Parents and teachers say they are deeply concerned about safety and cell phone usage — amid a litany of other issues — at Percy Julian and Gwendolyn Brooks Middle Schools, and reinforced that message last week by holding small demonstrations at the Julian campus and directly addressing the District 97 School Board.
Their comments came at a tense board meeting last Tuesday.
Joel Blecha, a kindergarten teacher at Irving Elementary School who said he is also a parent of a sixth-grader at Julian said at the meeting that parents often receive emails from Julian about incidents of fighting and lockdowns.
“Everyone in this room can agree that we’ve got to do everything in our collective power to keep our children from becoming desensitized to violence,” he said. “Students and teachers need to feel safe.”
Hannah Boudreau, a social worker at Brooks, agreed.
“Simply put, our middle schools are not safe,” she said.
Supt. Ushma Shah told Wednesday Journal in an email that Oak Park’s middle school experiences “must be universally excellent for all students.”
“To get to that vision,” she added, “our students must feel safe, engaged in robust learning, and supported to practice the skills they need in high school and beyond. All of us as school adults—administrators, teachers, teaching assistants, office staff, custodians and others—are responsible to create the conditions for student success. Our district is committed to strengthening existing collaboration spaces and standing up new ones so that our values result in concrete actions.”
‘To ensure we are heard’
At the meeting, Boudreau explained students who engage in physical or verbal altercations are often just sent back to class.
“No consequences, no accountability, no real restorative practices,” she said.
Boudreau added that she finds it concerning that if a suspension does happen to occur, attendance is frequently marked as a vacation or a mental health day.
“Why are we doing this?” she asked. “Are we intentionally doing this to alter our reporting numbers to ISBE? Are we putting our proverbial head in the sand and just pretending we don’t have an issue?”
Boudreau also said that the current Away for the Day cell phone policy, which was implemented at both middle schools in the fall of 2019, is great in theory but does not work.
“Why have the adults failed to make zero cell phone use a policy in our schools?” she said. “Why can’t we, like thousands of other districts globally, invest in locking pouches so students can be focused on learning and engaging with each other appropriately?”
Kelly Belmont, an educator at Brooks urged the Board to consider several changes, including smaller and more consistent class sizes, a consistent and comprehensive cell phone plan “that actually makes sense,” adding a third assistant principal, moving administrative staff to office spaces throughout the middle school buildings, and enforcing the student code of conduct and handbook to accurately reflect behavioral consequences.
“School leadership must be seen by parents, students and teachers on a daily basis,” Belmont said. “We are your stakeholders and we are often overlooked.”
District spokeswoman Amanda Siegfried told Wednesday Journal that officials are taking a number of concrete steps to address the concerns as part of a broader, multi-year effort to redesign District 97 middle schools.
“We are definitely taking very seriously everything that everyone has been saying and I think we want to move forward in a positive and productive way to set the students up for success in 2024/2025,” she said.
Siegfried added that staff members from Brooks and Julian planned to meet June 5 to begin addressing five key areas of middle school behavior for the next year: cell phones, IDs, hallway/bathroom transitions, backpacks in lockers, and lunch/social time.
After last week’s meeting, demonstrators gathered in front of Julian on both Wednesday, May 29 and Thursday, May 30, to show support for the teachers and to advocate for making safety a top priority at the school. The groups, who held signs expressing their support for the cause, consisted of staff, students and parents.
Julian PTO Co-president Lauren VanderBerg was on campus in front of the school because she was there for a school field trip.
“It wasn’t a protest,” VanderBerg said. “It was to raise awareness about some of the safety concerns and it was for the teachers, letting the teachers know that we were there and we support them. They deserve to be in a safe environment.”
VanderBerg said she feels there’s a disconnect between district administrators and the teachers.
“It seems like they’re not listening, at least from what I hear from teachers that I know from Oak Park that are also parents in the district,” she said. “They’re just feeling frustrated that they’ve been raising concerns that aren’t being heard.”
Ahead of D97’s Board of Education meeting on May 28, the executive board of the Julian PTO shared a letter with the D97 Board and Shah.
“We were unaware of the significant disconnect between Julian staff and D97 administration,” they wrote. “We fully support our Julian staff as they are the ones in the building every day, meeting the challenges and joys of working with our students. If they are unhappy and feel that the current climate at Julian is impacting their ability to teach our students, then we must listen to these professional educators and respond.”
The list of concerns raised in the letter involved cell phones, consequences for poor behavior, the need for increased supervision throughout the building and the need for additional custodial staff.
The letter also stated that it has come to their attention that there is a plan to outsource the D97 custodial staff.
Siegfried said this is not true. District 97 has no plans to outsource custodial work, she said.
“We highly value the contributions of SEIU members, and our custodial staff’s dedication and hard work are essential to the smooth operation of our schools,” Siegfried added. The Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, represents the district’s custodians.
Luis Fernando De León, assistant superintendent of middle schools said he was looking forward to the June meeting.
“The large number of staff who signed up demonstrates our community’s commitment to getting this right,” he said.
