab? On the current Board of Education, appointed by mayor Rahm Emmanuel in 2012 and 2013, there are are only a handful of members (Andrea Zopp, David Vitale, Mahalia Hines) who sent their children to CPS--and even then, only Hines's son attended a non-selective school (Luther High School South). 

On CPSObsessed this week, there is raging debate about how much access individual schools should give to individual parents. Inevitably, the discussion in comments turned to teacher perks. 

I don't get this us versus them mindset that seems to prevail whenever parents and teachers begin to bemoan the problems of a deeply imperfect and under-resourced system. I truly do not understand why we as a society cannot view the school environment as a school environment (even if it is a work environment for teachers/administration) and not as a corporate environment. As Dorothy Shipps chronicled in her book, School Reform, Corporate Style, business has been trying to modernize schooling to corporate ideals for over 90 years. Now the “free market capitalist” mindset toward public education has so infiltrated our collective psyche that the public is in on the cry for modernization as well. Even worse, we think it’s OK to compare every public service and agency to a private one. 

As I wrote last year, I believe in the teachers union. Even more important, I believe in the teachers themselves, and in the strength and integrity of their profession. I have been extremely fortunate that I have met only a handful of less-than-great teachers, and my children have been taught pretty much exclusively by good to great teachers. 

The mindset that teachers have it so easy--summers off, the laundry list of holidays, make more than the rest of us, automatic pay increases, work partial days, have funded pensions, to name a few things I've read about teachers lately--is farcical. It implies that there is only so much pain and suffering and general pain-in-the-assishness to go around, and that office workers have a lock on it. 

The teachers versus corporate workers comparison is reminiscent of conversations in the Great White Moose of an afternoon: does The Boy's loss of his favorite jacket trump The Girl having to be partners again with the boy next to her in line? Or does The Tot Who's Not trump them both because he's mortified that I told his uncle a story about The Tot and gummy bears?  

The fact is: if you're not a teacher, you have no idea how much the work day or work week can stink. (And if you've never worked a crummy corporate job, you've likely no idea how much the work day or work week can stink.)  That corporate America no longer gives the so-called white-collar knowledge worker a sense of purpose and control over his/her work environment is a great point of sociological discussion, but it has no bearing on what is happening systemically in public education or other public agencies. 

And then what happens?

It's no doubt a function of being a plugged-in mother of three, but it seems to me that American culture is divided on the subject of children in the public space. I've had many a conversation with childless individuals in which they offer advice on how to rear children or simply complain about their behavior.

I, too, had a lot of ideas about parenting before I become one. Things that were once horrifying (babywearing) became daily practices. Things that once seemed reasonable (spanking )_ became not so reasonable. But one that  hasn't changed over the past 11.5 years is my relationship with and attitude toward risk.

I generally think of myself as risk-averse. I don't gamble, take out ARMs, or cross against the light. But I d have a basic trust in society and my fellow humans. Some would say that's naive--and maybe they are right--but as an anxiety sufferer with its swirling thoughts and worst-case scenarios, I have come to embrace this basic human trust rather than become crippled by my fears.

While stories like this are increasingly rare, they do reflect my larger belief that it's OK to teach my children to embrace the world rather than flee from it. That less harm can come from teaching them to trust themselves than can come from teaching them to fear everyone and everything.

I feel I should point out that I am not teaching them to ignore their fears. Although I have not read Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear, it is a practice that my children--and myself--employ instinctively. After all, The Girl, now 8, has run into the house on more than one occasion to report to me that there's a creepy guy sitting in a van with the motor running on the street outside our house. Each time this happens, I've responded with a reassuring hug for my daughter and a trip outside myself. The guy, as it turns out, is our next door neighbor's father, an aging general contractor and lifelong smoker who is now suffering renal failure. He looks a little different (and a little creepier) than when The Girl first met him.

Letting my children loose in the world so that they can explore it safely is my job as a parent. To me, teaching my children to interact with other people, to become self-sufficient and self-reliant, to build and build upon life experiences, and to trust themselves is probably the third most important thing I can teach them, just after unconditional love and treating others with kindness and respect.

