Hi Christoper, this question was asked of Brandon and I’d like to get your take as well:
One of the key jobs of the board is to hire a superintendent. After decades of conducting open searches where finalists were announced to the public and the district held open meetings with finalists, the current board conducted searches entirely in the dark, without public input.
Would you vote to continue this practice? Or go back to a public-facing superintendent search for the next vacancy?
My first instinct is that of course I would go back to a public superintendent search. I'm curious to find out why exactly the last two processes were done privately. Of course, even if there are valid reasons for a private hiring process I think right now the board would have to carry out any superintendent search in the open.
I should also say that addressing the question of superintendent searches implies that the district will be hiring a new superintendent soon. I don't think that is the case.
Thanks for answering Chris. The reason the Board gave for conducting a private search in 2019 was that you get better candidates--some good candidates may not want it to publicly known they are seeking to move.
Of course that logic failed on two fronts in 2019. Devon Horton was flying all around the country to participate in public searches in 2019 (Grand Rapids in March, Rochester in May. Indianapolis in June). Just a couple months later, however, you have the board president Suni Kartha send an email on behalf of the board out claiming they couldn't name the finalist pool because they wanted to respect "the confidentiality requested by the candidates."
A couple weeks later when Horton was hired and they released his name it became clear that Kartha was lying--unless you want us to believe that Horton said, "I'm cool with everyone knowing I'm interviewing in Grand Rapids, Rochester, and Indianapolis. But Evanston? No way! I request confidentiality."
I maintain that if we had had an open search in 2019 and that the finalists were brought in for public scrutiny, either Horton wouldn't have made the cut or there would have been outcry about his lack of experience and dodgy financial background.
Kartha's statement said to me that they knew this guy had some baggage, and didn't want to be held to account.
Then last year we get ANOTHER closed search and we get ANOTHER hire who had limited experience and her own baggage from her time at CPS.
Were Horton and Turner *really* the best candidates we could get?!? When Murphy and Goren were hired in an open process, the public got the chance to see multiple people with good backgrounds. Maybe they didn't hire my preferred candidate, but at least we could see the choices and get a feel for the decisionmaking process.
I think a closed process erodes public trust in the board. Especially when you can do simple google new searches for "superintendent search" and see that districts that DO public searches are attracting people with much superior resumes than our current superintendent. It makes people ask, "what the hell is going on?"
Also, to your last point about hiring a new superintendent soon. Remember Horton left mid-contract, so that was not on the radar for the last election.
Turner's contract expires on June 30, 2027. So if you are elected you very much will be faced with a hiring decision. That may mean giving Turner another contract or it may mean going in a different direction. Either way the board will have to make a decision and I think having a commitment to re-establishing an open process shows a commitment to transparency.
Thanks for giving some context, Sandy. I think we both suspect that there may be some space between the board's official statements and their actual motives from 2019. As frustrating as it is I'm starting to accept that there is a lot about that era in District 65 decision-making that I'm just never going to know about.
Fortunately I don't think I have to know absolutely everything about what went on behind closed doors back in 2019 to see that the district is appropriately run now.
As for whether I think Dr. Turner is the right superintendent for the district now? I don't think there is one ideal candidate. My experience with Dr. Turner is limited but from what I have seen, I think she is capable of overseeing the district. There are two things that lead me to that conclusion.
The first is the meeting she held with board candidates to give an overview of the district, her own background and how she envisions the working relationship between the board and administration. I found the experience to be informative and reassuring, particularly the portions of the meeting where cabinet members of the administration gave information about their departments. Dr. Turner did not have to hold that meeting. She could have been printing out resumes. I could hardly blame her, based on some of the public comments that some of the candidates, including me, have given at board meetings. The fact that she met with us at all shows me that she is operating in good faith and that there is the possibility of a rebuilt, trusting partnership between the board and administration.
The second is the members of the cabinet staff. Dismissing Dr. Turner would probably mean further shakeups of central office positions. I know we just got through a long news cycle of trying to cut down a bloated central office staff but you have to have someone in there. I think the people in there now are at least good enough that the stability of maintaining the current administration is preferable to the chaos and uncertainty of a top-down replacement of everyone.
