Out of the darkness that ever hovers over the Chicago Public Schools came a flicker of light last week, something to applaud.
School reform, the massive decentralization effort the district undertook four years ago, has taken root in its 505 elementary schools, a new study said. In some cases, reform is flowering.
Schools that once sat idling on old, non-productive teaching methods and engulfed in endless struggles with the board’s Pershing Road headquarters, have been recharged by reform-their new authority to think innovatively and move independently on behalf of the children in their charge.
But the promise of the report, one of the few signs of hope for a beleaguered system, is in danger of being buried under the yearly avalanche of budget woes. In the struggle to fill the canyon of a budget gap, many fear that successful reform will be thrown into the pit.
According to the study by a group of local educators noted for their sound evaluations, more than half the schools have found ways to tailor education to their needs and are marching toward major improvement.
“A View From the Elementary Schools: The State of Reform in Chicago,” a 45-page report issued by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, showed that schools such as Spry, at 2400 S. Marshall Blvd., in the heart of a Hispanic neighborhood short on wealth but abounding in desire to see children excel, has enlisted the whole community to make that happen.
Likewise, other parents, teachers, students and principals in a school system saddled with the reputation of “worst in America,” are wandering off from that loathsome brand.
Simply put, things are changing.
But then again, some things never change.
While school supporters can glory in the fact that reform is taking hold, that at least one-third of the city’s elementary schools are shedding failure like an old skin, they also have to trumpet a grim truth: that the hard-won gains could dissolve due to $416 million worth of money woes that threaten to crash the school system.
Last week, as local education advocates worked to generate support for the upcoming election of local school council members, the people on the front line of reform, the deluge of media coverage of the massive deficit overshadowed efforts to get out the good news.
“Our concern is real because once again it appears that the deficit will capture the headlines,” Diana Nelson, president of the reform group Leadership for Quality Education, told educators and parents in a meeting room at the Westin Hotel.
One after another, parents and teachers stood to share before-and-after stories underscoring successful site-based school management.
But during the meeting, there was a need to pause and focus on reality.
“If I had to stand here today and say whether schools will open on time, I’d say, `No,’ ” school board President D. Sharon Grant told the group.
Soon after, newly appointed Supt. Argie Johnson took the microphone to talk of the “unfair” funding practices Chicago schools have encountered. To comfort her audience, she spoke of her ability to fight.
The question though, is why, now, should there be a need to fight? Now, when things are changing?
The Illinois General Assembly has for years shortchanged the state’s public schools, and Chicago school administrators feel they’ve been cheated. In the last 10 years, the legislature’s percentage of the funding for Chicago Public Schools has plummeted to 33 percent from 47 percent.
This year, as the city school system wrestled with one of the worst deficits in its history, there was at best a tepid response from Springfield-$84 million to feed a $416 million deficit.
And the grumbling-from the governor’s office to the state Capitol to the suburbs to even City Hall-has been that the Chicago school system and its school board are the problem.
While the city schools’ $2.8 billion budget could hardly be considered a shoestring, supporters demand that those who criticize the spending consider the task: educating and instilling hope in kids consigned to neighborhoods festering with drug abuse, death, joblessness-hopelessness.
“The future of 411,000 students is at stake here. It’s just immoral how the state lawmakers are ignoring our pleas,” board member Charles Curtis said as school officials outlined possible cuts in personnel and programs necessary to even come close to bailing out their system.
Board member Pam Lenane spoke of rough-going contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union that threaten to throw reform off course:
“The board has come up with proposals that push reform forward, and the union has said `no’ to them. They continue to say that our deficit is fabricated, that the money will come from somewhere. But when we ask them from where, they say they don’t know.”
But University of Chicago professor Anthony Bryk, primary author of the school reform study, knows. And he mourns.
“As you look at the steps that have to take place in order to open schools (this fall)-the cuts in programs, the pulling back of supplemental funds from local schools-it seems almost inevitable that it will eviscerate” the growth brought by reform.