In May, I attended a talk given by the Free-Range founder herself, Lenore Skenazy. That experience--being in a preschool classroom with 30 other mothers (and a smattering of fathers) who shared my philosophy on letting kids be kids, even in the big, bad city--gave me the high of a shared connection or a great deal at the Treasure Store. So I spent the summer giving my kids increasingly longer leashes. The Girl walked to the corner store and back with a friend. Five times. The Tot Who's Not, age 6, finally learned to scooter and started doing scooter laps around the block. The Boy got a new bicycle and began roving around the neighborhood on his bike. Except for 2-3 neighborhood boys whose parents share my philosophy, the only other kids he met were 6th and 7th grade boys from his school.

Earlier this week, after dropping The Girl off at the movies with her girl scout troop, I found myself with 90 minutes to kill in a Barnes & Noble, where I settled in with a stack of magazines and a cup of coffee. Among the mags was Real Simple Family, which featured a cover story on helicopter and overprotective parenting. The first page of the story featured wisdom from, yet again, Ms. Skenazy, who reiterated the difference between taking risks and engaging in risky behavior.

It's a good reminder for us all. There are risks in merely existing in our world, but risky is walking home through an unlit secret passage in the dark, accepting a drink in an open cup from a stranger, or waiting until your kids are in college before you let them leave the house without you. 

After the first time I let The Girl go to the corner store and The Tot Who's Not scooter around the block, I asked each of them if anyone had approached or talked to them. Giving me the look that clearly said, "Mom, you are Looney Tunes," they reported that no, no one had talked to them, approached them, or motioned them to get into a car. I answered with a what-if, and each of them gave me the withering look and said, "Scream and run like hell."

It's the same look they give me when I repeat, for the gazillionth time, some warnings before sending my boys into the men's restroom: "Remember: don't talk to anyone and if anyone tries to touch you, scream as loud as you can and run like hell." The Boy has heard this so many times that I don't even bother to repeat it to him. He recently told me, "Mom, this is imprinted on my brain!" The Tot Who's Not has heard it less often, but he'd risk peeing on the floor rather than enter the ladies' room with me in public under any circumstance.

This is how I prefer it. And I think this is how most girls age about 8 and older would prefer it as well. I can't imagine having to fumble with an early period in a public restroom while sharing a stall wall with your 3rd period classmate. This is why it's a problem for a mother to bring her 8-year-old son into the ladies restroom with her, as one mother wrote that she did when the question of allowing opposite sex children use the opposite sex public restroom arose recently on a popular Chicago message board. Other answers to the question ranged from age 5 to age 34. I am not making this up.

My boys were 6 and 4 when I began encouraging them to use the restroom designated for their gender. Part of this was laziness on my part as The Boy would invariably ask to pee just as we sat down to eat something. But then part of me realized that the fear of using the Target restroom is, essentially, a phobia: irrational and not statistically likely. Since then, I've trusted my boys to use the men's public restroom and trusted the world to let them do their business without comment or incident. And so far, the public restroom public has been worthy of that trust. And that's been true at K-Mart, Target, the library, tollway oases, O'Hare airport, the grocery store, the park, and the beach.

On a related note, I found myself facing another "Am I crazy?" moment this week while I listened to two parents at a school event discuss how to get crossing guards in place to protect their 4th-7th grade children while they walked 1/2 mile or less to school. When I said that The Boy walks the same route with 50+ morning commuters, they said that they didn't feel comfortable letting their children walk the same route alone because of a nearby SRO and shelter, and exit-ramp vagrants. They then went on to say that because they work in public service, they have a different perspective than I do. 

I've been reflecting on this conversation all day and mostly I want to know: What do these parents know that I do not? Should I be more concerned about exit-ramp vagrants? I've passed these folks many a morning on my way to work and they usually look as if they are sleeping it off. Whatever it is. I can't imagine any one of them rising from their cardboard-backed slumber to bother me or my kid. In two years of commuting the same route, I've had 1 person ask me for money, which I would call neither harassment nor particularly damaging an experience. Yes, I am an adult and these types of interactions should be no big deal to me. But how did they get to become no big deal to me? Experience and exposure. 