Replying to you and Sandy below her second comment. (EDIT. oops, I thought Sandy and Penny were the same person at first. I see now that Sandy is replying to Penny. Sorry to confuse you two. Your names look similar enough at a quick glance. Also your icons are identical on my screen)
What do you see as the three biggest drivers of the current financial crisis and what controls will you put in place to prevent similar overspending in the future?
When schools are closed/consolidated (including BR) what are your plans for addressing the feelings of hurt, abandonment, and disenfranchisement of the students, families, and teachers? In other words, how will you show that community that they are still valued members of the district worth more than the price of their school's land?
Thank you for making yourself available for questions!
I think the current financial crisis has its deep roots, as well as recent catalysts. Evanston as a town has several baked-in challenges that make the school system financially fragile, even if we are taking in a decent amount of revenue. The practice of funding schools with property taxes in a district where much of the valuable property is owned by tax-exempt organizations (Northwestern University and, to a lesser extent, all the houses of worship downtown), is putting a strain on the school system before budgets are even drawn up. Secondly, redlining the Black and minority populations into one area and keeping them economically deprived has historically deflated the property value of those neighborhoods through good old-fashioned racism, further reducing the tax-base. Furthermore, after Brown v. Board of education and the Civil Rights Act, Evanston decided to de-segregate schools through bussing, as opposed to a broader attempt to diversify the neighborhoods. This made our budget vulnerable to increases in transportation costs. If we want to talk about equity, that's where I think we have to start: the literal costs to a city and school district of maintaining a segregated town.
Then came the pandemic. Whenever I get heated about the board's spending decisions of during the pandemic I have to ask myself "how LITTLE should we have spent in an attempt to mitigate learning loss during the shelter-in-place order?" It was a novel situation, with a lot of unknown variables and served to tip an already fragile system into a spiral from which we are trying to recover. I have empathy for the school board during that time but little sympathy. They failed to rise to the occasion and I believe their decisions, or indecision in some cases made a bad situation worse.
The third cause is well-known by readers of this Substack: the financial mismanagement of the district by the Horton administration. I've gone on long enough about the other causes so I'll try to keep this short, but the record shows that superintendent Horton made bad financial decisions that not only dug the district deeper in a financial hole but strained the bonds of trust between the board, administration, educators and the community. It will take time and effort to rebuild that trust which is unfortunate because some big decisions will have to me made in the near future. Which brings us to.....
School Closures
I won't mince words. This is going to be really difficult. I wish I had an answer that would reassure the community that everything will be all right. In the absence of such an answer I have to try and prepare the community for undertaking a difficult task. The start of that preparation is making the case that the task itself is necessary. Phase 2 of the structural deficit reduction plan involved getting the administrator-to-student ratio closer to districts with similar numbers of students. Phase 3 will involve doing the same with the school-to-student ratio. A quick scan of the Illinois Report Card website shows that we have enough schools for a district with twice our student population. Looking through the Master Facilities Plan we can see that many of our schools are old and represent an ever-increasing financial liability. We cannot afford to keep all of them open.
Of course, a school is not like an old water-heater that is past its product lifespan and needs to be replaced or the repair bills will get increasingly expensive and frequent. Schools are centers of community and the people who make up that community will have to be treated with respect, not like pieces on a chessboard to be moved around to suit the needs of the player.
An important concept in personal fitness training, borrowed from the medical field, is that of client/patient agency. Making someone an active participant in their recovery, as opposed to a passive recipient of care, is key to having a patient or client adhere to a recovery/training plan. I want to carry this philosophy to the process of school closure/consolidation. It will take a lot more effort, both from the board and the community but it will be worth it.
Three part question here: Do you support a full and complete & independent financial “forensic” audit of D65, going back to when the last referendum was passed—in order to get a handle on what has happened in D65 financially? And then, importantly share the findings with the community via open house two way Q&A forums? If you support, can we get your commitment to call for this at the first BOE meeting you attend as a new BOE member?
Hey, TS. This will be a multi-part answer. Personally I am just as curious as anyone in these comments as to what has been going on in the district’s finances over the last decade or so. As a school board member though, I have to ask how performing a forensic audit of district finances will have a direct, positive impact on the student experience.
Just as a firefighter’s first job is to contain and extinguish a fire before trying to determine the cause, the new school board’s first job is to stabilize the district and put financial controls in place to track current and future spending.
