Sharon Patchak-Layman, the veteran school board member at Oak Park and River Forest High School, is isolated within her board for a reason. She raises uncomfortable issues. She’s done it for years. She does it calmly and thoughtfully. And agree or disagree, she moves necessary conversations forward.
She did it again last month when she asked the board, during its annual goal-setting session, to focus on making the racial make-up of the school’s sports teams reflect the racial make-up of the school — roughly 57 percent white and 43 percent non-white.
Right now, she says, the teams do not reflect such balance and she produced numbers to demonstrate her case. She didn’t call out any specific teams that were either overly Caucasian or predominantly African-American, though such imbalanced teams exist. She asked for a board goal that by 2015 every team will diverge no more than 10 points — plus or minus — from the school average.
This isn’t our issue and it isn’t a goal that we would set in stone. But we have watched for years as certain teams have tipped and lost racial balance. Saying it out loud and saying we ought to actively reach out to talented kids to improve that balance is an entirely worthy goal. Just not one we would pin so specifically to the current racial makeup of OPRF. To us that feels forced.