I understand that law enforcement sees the underbelly of Chicago, and I, in my safe NWside neighborhood and mostly daytime roving, don't have much exposure to it. But I've looked up the crime statistics for my police district and I still don't get it. What am I missing? What do police officers and public servants see happening in our area that I do not? Does the department issue crime alerts for only some of the incidents that happen in our precinct? Do police and fire departments track the crimes that they were able to prevent from happening? Do these departments redact crime reporting? 

I'm pretty sure that despite a lot of anecdotal, on-the-job experiences, the statistics--at least those reported by our police precinct--do not bear out the idea that great harm comes from school-aged children being approached by strangers on the street in our area. In the highly unlikely scenario that an exit-ramp vagrant, SRO or shelter resident approached my kid on a well-lit, well-traveled public street, the question I wanted to ask, but didn't is: and then what happens? And how do you know?

This Girl Stuff Is Going to Kill Me

This week, The Girl went off to sleep away camp for the first time. I chose a Girl Scouts camp for her, while her big brother went to YMCA camp. I did this for several reasons, but the most important of these were (1) because it was shorter and less expensive than the YMCA camp, and (2) because the camp came highly recommended among Girl Scout leaders in our area.

That it was a Girl Scout camp is of no small importance. As a child, I loved visiting Juliette Gordon Low's Savannah home. In theory, Juliette Gordon Low was one of the first feminist role models for girls, basing her version of scouting on the idea that girls are not inherently neater, cleaner, prissier, or more careful than boys, however much society would like to make it so. I always got the impression that JGL thought that girls can and should enjoy similar pursuits as those of boys. As a girl, this appealed to me. As a woman, as a feminist, and most importantly, as the mother of a girl, this is of critical importance. 

My hope is that GS will help reinforce what I try to teach my daughter (and my sons): that a girl's self-worth should have less to do with what she looks like, what she wears, and the grades she earns in school and more to do with who she is as a person. 

I will readily confess that as The Girl spent 5.5 days at camp, I enjoyed a wee vacation from my middle child. It's a break I really needed as The Girl is super smart, fiercely analytical, somewhat attention-seeking, extremely perceptive, and often overwhelmed by her own emotions. 

It is exhausting. 

I recognize that it's part of my job as a mother to listen to her and help her to navigate those emotions. But it may surprise everyone (or no one, depending on your view of blogging) to learn that I struggle to maintain my voice and authentic self. This adds another layer of work--and another source of fatigue--to the process of mothering a girl. 

Because, really, our society sends such mixed messages to girls and women. We are bombarded with often conflicting information about how to act, how to dress, what and who to like, what to say and how to say it, and what defines femininity, beauty, popularity, and intelligence. 

And the messaging starts early. In the 18 months since I last wrote about this, my girl has spent the intervening time struggling--and failing--to come to terms with the idea that she is "not popular." As her mother, I see both the positive and negative sides of her behavior and interactions with her peers. She feels excluded and she reacts by pouting. But as her mother, I wonder how an 8-year-old comes to feel regularly excluded by her peers?

As a friend pointed out recently, how are such concepts introduced to 7- and 8-year-olds? And how is popularity determined at this age? Is it self-selection or self-declaration? 

I hate summer

It's time for my annual rant about how I hate summer. 

I hate summer.

Why? 

First, it's hot. I am pale-skinned, pale-eyed, pale-haired. I can feel my skin burning in the sun and the heat. I don't feel endorphin-induced euphoria from running around in the sun or relaxing on the beach. I can "lay out" for a grand total of 10 minutes before I flee for the shade. When I was a kid, my mother never sent me to the park district's day camp. I always thought it was because (a) she never remembered the registration date or (b) she didn't work and didn't need the day care element of day camp, but now I wonder if it's because she knew I would come home complaining of a day spent in the sun.