I could be convinced otherwise but I would need a satisfactory answer to my question: how would performing a full forensic audit of district finances going back to the last referendum provide a direct, positive impact on the day to day experience of students and educators?
I wish I could come up with a better metaphor than fire but it’s the best one I’ve got right now. Once the fire is extinguished I will feel comfortable devoting board time and resources to identifying the cause.
How comfortable are you with the rhetoric in the online parent community? It’s been concerning to see the level of bullying and attacks that play out.
For instance one of your prospective board colleagues Maria was skewered online by the sheer fact their spouse is a homeland security employee. We don’t know the spouses actual position or views, but immediately Maria was deemed to be a terrible person and crucified in a parent group. Ironically this rhetoric is led by a District employees spouse.
How can we stop the extreme outbursts and attacks, and find ways to be respectful and have constructive dialogue and ask questions not just rushed judgements and outlandish attacks.
How comfortable are you with this rhetoric and how do you assure voters that you will not support this tyrannical behavior?
I think one of the reasons I've enjoyed the campaign process as much as I have is because I've purposefully avoided online engagement as much as possible. One of my personal goals for the community at large is to migrate as much discourse as possible into the real world.
I don't think we can stop extreme outbursts and attacks on social media because that behavior is heavily incentivized on social media. Everything I've read about Facebook and virtually every other social media site says that they thrive on just this type of vitriol and negative engagement. When something on social media makes someone mad they spend more time engaged on social media. When someone spends more time engaged on social media, they are exposed to more ads. Therefore, social media is designed get people mad and an easy way to get someone mad is to introduce a threat (real or perceived) to their children.
I think it's ironic that we are spending so much time hand-wringing about technology in schools (a legitimate concern, and something the school board can directly effect), when so much damage to the district, and the children in it, is related to the ADULTS and their use of technology. Maybe I'll circulate my own pledge, to the parents and caregivers of District 65, to delete their facebook accounts, or at least delete the app off their phones.
Come on, dude. That question’s so vague you know I have to write a whole multi-point essay in response 😂. Before I take the time though, just promise me you’ll at least read it and leave a like so I know you finished it. You don’t even have to reply. If not, I could be using the time to prepare for the CASE/special education forum tomorrow.
I'm not a "dude", I'm an interested community member.
Christopher, this is a serious question. I write it as a recently retired classroom teacher of 30 years.
What I'm interested in hearing is your foundational thinking on what the essence of the school experience is for children. All of the issues our schools face today, tomorrow and years into the future can be better addressed if those who manage those decisions have a core set of beliefs about why we have these places of learning in the first place.
I'm interested to read your reply - whether it's one sentence or several paragraphs.
I’m working on my response and will post it tomorrow morning
3/12/2025 11:00am EDIT:
Hi Mark. Thank you for the more detailed question. I apologize for getting a little too familiar in my initial reply. Actually, your question is something that I have been wanting to address and have been unable to find the time to do so between all of the other campaign events and questionnaires. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to put my philosophy of education in a little more detail and outline what I think is the essence of the school experience for children. This is a topic that has definitely gotten lost in the issue-specific coverage of this school board campaign.
When I first read your comment and saw it copied verbatim on the other candidates’ guest posts, I interpreted it as more of a challenge than a question. Its brevity and repetition gave it almost an attacking tone. My reaction says more about me and my state of mind when I read it than it does about you and the question itself and I ended up taking out some of my frustration in my reply to you. Chalk it up to the hazards of comment-section based discourse, I suppose. Now then, on to your question!
Honestly, I think the purpose of a school is mutable, subject to the changing priorities of the culture at large. However, assuming a context in which adults have to work to earn a living, at a fundamental level a school is a building where children can be safe while their parents are at work. Once this basic foundation of safety is established we can think about what these children will be doing all day in this building while their parents/caregivers are earning a living. They’re probably going to be interacting with one another, making friends, getting into arguments, playing, basically figuring out how to navigate a world in which they share space with other people. In other words, they are learning to be social beings. These children cannot be unsupervised all day so they need adults to be in the building with them to make sure they are interacting safely with one another. These adults should be specially trained in the unique needs of children who do not think or behave like adults while their minds and bodies are developing. As the years go by and these children grow up, their activities in school will progressively resemble the activities of the adults in their society, such that when they reach the age of maturity they are prepared to take their place among their fellow adults. This is my abstract model of a school absent any cultural context: a building where children can learn to socialize safely under the care of adults who are specially trained in the needs of children and their development, and where children can develop a foundation of skills that will help them navigate and thrive in the adult world.
