While a majority of students said they felt welcome and accepted in the District 90 community, more than 32 percent of their peers said they didn’t feel that way this year, according to results of an inquiry that examined feelings around the environment in River Forest schools.
Third- through eighth-graders took the first-ever survey of student attitudes, and nearly 42 percent noted they were socially excluded or embarrassed and another 32 percent said they were teased or bullied. About 43 percent of the students said they sometimes felt lonely at school. And over half felt left out sometimes at school.
In all, 1,200 people took the online survey, provided through the Inclusiveness Advisory Board. About 800 youngsters participated in the questionnaire.
Different surveys were administered to faculty and staff and to parents. The surveys were taken between late March and May.
The attitudes and concerns in the survey are notable in that they and others could affect a student’s academic performance, district officials said. That will be critical as the district examines how to implement its newly adopted strategic plan.
“It is disheartening to learn that the needs of some individuals in our school community are not being met. Clearly, there is work to be done,” said Ed Condon, District 90’s superintendent.
How included students feel may very well have an impact on how well they do in the classroom, on standardized tests and in other areas. Some students noted that they didn’t feel welcome and comfortable because of how they dressed and looked, the activities they were and were not involved in and the people they hung out with around school.
More than 36 percent of students said that sometimes they saw an adult treating a student unfairly because of any of those factors. Nearly 62 percent of the students said they saw a group at school exclude someone because of those factors.
A vast majority of the respondents said they had a close friend at school, but nearly 30 percent said there wasn’t a grown-up at school they could talk to if they had a problem.
Some parents said they and their children sometimes felt unwelcome or uncomfortable because of where they lived, their ethnicity or cultural background and religious beliefs.
In addition, some parents felt unwelcome because of their opinions or length of time the family had been in the community. At times that feeling of being unwelcome or discomfort took place in spots where it seems they should be most welcome: school sponsored activities, PTO-sponsored activities and at D90 volunteer activities.
Teachers said students sometimes felt uncomfortable and unwelcome because of the language they spoke at home, where they lived, their ethnicity and cultural background, their learning differences or styles or their friends.
One of the positive aspects that arose from the survey was the acceptance of same-sex families and their children. More than 90 percent of the children felt they weren’t made to feel uncomfortable and unwelcome because of the kind of family they had.
Nearly 95 percent of parents said they felt welcome and comfortable in the school community and that more than 89 percent of them said their children felt the same way.
District officials said all parents and students need to feel a part of the community.
“If 25 percent of the students are feeling isolated, and parents are not feeling welcome, then we need to improve our practices and procedures” said Anne Gottlieb, a member of the board of education and liaison to the Inclusiveness Advisory Board.
“We need to drill down to policies and practices and interactions on all different levels. We want to strengthen our sense of community.
The Inclusiveness Advisory Board was formed during the 2013-14 school year to help assess how inclusive the schools were. The survey, Gottlieb said, was one method of helping the panel do its work.
The results and information will be among the tools that the inclusiveness group and the Equity Committee, just recently formed by the board of education, will use to examine how the reasons behind disparate test scores between white students and students of color and the extent of an achievement gap between boys and girls.
On the 2014 Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), the last year those standardized tests were administered, white students outperformed African-American, Hispanic and Asian students on the reading portion. In math, Asian students outperformed whites, and both groups outpaced African-American and Hispanic students.
Slightly more girls than boys met or exceeded expectations on the reading, math and science portions of the 2014 ISAT, but some parents have expressed concern about the level of involvement in math and science activities in school.
At the time the test was administered, there were 972 students in District 90. African-American and Hispanic students comprise nearly 15 percent of the student population; around 4 percent of the students are Asian.
Results from the new PARCC assessment are not yet available, district officials said.