Second, and more importantly, like those economically disadvantaged children discussed in study after study, article after article, I experience brain drain. I feel myself getting stupider by the day as my brain melts out my mouth with the heat and humidity of an archetypical July day in Chicago. 

This is, of course, hyperbole. The very fact that I am writing this post, reading articles like these, and plowing through my stack of both non-fiction books and novels suggests that I remain engaged in the process of learning even through the dog days of summer. 

But it seems a lot harder to do anything in summer. My countdown to the first day of school (30 days, by the way) usually begins on the first week of summer vacation, as my tendency toward free-range parenting kicks me in the ass when I realize that my summer plans for my children of playdates and pool have been dashed by that over which I have no control: day camp, vacations, and the weather.

It's July 26th and I am out of ideas. I cannot seem to muster the kind of "isn't this great?!" cheerleading that seems to accompany most child-centered activities. A few months ago, I read a book on organizational psychology called Drive, by Daniel Pink. Pink's theory is that individuals are most motivated by doing things that are intrinsically satisfying rather than "incentivizing" individuals to perform certain tasks. Modern parenting, it seems to me, is one giant game of carrot-and-stick. One that I am not particularly interested in playing today. 

The Choices We (Don't Get to) Make

Yesterday morning, The Dad and I made our annual pilgrimage to Park Ridge, to have our taxes done. While The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot (Who's Not) kept themselves busy with a 3DS, iPod. and iPhone, respectively, The Dad and I learned that this year, we would again receive a rather decent refund from the Feds.

By again, I mean that we have received refunds in the past, but owed the government in 2010 after I worked full-time for the year. I know I should be thankful that we'll get what feels like a an unexpected windfall in a bad economy. But I'm not.

I'm angry. I feel betrayed by our culture and our government. I naively believed for years that the decision to work--or not--was mine. Do societal norms set public policy or vice-versa? It's a cornerstone of economics that governments determine and pursue a course of public action to encourage (or discourage) certain behaviors. Clearly, if one looks at the tax code, the ease in finding child care, and the average respect accorded school teachers, this country doesn't want both parents in a two-parent, heterosexual family to work. 

I know it's possible that the U.S. government doesn't mean that men must work in a two-parent, heterosexual families. But given how respected and well-paid the average day care or parks & recreation worker or K-12 teacher is, it's clear that the business of taking care of children and/or households--the same duties performed on an hourly basis by SAHPs--is not valued in this country. 

No one questions if The Dad loves his children while he puts in a 10-hour day writing code, so I am not going to even go there. But if what I want out of life goes beyond being paid in hugs and temper tantrums, what course of action can I reasonably pursue? If I work for pay, our family takes a giant hit in what I can reasonably bring home, as child care for my three children costs more than I made in my first three jobs out of college, and the government gives us a measly $5,000 tax credit for it? When I was working, achieving work-life balance was my number one concern. Now that my executive functioning is spent on meal-planning, lunchbox-filling, carpooling, and keeping the bathroom stocked with TP, I'm wondering if I will ever be able to pursue the work part of work-life balance without losing my shirt in the process?

This war on women has got to stop. I don't want The Girl, The Boy, and The Tot (Who's Not) growing up to think that daddies work and mommies (or female nannies) make lunch and drive them around because that is all that they see around them.

Girls...

a.k.a. if it's this bad in 1st grade, how can I make it through the teen years?

No shrinking violet, The Girl is by turns, spunky, sweet, and incredibly perceptive. The competition she imagines that she has with her brothers is entirely unfounded. Because with her dimples, infectious laugh, and the fact that she generally enjoys the same activities as I do, she's my first choice companion for adventures and outings almost every time. 

But the girl relationship bullshit that begins (I've learned) at age 4 or 4 is the reason that I never wanted to parent a girl child. Tears erupt on the playground after school more often than not, and the list of casual slights, perceived insults, and overheard exclusions grows ever longer by the day. As any grown woman will tell you, there's nothing worse to the average girl than getting dropped like a hot potato by a good friend. Yes, you learn how to cope. Maybe you even end up stronger than you were when you went into it. But it sucks.