My personal views on the purpose of a school and its relationship to the student experience in our modern context are shaped by my readings of John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, Barbara Ehrenreich and Paolo Freire. That philosophical framework is informed, reinforced, even changed and amended by my personal experience in student teaching assignments and in the various jobs I have held in my adult life. The sum total of my education and experience has led me to the conclusion that in an era of increasing social isolation, digital information dissemination and privatization the school serves a vital role to a community, that of a truly public space. It is increasingly difficult to define “the public,” much less the public good, but the schools are becoming the place where we are collectively defining those terms every day. It has not been easy, as the last few decades of changes in public education policy have demonstrated. Regardless of changing cultural norms and priorities, I believe that there are three broad sets of skills that remain consistent when it comes to my previous claim that schools should prepare children to function and thrive in the adult world. Those are literacy, number sense and socialization. I admit that is not as catchy as “reading, writing and ‘rithmetic” but I think the skills necessary for navigating our (arguably) democratic society are contained within those broad categories. I use the word literacy to refer not only to parsing a written text and organizing one’s thoughts into words but also to the set of skills necessary for navigating the world of media. Just as children in the past had to be taught of the dangers their society faced, whether it was wolves or how to tend crops so there would be enough food, children today need to have some understanding of how the various media sources they come in contact with work and try to influence them and claim their attention. When I talk about number sense I am referring to how a child conceives of numbers, as opposed to the rote memorization of arithmetic tables that may have been sufficient in times when that was all that was required to navigate the world. Today our relationship with numbers and math requires members of the public to have at least a general concept of how numbers and statistics work and impact their lives. Elementary school math instruction should be done with this in mind. The last category, socialization is more vital than ever. Our opportunities to interact in groups, in-person are dwindling. In the past, when public life was more robust, the purpose of schools could be more skills-based since social interaction took place out in the public sphere but now, when skills instruction is more widely available but social interaction is increasingly scarce, public schools are becoming greater hubs for the interpersonal contact that is necessary for human beings in a pluralistic, democratic society. The student experience should be explicitly tailored to reflect that.
Now that I have established both a broad, underlying framework for the purpose of a school, and defined my personal opinion on the skills necessary for students to function in contemporary American society, we can ask the question: what is the purpose of a school in Evanston/Skokie District 65 in the year 2025? An answer to this question could fill several books. I hope to answer it collectively with my fellow school-board members and the community at large. Each of us will have to keep our individual models of the purpose of a school in mind as we establish a framework that will allow the district administration and educators to determine the day-to-day mechanics within the schools that will allow them to serve their greater purpose. These day-to-day procedures, policies and tools will have to take into account the unique history and situation of District 65 schools, which I have addressed in other formats (Evanston Roundtable, Evanston Now [might be behind a paywall], and my campaign website, to name a few). Our job as a school board will be to empower the district’s educators, those specially trained adults I mentioned a couple paragraphs ago, to determine the student experience. It will take a lot of work, mutual trust and respect and yes, an understanding of what we all believe the purpose of a school to be.
I hope I’ve been able to articulate my thoughts on the purpose of a school in a way that makes sense. I want to reiterate that this is a question that has been on my mind throughout the campaign and that I am deeply grateful for the chance to answer it. It is a topic that I genuinely love to think about and discuss. After a 30 year career in education I have no doubt that your opinions are more interesting and valuable than mine by several orders of magnitude. Please do not hesitate to reach out. My campaign email address is denardoford65@gmail.com but I’d be happy to share my personal contact info with you as well. Thank you for reading and congratulations on your retirement……dude 😉
Hi Christoper, this question was asked of Brandon and I’d like to get your take as well:
One of the key jobs of the board is to hire a superintendent. After decades of conducting open searches where finalists were announced to the public and the district held open meetings with finalists, the current board conducted searches entirely in the dark, without public input.
