This is a tale of two public high school districts.
One district’s residents haven’t voted to increase school funding since the 1960s. The other hasn’t had a referendum rejected by district voters since its founding in 1951.
The successful district has a public relations director. The other has budgeted for one.
They are Joliet High School District 204 and Lincoln-Way High School District 210.
If this were a parable, Joliet would be represented by the problem student, the one with the blotted permanent record. Lincoln-Way would be the homecoming queen, destined for Harvard.
Susan Gahan, 19, of Joliet, vividly remembers her first day at Joliet West High School, one of District 204’s two high schools.
“I was terrified,” said the freshman at Carlton College in Northfield, Minn. “I’d heard so many horror stories about the place. I thought someone was going to beat me up and stuff me in a locker.”
Sensing her tension, Susan’s mother, Laura Gahan, cut her a deal: “Give it your all for one year. If you don’t like it, you can transfer.”
As her mother explained, “I’d been involved in community projects at West , and I was impressed by what I saw. There’s always been talk of gangs and trouble, but the more I looked into West, the more impressed I became. A lot of people don’t want to believe it, but Joliet has great public high schools.”
Four years later, Susan had not only stuck it out at Joliet West, but she also had graduated as student government president, with her choice of colleges.
” West prepared me just as well as the elite private schools many of my college classmates went to out East,” said Susan, who aspires to be a teacher. “I received a wonderful education. The school has its supporters, but the majority of people in Joliet give it a bum rap.”
Bum rap or not depends on whom you ask. “I would never send my kid to Joliet West or Central,” said Bob Pucel, a 37-year-old electrician from Joliet whose information about the Joliet high schools is admittedly second-hand. “No matter what I have to do . . . get a second job or work extra shifts, my son is going to Joliet Catholic .
“At the public schools, you’re only known if you get shot or beat someone up. At Joliet Catholic, they don’t just slide you through. The kids learn respect and are prepared for college.”
Pucel is not alone in his thinking, admits Chuck Baird, superintendent of Joliet High School District 204. “There’s a negative misconception in this town that our halls are covered with graffiti and run by gangs,” said the 28-year veteran of the district. “It’s simply not true.”
To combat the schools’ negative image and the lackluster support for public education by voters, District 204 is in the final stages of hiring a public relations and marketing professional, who will be paid between $28,000 and $32,000. In October, Joliet West parents and administrators also formed an 11-member public relations committee, currently in the process of preparing a brochure and working with Joliet’s local cable station on a commercial touting the school. The target date for both is August, in time for the start of the next school year.
“We’re just tired of all the rumors,” said Joliet West Principal Richard Samlin. “Our local paper gets calls asking why they’re covering up all the gang killings at Joliet West. We have our share of problems, just like every other school, but there are no gang killings. The bottom line is, I’ll put my best 150 kids up against any schools’ in the country.
“We’ve got great kids and teachers,” added the 31-year veteran of District 204. “As administrators, we need to do a better job of getting that message out.”
And Samlin has numbers to pitch. Joliet West students scored an average 22.7 (36 is perfect) on their composite ACT exams last year, second best among all Will County schools, public and private, and above the national average of 21.1. Compared with suburban high schools in the Chicago area with at least 20 percent of students coming from low-income families, Joliet West (at 28 percent) ranked first in composite ACT scores, and in the top five in science, reading, math, writing and social science in the Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP).
Joliet Central, the district’s other high school, which has the highest percentage (53.2 percent) of students from low-income families among suburban schools, ranked third in composite ACT scores at 21.5 and no lower than 16th out of 21 in all of the IGAP scoring areas.
The statistics are more impressive when you realize Joliet Central and West spend the least per pupil of Chicago suburban high schools with at least 20 percent low-income students, at $7,821 a year. Evanston Township High School, which spends more than $13,000 per student per year, was the only school to top Joliet Central in composite ACT and finished second to Joliet West at 22.3.
Although test scores are respectable, Joliet is entrenched in a public education deadlock. Voters haven’t passed a referendum in support of their public high schools since 1966, and except for a brief stretch in the mid-’80s (when Joliet East was closed and sold), the district hasn’t balanced a budget in more than 33 years. The ’94-’95 budget for both Joliet high schools is $37.6 million a year.
“Referendums are the yardstick by which you judge a community’s support for its public schools,” said Baird, 56, of New Lenox. “And voters in Joliet have definitely made their feelings known.”
To make ends meet during the last 30 years, District 204 issued more than $30 million in deficit financing bonds, $40 million in bonds for improvements such as fire alarms and handicapped accessibility, and made nearly $10 million in budget cuts. Since the passage of the state’s educational tax cap in 1991, schools can no longer issue these bonds without voter support, and three recent attempts to pass an increase in the tax rate failed. The ’94-’95 tax rate was $2.0651 per $100 of equalized assessed valuation.
Since 1992, the district, which has an enrollment of 4,226, was forced to slice more than $4 million from the budget. Class sizes were increased, staff cut, budgets frozen and sports teams consolidated. These moves would have done much to balance the budget if state aid had remained constant. In 1989-90, District 204 received more than $5 million in general aid from the state. In 1995-96, the total will be less than $1.9 million.
Riverboat gambling has helped, pouring an additional $1 million into the district during the last two years. The Joliet City Council, however, has mandated that the funds be used for one-time capital purchases only; so far it has bought computer equipment, audio-visual supplies, departmental equipment, copying machines and a new fire alarm system for Joliet Central (a school that was built in 1901 and has a spot on the National Register of Historic Places).
District officials fear that unless state aid increases or voters pass a referendum proposal, they’ll have to make even greater budget reductions. Such cuts may ax the new public relations person before he or she’s even hired, Baird said.
