Throughout the first years of racially integrated housing in Oak Park in the 1960s, village officials and District 97 leaders stressed the need to closely monitor the direct interface between housing integration and school integration if the new Oak Park vision of racial diversity were to succeed. The numbers of African American children in Oak Park and the relative balance of integration of schools became paramount data on whether the Oak Park vision of racially integrated housing was on the right track.
Today, we may be witnessing a reversal of Oak Park’s early measurement of success as the percentage African American students is declining significantly at Oak Park and River Forest High School and in D97. A loss of racial and economic diversity in housing appears to be following close behind. But what do we know for sure? What questions should we be asking and what can we learn to apply to housing diversity from recent efforts in District 200 decisions to expand, not diminish, racial equity in students’ opportunity to learn?
For sure, the current village survey around housing challenges and priorities is a step in the right direction. Equally promising is the commitment by President Vicki Scaman, our trustees, and Village Manager Jackson to actively use racial equity assessment protocols under the guidance of Oak Park Equity Director Danielle Walker. After major resistance from previous village leaders, our schools and village hall are finally getting in sync.
There is an important lesson the village must now apply, which was vital to bringing about unprecedented, equity-based reorganization of curriculum at OPRF by de-tracking most core freshman courses and making all honors level courses open to more students of color. These curriculum reforms were backed by D200’s own, extensive research data, with close attention to the history of race and education, and with understanding of what national and international research said about curriculum equity.
D200 could not allow major decisions impacting equity and the community’s faith in its high school to be made intuitively or to rely on long-standing popular beliefs about the best way to organize curriculum. Instead, D200 broke with that tradition and resolved to make decisions about racial equity that were tied to a rich data base and research-based evidence. This is a standard that should guide the village’s housing inquiry.
I suggest that new data on housing should prioritize assessing in what ways both market and governmental forces are actually advancing the vision and values incorporated in the Village of Oak Park Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion statement, adopted in 2019. Here are a few questions I shared recently at the village meeting on housing:
To what degree do major losses in African American student population over the last 10 years in D97 and D200 correspond to a loss of racial diversity in housing?
What are the exact racial demographics in Oak Pak over the last 20-30 years since some people claim all is good and there is no crisis in economic and racial diversity around housing?
When and why did the village stop tracking racial demographic data in housing and is such a practice supportive or aversive to equity and diversity?
About 6 million home mortgages were foreclosed after the great financial crash of 2008 with African American and Latinx people grossly over-represented in losing their homes. What do we know about how that disaster played out in Oak Park; was it a factor influencing racial and economic diversity in housing?
The list of important questions is much longer and varied. But if we don’t ask the right questions and have accurate data, we as a community cannot live up to having the inclusive, racially and economically diverse community that brought so many of us to Oak Park over the last half century.
John Duffy is co-chair of the Committee for Equity and Excellence in Education. He has lived in the Longfellow School neighborhood with his wife Patricia for 46 years.