And it hurts. As a nearly 7-year-old child, The Girl is ill-equipped to handle it. As a 38-year-old mother, I'm not sure how to handle it, and my own childhood is rife with such incidents. The realist in me can see that Stacie, Susie, Bitsy, Edie, and Amy have vastly different interests than The Girl, who leans toward culturally creative and mathematically gifted pursuits. The Girl, like her parents, prefers comfort over style, has zero interest in becoming a veterinarian, and plays dolls and dress-up only when pressed. She is better suited to develop friendships with girls (and boys) who share her interests. 

But as the title of Mindy Kaling's book alludes, the fear of being left out is very real to many adult women, and our grade-school counterparts are unfortunately afflicted with this as well. After all, as Amy Lynch and Linda Ashford write in their book, How Can You Say That?: "When our daughters are little, we [mothers] get to decide who their friends will be." There is a clique of girls on the playground--and The Girl  is not in it. Are these girls the future alpha moms of their generation? It's possible that the exclusion is not mean-spirited, but to The Girl, it feels deliberate. Write Lynch and Ashford, "Even as they become more independent, [mothers] still have plenty of control over how much time [our school-age daughters] spend with whom." 

This struggle is undoubtedly one of the hardest parts of parenting. Obviously, this is not the path I'd choose for my daughter if I could avoid it. I'd love to see The Girl make friends with the girls (or boys) who better share her natural interests, but I'm not sure that I can really choose who her friends are (and I'm not sure that I should). I wish I could say that I have a neat little conclusion for this story, but at this point, I don't. At this point, all I can do is to encourage her to talk to me, provide her love and comfort, and hope that her voice remains authentic and strong.

Varied Interests

After walking The Boy, The Girl, and The Tot (Who's Not) to school this morning, I returned home to find this comment, a response by Handmaiden to the Lord, to this post in my email box: "Well unlike you, I LOVE being a stay at home mom. Unlike you, I don't need a babysitter for my kids.... I LOVE my children."

In my head, I was both amused by the assumptions in her comment, and defensive of these attempted negative assignations to my character as a mother.

But then I got mad. The kind of anger fueled by a profound sadness at the way women continue to be cast as the lesser sex--by men, but also by ourselves. I find my own words inadequate, but Emily Hauser, who wrote recently about the GOP, captured my sense of frustration perfectly: "There is a purely incandescent rage that comes over me now on a nearly daily basis over the blatant dehumanization of women that is currently sweeping the nation."

It's not just the notion that behaving a certain way or having interests outside of motherhood makes me an inadequate mother in the eyes of readers, but that even talking about our struggles is not allowed. When The Dad became a father, he wasn't expected to give up his job, interests, or hobbies because he became a father. That's different, you say. Fathers are wired differently. First, hog-wash. And second, I'm not buying that. I don't believe for a second that blogging about the struggle I have with work, home, children, and daily life in any way indicates that I want to cast off my children, or that I don't enjoy motherhood, or that I don't love them and enjoy them as little people in their own right. 

Forgive me another Mad Men reference, but office stick-in-the-mud Peggy Olson summed it up best when she said, at the end of last season: "I signed the first new business since Lucky Strike left...but it's not as important as getting married."

This is not about men subjugating women, although that certainly happens a lot on Mad Men and within the GOP. But what Handmaiden's comment is really about is women subjugating women. 

Ask any one of my children who last bought them shoes, took them to school, prepared any meal, took them to a birthday party, bought a present, went to the grocery store, washed and folded their clothes, baked cookies or helps them with their homework most of the time and the answer is the same: Mama. Some of these tasks I enjoy, others I do not.

BRC Redux

The Dad, the kids and I rolled back into town after our first ever family road trip on Monday night around 11 p.m. Less than 24 hours later, I was back in the auditorium of Lane Tech, listening to the same CPS administrator review this year's proposed changes to SE/magnet enrollment policy (see page 6). Unlike at last year's presentation, which was sketchily announced and scarcely attended, yet expertly presented, the crowd this year was huge. Public comment extended beyond the allotted 2-hour window. (CPS is learning that the best way to contact parents is not to stick a print ad next to the obits in the Trib.)

