Oak Park and River Forest High School will boost its academic support staff by two positions in time for an August school opening after the OPRF school board voted unanimously July 16 to approve the creation of two more teaching positions, a reading interventionist and a math interventionist.
The positions were recommended by the OPRF administration in response to pressure from equity advocates, some school board members, and after a report prepared by two members of the OPRF Community Finance Committee concluded that OPRF underspent on tutoring and academic support.
“We hear the comments; we’ve heard comments at previous meetings, we’ve had conversations with several not present here, both internally and externally” said OPRF Supt. Greg Johnson in introducing the recommendation for discussion. The vote took place at a special meeting of the school board that was called to approve the late recommendation to add the two interventionist teaching positions. “We hear the urgency to bring items forward that address the concerns related to equity, achievement gaps, in a variety of different ways,” said Johnson.
The recommendation was presented to the school board by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Jen Hester, Director of Student Learning Jennifer Brinkman and Executive Director of Special Education Andrea Neuman.
“Our students of color are not experiencing success at the same rate as their peers and that is why we are actively working, and we have strategies, to improve how classroom instruction meets individual needs,” Hester told the school board.
Hester said there is lots of room for improvement.
“We can be better; we can be a lot better,” Hester said.
The new reading interventionist will be assigned to World History A classes, which is part of the Honors for All freshman curriculum, and will mostly work with students needing help in small groups.
The math interventionist will be assigned to the Math Enrichment Center and work with students who come for additional help.
Hester told the school board that one of challenges in designing academic support is that special classes or extended instruction in certain subjects, which already exist for freshman who enter high school with quite low reading and math scores is that the limited number of class periods in the school day and that academic support doesn’t get in the way of taking classes needed to graduate.
“It’s very critical that our systems of support allow our students to meet their graduation requirements and they don’t keep them from getting into graduation requirement courses,” Hester said. “And it’s also critical that our students who need interventions have access and choice to planning their four-year pathway.”
Johnson said administrators will spend the next year brainstorming how to provide more academic support in the future while dealing with the constraints of class schedules.
“This is a step,” Johnson said. “We don’t suggest, imply or state in any way that this is the entire thing.”
Board members Josh Gertz and Jonathan Livingston suggested exploring remote tutoring so that students can get help outside the regular school day with Livingston also saying that he would like to see weekend tutoring.
Board member Fred Arkin asked about making tutoring mandatory for those who need it.
Board member Tim Brandhorst, referencing a page in Hester’s slide presentation that outlined key strategies over a three to five year time period, said that a three-year timeline to implement more substantial academic supports is “unacceptable.”
Hester will soon be meeting with Michele Mangan and Bob Spatz, the two members of the OPRF Community Finance Committee who wrote a report comparing OPRF’s staff spending to what the state’s evidence based funding model suggests and concluded that OPRF underinvests in academic support and tutoring, in an attempt to figure how OPRF might do more academic support and tutoring.
Four equity advocates spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting urging the school to do more to support struggling students and Black students in particular.
In his public comment John Duffy, a founding member of Committee on Equity and Excellence in Education and a retired high school history teacher, said that he was both hopeful and disappointed with the proposal to add two interventionists.
“First steps are always significant, but the administration’s proposal falls woefully short responding to needs identified since the first semester of the freshman restructured honors program four years ago,” Duffy said. “It is an anemic response to the immediate recommendations of the Community Finance Committee to provide a minimum of five and a half dedicated tutors and to overall increase supports for student learning.”
In a telephone interview after the meeting, Duffy said the report presented by Hester was informative and instructive but repeated that the current proposal is inadequate to meet the needs that are present.
“It is a step, but the need is much greater than that,” Duffy said.
School board president Audrey Williams-Lee said the achievement gaps start long before kids enter high school and more attention must be given to younger children.
“What is being done in the lower grades,” Williams-Lee asked, saying that there must be harder looks at what goes in the elementary and middle schools that feed into OPRF to understand why some kids are off track by the time they enter OPRF.
Hester said that OPRF already has some partnerships with River Forest District 90 and is looking forward to creating more partnerships with Oak Park Elementary School District 97.