Would you vote to continue this practice? Or go back to a public-facing superintendent search for the next vacancy?
Also, thanks for taking the time to read and reply!
My first instinct is that of course I would go back to a public superintendent search. I'm curious to find out why exactly the last two processes were done privately. Of course, even if there are valid reasons for a private hiring process I think right now the board would have to carry out any superintendent search in the open.
I should also say that addressing the question of superintendent searches implies that the district will be hiring a new superintendent soon. I don't think that is the case.
Thanks for answering Chris. The reason the Board gave for conducting a private search in 2019 was that you get better candidates--some good candidates may not want it to publicly known they are seeking to move.
Of course that logic failed on two fronts in 2019. Devon Horton was flying all around the country to participate in public searches in 2019 (Grand Rapids in March, Rochester in May. Indianapolis in June). Just a couple months later, however, you have the board president Suni Kartha send an email on behalf of the board out claiming they couldn't name the finalist pool because they wanted to respect "the confidentiality requested by the candidates."
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2019/11/12/city/district-65-narrows-search-for-superintendent/
A couple weeks later when Horton was hired and they released his name it became clear that Kartha was lying--unless you want us to believe that Horton said, "I'm cool with everyone knowing I'm interviewing in Grand Rapids, Rochester, and Indianapolis. But Evanston? No way! I request confidentiality."
I maintain that if we had had an open search in 2019 and that the finalists were brought in for public scrutiny, either Horton wouldn't have made the cut or there would have been outcry about his lack of experience and dodgy financial background.
Kartha's statement said to me that they knew this guy had some baggage, and didn't want to be held to account.
Then last year we get ANOTHER closed search and we get ANOTHER hire who had limited experience and her own baggage from her time at CPS.
Were Horton and Turner *really* the best candidates we could get?!? When Murphy and Goren were hired in an open process, the public got the chance to see multiple people with good backgrounds. Maybe they didn't hire my preferred candidate, but at least we could see the choices and get a feel for the decisionmaking process.
I think a closed process erodes public trust in the board. Especially when you can do simple google new searches for "superintendent search" and see that districts that DO public searches are attracting people with much superior resumes than our current superintendent. It makes people ask, "what the hell is going on?"
Also, to your last point about hiring a new superintendent soon. Remember Horton left mid-contract, so that was not on the radar for the last election.
Turner's contract expires on June 30, 2027. So if you are elected you very much will be faced with a hiring decision. That may mean giving Turner another contract or it may mean going in a different direction. Either way the board will have to make a decision and I think having a commitment to re-establishing an open process shows a commitment to transparency.
Thanks for giving some context, Sandy. I think we both suspect that there may be some space between the board's official statements and their actual motives from 2019. As frustrating as it is I'm starting to accept that there is a lot about that era in District 65 decision-making that I'm just never going to know about.
Fortunately I don't think I have to know absolutely everything about what went on behind closed doors back in 2019 to see that the district is appropriately run now.
As for whether I think Dr. Turner is the right superintendent for the district now? I don't think there is one ideal candidate. My experience with Dr. Turner is limited but from what I have seen, I think she is capable of overseeing the district. There are two things that lead me to that conclusion.
The first is the meeting she held with board candidates to give an overview of the district, her own background and how she envisions the working relationship between the board and administration. I found the experience to be informative and reassuring, particularly the portions of the meeting where cabinet members of the administration gave information about their departments. Dr. Turner did not have to hold that meeting. She could have been printing out resumes. I could hardly blame her, based on some of the public comments that some of the candidates, including me, have given at board meetings. The fact that she met with us at all shows me that she is operating in good faith and that there is the possibility of a rebuilt, trusting partnership between the board and administration.
The second is the members of the cabinet staff. Dismissing Dr. Turner would probably mean further shakeups of central office positions. I know we just got through a long news cycle of trying to cut down a bloated central office staff but you have to have someone in there. I think the people in there now are at least good enough that the stability of maintaining the current administration is preferable to the chaos and uncertainty of a top-down replacement of everyone.
Why do you believe that the current superintendent is the appropriate leader for the district right now?
Replying to you and Sandy below her second comment. (EDIT. oops, I thought Sandy and Penny were the same person at first. I see now that Sandy is replying to Penny. Sorry to confuse you two. Your names look similar enough at a quick glance. Also your icons are identical on my screen)
I have two questions:
What do you see as the three biggest drivers of the current financial crisis and what controls will you put in place to prevent similar overspending in the future?