If funding and a lack of public support weren’t enough to keep Baird awake at night, the Will County Chamber of Commerce two years ago released the results of a controversial study harshly criticizing the district. If the school board followed 15 recommendations made by independent consultants, the district could show a surplus by 1998 without raising taxes, according to the Yellow-Pages-thick study, which was performed by out-of-state consultants and paid for by local businesses and the city of Joliet.
A heated debate ensued over the study’s accuracy. The chamber and school board clashed on almost every point, including the conclusion that the district lacked vision, that the board simply “rubber-stamped” requests and that the two campuses were duplicating services. After a year of bickering, the chamber asked that the Joliet City Council freeze District 204’s share of riverboat revenue until school officials enacted the study’s recommendations. The district collected its riverboat money, but the two sides remain divided on how to solve Joliet’s school-funding stalemate.
“It’s tough to sell people on public education when your chamber of commerce tells home buyers to look elsewhere, voters haven’t passed a referendum since ’66 and people perceive you’re overrun by gangs,” Baird said. ” is like the student that repeatedly, over and over, is told he’s a bad kid. Sooner or later, no matter how much he tries, he’s going to start to believe it.”
Chamber chairman Bob Rogina explained his organization’s rationale.
“The chamber asked the city to withhold the district’s riverboat money because we wanted to ensure that all the cuts that could be made were,” Rogina said. “The city took the position that rather than harming the district by holding back the money, they would push for further talks. It worked and now we’re sitting down with school officials and talking about the best possible solutions. . . . Everyone recognizes a referendum will be necessary in the future. We just have different opinions on how to get from A to B.”
“The district’s financial situation is dismal,” admitted John Mezera, Joliet city manager. “But school officials have done a lot to cut costs. Cutting programs is a necessary part of convincing voters you are serious about a referendum attempt. The district has done that, and the pressure from the chamber has helped.”
The flip side of such bickering is less than 10 miles to the east. Lincoln-Way High School, with campuses in New Lenox and Frankfort and an enrollment of 3,771, is a model of modern education. A $27 million expansion completed in March brought the district a state-of-the-art 1,300-seat auditorium, 45 new classrooms and two new 89,000-square-foot indoor athletic facilities.
While Joliet hasn’t passed a referendum proposal since the mid-’60s, Lincoln-Way hasn’t had a failure in eight attempts since the district’s founding in 1951. “The bottom line is our residents view public education as an investment,” said Lawrence Wyllie, superintendent of Lincoln-Way High School District 210. “They realize the $175,000 or $200,000 they paid for their home is the biggest investment they’ll ever make. For them, ensuring good schools is just part of protecting their investment. It’s good business.”
By way of comparison with the Joliet district, in 1994 the average ACT score for Lincoln-Way Central (the New Lenox campus, which houses juniors and seniors) was 22.3, and its rate of students from poverty-level homes was 1.9 percent. District 210’s per-pupil spending was $5,628, an “apples and oranges” comparison, according to Baird, who pointed out that the Joliet costs of special education, bilingual education and security boost that district’s per-pupil costs. The annual budget for the two Lincoln-Way campuses is $20 million, and its tax rate is $1.84 per $100 of equalized assessed valuation.
Wyllie, a former teacher, diagrams a simple, five-element equation for Lincoln-Way’s community relations success. “First and foremost you need a community that supports, values and understands education,” he said. “Combine that with a fiscally responsible board that values what’s best for kids, a staff that goes the extra mile, students that take pride in their school and a dedicated person to communicate all of that, and you have Lincoln-Way High School.”
Wyllie praises Lincoln-Way’s public relations chief, Stacy Holland, 41, of Frankfort, for keeping the spotlight on the district.
“Stacy Holland was hired in 1992 for one purpose, and one purpose only–to pass a referendum,” Wyllie said. “Don’t let her youthful looks and politeness fool you. She knows her politics and media. But most importantly, she’s a mom and passionate about quality education.”
The referendum proposal passed and Holland remains, at a salary of $37,105 a year. From a broom-closet sized office, she publishes dozens of pamphlets, brochures, fliers and newsletters. She’s in constant communication with area reporters and media representatives. Scores of newspaper clippings cover her office bulletin boards. Articles range from front-page spreads on Lincoln-Way’s recent auditorium dedication to blurbs on upcoming chamber of commerce events at the high school.
While Joliet bickers with its chamber, Wyllie recently received a surprise recognition plaque from its three regional chambers. Though many Joliet residents have never set foot in their public high schools, more than 3,500 residents of District 210 walk and work out in Lincoln-Way’s new athletic facility every week.
“You need to get people involved in schools. That’s the key,” Wyllie said. “We host community meetings. We sponsor gang awareness seminars. In December, a professional troupe will put on `A Christmas Carol’ in our auditorium. When our athletic facilities aren’t in use, they’re open to the park districts and area residents. The key is to get people a sense of ownership. They paid for the place. They should be able to use it.”
Baird is quick to admit to a case of Lincoln-Way envy.
“Would I love brand-new facilities? You betcha. But I’d much rather have level of community support. Joliet has dedicated parents and supporters, but there’s a huge portion of the community that still thinks we’re overrun by gangs. We need to do a better job of getting our positive message out. That’s what Lincoln-Way does so successfully.”
Baird believes Lincoln-Way’s success and Joliet’s public education challenge are summed up in a quote painted in 12-inch letters above the stage of Joliet Central’s ornate 2,050-seat auditorium: ” `The foundation of every state is the education of its youth,’ ” Baird said, quoting the gold-scripted words of Diogenes.
“We need to get that across to people. Public education is the foundation of every community, and community support is the most important thing education can have. With it, you cannot lose. Without it, you’re going to go downhill fast.”