Like last year, I spoke to the Blue Ribbon Commission. Unlike last year, the moderator responded to comments and questions from the crowd. My comments were not news--either to the audience, which included the Raise Your Hand Coalition steering committee and a few teachers and fellow parents from the kids' school, or to the CPS powers-that-be: we need more high school options, we need to increase the size of the pie all-around. This sentiment was oft-repeated by those who gave testimony at the hearing.

Another common theme among commenters was how unfair CPS's 2009 SE enrollment policies are to their junior high children. The prevailing sentiment was that their ("our") northside children are more deserving of a spot at Northside Prep, Walter Payton, or Jones because they  scored 20 points (or 50 points or even 100 points) higher than a kid who has to bus in from the west or south sides. You'll soon be able to read the transcript online, so you'll be able to verify that a man said, "the smarter kids are going to become disenfranchised" by CPS' current SE enrollment policy/system. Really? I'd like to see some research on that. Because I know there is a whole lot on how black, Hispanic, Asian, and poor children become disenfranchised by a dearth of opportunity. More on this issue at another time.

And the other major theme at Tuesday's hearing was the issue of enrolling the children of school staff at magnet schools. I had read about the policy-change proposal drafted by the Friends of Mayer group several weeks ago on NPN, but it wasn’t until I attended the hearing that I realized the import of such a change. The proposal asks that CPS/Blue Ribbon Commission replace principal discretion at magnet schools with a new, transparent policy that would allow teachers, principals and staff to enroll their children at the school where their parent(s) work.

I was directly and positively affected by the Board of Education’s 2009 decision to keep families together by giving siblings priority in the magnet enrollment process. Keeping siblings together in their schooling minimizes family stress and maximizes educational outcomes for students. Likewise, keeping school employees’ children with them in the school communities they serve is critical for the continued success of great CPS elementary schools.

As I listened to parent after parent and teacher after teacher speak in support of keeping families together, it struck me that our school community and our children will bear an incredible loss if our extremely dedicated teachers, administrators or staff were forced to measure their time between their children and their students.  Can you imagine our school without the excellent teachers who have been with the school since its inception and, I believe, are an integral part of its success? I do not want to do so.

You can show your support for fabulous teachers, administrators and school staff everywhere within CPS by submitting public comment in favor of allowing teachers, administrators and staff to enroll their children in the magnet schools where their parent(s) work by submitting public comment here.

High School

As I reached the train platform this morning, I noticed a high school girl wearing sweatpants and a backpack who had just exited the train and was walking down, presumably to go to school. I assume that she was on her way to nearby Schurz High School. In about 6 years, high school for The Boy will be on our minds. It's really not that far away. If schools get better by parent/community involvement and marketing power, maybe it's time to get involved in the local high schools in the hopes that by the time my 7-year-old is ready for them, they'll be worth attending?

However, high school is still a daunting thought to me. First, there are only a handful of selective enrollment high schools in the city, which means that competition is fierce. One group, the North Side High School Initiative, is trying to start the process to improve options at the high school level. Unfortunately, this group is from/focused on wards 32, 42, 46 and 47; I'm in ward 39. 

Second, and slightly more upsetting, is the issue of school violence at the high school level. Last week, I attended the League of Women Voters' lunch talk on school violence in CPS. Unfortunately, I missed the first 5 and the last 20 minutes of the presentation because I had to work, and missed the speaker's name. However, he was an administrator with Chicago Public Schools and presented data from a September 2009 PowerPoint deck on school violence. While the deck did present some good information (80% of school violence takes place in 38 schools, for example), the presenter had taken the CPS spin class, and could/would not give me specific answers to some of my questions (like the names of the 38 schools). 

I'm committed to CPS through 8th grade, but will we be city-dwellers after 2017? It has nothing to do with street cred; I'm not sure I can hack the politics of everything.