When schools are closed/consolidated (including BR) what are your plans for addressing the feelings of hurt, abandonment, and disenfranchisement of the students, families, and teachers? In other words, how will you show that community that they are still valued members of the district worth more than the price of their school's land?
Thank you for making yourself available for questions!
I think the current financial crisis has its deep roots, as well as recent catalysts. Evanston as a town has several baked-in challenges that make the school system financially fragile, even if we are taking in a decent amount of revenue. The practice of funding schools with property taxes in a district where much of the valuable property is owned by tax-exempt organizations (Northwestern University and, to a lesser extent, all the houses of worship downtown), is putting a strain on the school system before budgets are even drawn up. Secondly, redlining the Black and minority populations into one area and keeping them economically deprived has historically deflated the property value of those neighborhoods through good old-fashioned racism, further reducing the tax-base. Furthermore, after Brown v. Board of education and the Civil Rights Act, Evanston decided to de-segregate schools through bussing, as opposed to a broader attempt to diversify the neighborhoods. This made our budget vulnerable to increases in transportation costs. If we want to talk about equity, that's where I think we have to start: the literal costs to a city and school district of maintaining a segregated town.
Then came the pandemic. Whenever I get heated about the board's spending decisions of during the pandemic I have to ask myself "how LITTLE should we have spent in an attempt to mitigate learning loss during the shelter-in-place order?" It was a novel situation, with a lot of unknown variables and served to tip an already fragile system into a spiral from which we are trying to recover. I have empathy for the school board during that time but little sympathy. They failed to rise to the occasion and I believe their decisions, or indecision in some cases made a bad situation worse.
The third cause is well-known by readers of this Substack: the financial mismanagement of the district by the Horton administration. I've gone on long enough about the other causes so I'll try to keep this short, but the record shows that superintendent Horton made bad financial decisions that not only dug the district deeper in a financial hole but strained the bonds of trust between the board, administration, educators and the community. It will take time and effort to rebuild that trust which is unfortunate because some big decisions will have to me made in the near future. Which brings us to.....
School Closures
I won't mince words. This is going to be really difficult. I wish I had an answer that would reassure the community that everything will be all right. In the absence of such an answer I have to try and prepare the community for undertaking a difficult task. The start of that preparation is making the case that the task itself is necessary. Phase 2 of the structural deficit reduction plan involved getting the administrator-to-student ratio closer to districts with similar numbers of students. Phase 3 will involve doing the same with the school-to-student ratio. A quick scan of the Illinois Report Card website shows that we have enough schools for a district with twice our student population. Looking through the Master Facilities Plan we can see that many of our schools are old and represent an ever-increasing financial liability. We cannot afford to keep all of them open.
Of course, a school is not like an old water-heater that is past its product lifespan and needs to be replaced or the repair bills will get increasingly expensive and frequent. Schools are centers of community and the people who make up that community will have to be treated with respect, not like pieces on a chessboard to be moved around to suit the needs of the player.
An important concept in personal fitness training, borrowed from the medical field, is that of client/patient agency. Making someone an active participant in their recovery, as opposed to a passive recipient of care, is key to having a patient or client adhere to a recovery/training plan. I want to carry this philosophy to the process of school closure/consolidation. It will take a lot more effort, both from the board and the community but it will be worth it.
TL:DR
1. It's complicated
2. It's going to be difficult and require extra effort from both the board and the community but it will be worth it.
Three part question here: Do you support a full and complete & independent financial “forensic” audit of D65, going back to when the last referendum was passed—in order to get a handle on what has happened in D65 financially? And then, importantly share the findings with the community via open house two way Q&A forums? If you support, can we get your commitment to call for this at the first BOE meeting you attend as a new BOE member?
Hey, TS. This will be a multi-part answer. Personally I am just as curious as anyone in these comments as to what has been going on in the district’s finances over the last decade or so. As a school board member though, I have to ask how performing a forensic audit of district finances will have a direct, positive impact on the student experience.
Just as a firefighter’s first job is to contain and extinguish a fire before trying to determine the cause, the new school board’s first job is to stabilize the district and put financial controls in place to track current and future spending.
