There’s nothing quite like a budget crisis for exposing our true commitments. When money is no object, it’s easy to solve problems by funding solutions. When money is tight, we have to make choices.
That’s the unsavory position the District 97 school board has been in for the past three years. The parents, teachers and staff members who attended last week’s board meeting clearly understood that cuts had to be made and would be unpleasant. But they also had a clear message: Don’t cut teachers.
The schools that are currently poised to lose one teacher apiece are Irving, Longfellow and Hatch. Ironically, these are the three schools to which the Commitment to Diversity Education Task Force a few years back urged District 97 to allocate additional resources because they need them more than do the other Oak Park schools. The task force reached this conclusion based on research into factors that bolster the academic achievement of poor and minority students, which make up a larger portion of the student population at these three schools. One of the main resources these schools need, the task force found, was a lower student/teacher ratio, because (as many people pointed out last week) minority and low-income students disproportionately benefit from smaller class sizes.
It wasn’t a popular recommendation. To the schools that would not benefit from this recommendation, it sounded blatantly unfair. Why should they receive less than their share of district resources? The task force, however, was trying to counterbalance something that is inherently unfair: the unequal distribution of resources in the home lives of students around our village.
I’m talking about the fact that some of our students live in homes with lots of books and Internet access, have highly educated parents with the time and knowledge to effectively help them with their homework, and go to museums and take vacations because their parents are able to offer them these educational advantages. Meanwhile, other students live in homes with parents or caregivers who are just as loving and caring, but for whom financial constraints don’t allow for the wealth of books and computers the other children have. These parents may not be as comfortable with algebraic equations, may not have memberships at the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium, may not be able to afford to take their kids to the Grand Canyon or to Washington, D.C.
And as we all know, these types of homes are concentrated in different corners of our village and therefore their children are concentrated in certain schools. The task force’s argument was that the district shared responsibility for leveling the playing field.
Those of us who confidently sent our children to schools that were poorer in resources found it a bit painful to talk about this subject. We pointed out that our schools?#34;the ones with a higher number of low-income students?#34;weren’t worse schools. In fact, they were richer in diversity, which was the quality that drew us to Oak Park. But we acknowledged that we faced challenges that came along with this richness, and we needed help from the district to make up for some of the differences of resources.
I feel particularly bold about making this argument now because I won’t have a child at Irving school after this year. My children won’t suffer from an increase in class sizes if Irving loses a teacher. I am now an Oak Park resident who is concerned about the effects the proposed teacher cuts will have on our shared community, not just on my individual school.
The parents, teachers and staff at Irving, Longfellow and Hatch are also concerned about the whole village. They would certainly be thrilled if class sizes throughout the district could be as low as they currently are at these three schools. If that can’t be done, however, they’re urging the board not to raise the class sizes at the three schools that can least afford the effects that doing so will have on poor and minority students.
Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin teaches journalism at Columbia College Chicago and has two children in District 97 schools.