I could be convinced otherwise but I would need a satisfactory answer to my question: how would performing a full forensic audit of district finances going back to the last referendum provide a direct, positive impact on the day to day experience of students and educators?
I wish I could come up with a better metaphor than fire but it’s the best one I’ve got right now. Once the fire is extinguished I will feel comfortable devoting board time and resources to identifying the cause.
How comfortable are you with the rhetoric in the online parent community? It’s been concerning to see the level of bullying and attacks that play out.
For instance one of your prospective board colleagues Maria was skewered online by the sheer fact their spouse is a homeland security employee. We don’t know the spouses actual position or views, but immediately Maria was deemed to be a terrible person and crucified in a parent group. Ironically this rhetoric is led by a District employees spouse.
How can we stop the extreme outbursts and attacks, and find ways to be respectful and have constructive dialogue and ask questions not just rushed judgements and outlandish attacks.
How comfortable are you with this rhetoric and how do you assure voters that you will not support this tyrannical behavior?
Uh, I don't care for it?
I think one of the reasons I've enjoyed the campaign process as much as I have is because I've purposefully avoided online engagement as much as possible. One of my personal goals for the community at large is to migrate as much discourse as possible into the real world.
I don't think we can stop extreme outbursts and attacks on social media because that behavior is heavily incentivized on social media. Everything I've read about Facebook and virtually every other social media site says that they thrive on just this type of vitriol and negative engagement. When something on social media makes someone mad they spend more time engaged on social media. When someone spends more time engaged on social media, they are exposed to more ads. Therefore, social media is designed get people mad and an easy way to get someone mad is to introduce a threat (real or perceived) to their children.
I think it's ironic that we are spending so much time hand-wringing about technology in schools (a legitimate concern, and something the school board can directly effect), when so much damage to the district, and the children in it, is related to the ADULTS and their use of technology. Maybe I'll circulate my own pledge, to the parents and caregivers of District 65, to delete their facebook accounts, or at least delete the app off their phones.
I deleted mine in 2016 .. and I even *worked* for facebook!
I deleted mine a few months into the pandemic. It would just stress me out and pull my attention away from more local concerns
Hi Christopher,
My question:
What is the purpose of a school?
Come on, dude. That question’s so vague you know I have to write a whole multi-point essay in response 😂. Before I take the time though, just promise me you’ll at least read it and leave a like so I know you finished it. You don’t even have to reply. If not, I could be using the time to prepare for the CASE/special education forum tomorrow.
Dude!?!
I'm not a "dude", I'm an interested community member.
Christopher, this is a serious question. I write it as a recently retired classroom teacher of 30 years.
What I'm interested in hearing is your foundational thinking on what the essence of the school experience is for children. All of the issues our schools face today, tomorrow and years into the future can be better addressed if those who manage those decisions have a core set of beliefs about why we have these places of learning in the first place.
I'm interested to read your reply - whether it's one sentence or several paragraphs.
I’m working on my response and will post it tomorrow morning
3/12/2025 11:00am EDIT:
Hi Mark. Thank you for the more detailed question. I apologize for getting a little too familiar in my initial reply. Actually, your question is something that I have been wanting to address and have been unable to find the time to do so between all of the other campaign events and questionnaires. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to put my philosophy of education in a little more detail and outline what I think is the essence of the school experience for children. This is a topic that has definitely gotten lost in the issue-specific coverage of this school board campaign.
When I first read your comment and saw it copied verbatim on the other candidates’ guest posts, I interpreted it as more of a challenge than a question. Its brevity and repetition gave it almost an attacking tone. My reaction says more about me and my state of mind when I read it than it does about you and the question itself and I ended up taking out some of my frustration in my reply to you. Chalk it up to the hazards of comment-section based discourse, I suppose. Now then, on to your question!
Honestly, I think the purpose of a school is mutable, subject to the changing priorities of the culture at large. However, assuming a context in which adults have to work to earn a living, at a fundamental level a school is a building where children can be safe while their parents are at work. Once this basic foundation of safety is established we can think about what these children will be doing all day in this building while their parents/caregivers are earning a living. They’re probably going to be interacting with one another, making friends, getting into arguments, playing, basically figuring out how to navigate a world in which they share space with other people. In other words, they are learning to be social beings. These children cannot be unsupervised all day so they need adults to be in the building with them to make sure they are interacting safely with one another. These adults should be specially trained in the unique needs of children who do not think or behave like adults while their minds and bodies are developing. As the years go by and these children grow up, their activities in school will progressively resemble the activities of the adults in their society, such that when they reach the age of maturity they are prepared to take their place among their fellow adults. This is my abstract model of a school absent any cultural context: a building where children can learn to socialize safely under the care of adults who are specially trained in the needs of children and their development, and where children can develop a foundation of skills that will help them navigate and thrive in the adult world.
My personal views on the purpose of a school and its relationship to the student experience in our modern context are shaped by my readings of John Dewey, Hannah Arendt, Barbara Ehrenreich and Paolo Freire. That philosophical framework is informed, reinforced, even changed and amended by my personal experience in student teaching assignments and in the various jobs I have held in my adult life. The sum total of my education and experience has led me to the conclusion that in an era of increasing social isolation, digital information dissemination and privatization the school serves a vital role to a community, that of a truly public space. It is increasingly difficult to define “the public,” much less the public good, but the schools are becoming the place where we are collectively defining those terms every day. It has not been easy, as the last few decades of changes in public education policy have demonstrated. Regardless of changing cultural norms and priorities, I believe that there are three broad sets of skills that remain consistent when it comes to my previous claim that schools should prepare children to function and thrive in the adult world. Those are literacy, number sense and socialization. I admit that is not as catchy as “reading, writing and ‘rithmetic” but I think the skills necessary for navigating our (arguably) democratic society are contained within those broad categories. I use the word literacy to refer not only to parsing a written text and organizing one’s thoughts into words but also to the set of skills necessary for navigating the world of media. Just as children in the past had to be taught of the dangers their society faced, whether it was wolves or how to tend crops so there would be enough food, children today need to have some understanding of how the various media sources they come in contact with work and try to influence them and claim their attention. When I talk about number sense I am referring to how a child conceives of numbers, as opposed to the rote memorization of arithmetic tables that may have been sufficient in times when that was all that was required to navigate the world. Today our relationship with numbers and math requires members of the public to have at least a general concept of how numbers and statistics work and impact their lives. Elementary school math instruction should be done with this in mind. The last category, socialization is more vital than ever. Our opportunities to interact in groups, in-person are dwindling. In the past, when public life was more robust, the purpose of schools could be more skills-based since social interaction took place out in the public sphere but now, when skills instruction is more widely available but social interaction is increasingly scarce, public schools are becoming greater hubs for the interpersonal contact that is necessary for human beings in a pluralistic, democratic society. The student experience should be explicitly tailored to reflect that.
Now that I have established both a broad, underlying framework for the purpose of a school, and defined my personal opinion on the skills necessary for students to function in contemporary American society, we can ask the question: what is the purpose of a school in Evanston/Skokie District 65 in the year 2025? An answer to this question could fill several books. I hope to answer it collectively with my fellow school-board members and the community at large. Each of us will have to keep our individual models of the purpose of a school in mind as we establish a framework that will allow the district administration and educators to determine the day-to-day mechanics within the schools that will allow them to serve their greater purpose. These day-to-day procedures, policies and tools will have to take into account the unique history and situation of District 65 schools, which I have addressed in other formats (Evanston Roundtable, Evanston Now [might be behind a paywall], and my campaign website, to name a few). Our job as a school board will be to empower the district’s educators, those specially trained adults I mentioned a couple paragraphs ago, to determine the student experience. It will take a lot of work, mutual trust and respect and yes, an understanding of what we all believe the purpose of a school to be.
I hope I’ve been able to articulate my thoughts on the purpose of a school in a way that makes sense. I want to reiterate that this is a question that has been on my mind throughout the campaign and that I am deeply grateful for the chance to answer it. It is a topic that I genuinely love to think about and discuss. After a 30 year career in education I have no doubt that your opinions are more interesting and valuable than mine by several orders of magnitude. Please do not hesitate to reach out. My campaign email address is denardoford65@gmail.com but I’d be happy to share my personal contact info with you as well. Thank you for reading and congratulations on your retirement……dude 😉