Evanston Consolidated Public Schools
I wrote a guest letter in the Evanston Roundtable, advocating that we should finally consolidate the public schools.
I wrote a guest letter for the Evanston Roundtable, you should go read it over there and click some ads for them:
Guest essay: The case for a consolidated Evanston school district
My fundamental theorem is that having separate K-8 and High School districts is unsustainable for a variety of reasons including teacher compensation, the achievement gap, and administrative expansion/taxes.
I submitted this to the Evanston Roundtable because they’re more of a “paper of record” than this newsletter/blog is. I think the subject matter might ruffle some feathers, including your own. If so, please feel free to comment and tell me why I’m wrong. I learn the most from those comments.
And here’s a picture of a pretty yard in front of a house on Hinman. The rains have made everything so green lately and this part of Evanston still doesn’t have cicada infestations (yet). This house always has original native plant landscaping and in the spring is quite beautiful.
I’m leery of getting hit with a major tax increase to level up 65 salaries, but I feel as though continuity might be key for the state of education in this city and consolidation could create that.
If I were king, I would start with clearing the Board out with new people who want radical change with a focus on fiscal responsibility and improvement. I’d hire a new super with previous experience. Maybe drag someone out of retirement who is old school and not enamored with new and expensive curricula and “best practices”. I’d be looking for someone who wants to strip it bare and build it back only as big as needed. Let’s go Little House on the Prairie style education- minus the student beatings. Slash the JEH staff in half. Salaries cut. I’m not worried about “will we be competitive if we don’t pay a ton?” Number one- people will work for us. Great people work in jobs where they possibly could make more elsewhere. Number two- folks are leaving this district in droves anyway. Zero tolerance for the constant consulting $$$ contracts. Do it in house or forget about it. Obvious exceptions are ok. Number three- maybe we principal and admin staff share. Each school has VP/AP, principals oversee two schools. New focus on bare bones learning. Renewed focus on expected behavior and repercussions. Students and teachers deserve to feel safe. Zero tolerance. Or .5 tolerance. Put parents on warning- talk to your kids about behavior, we aren’t playing anymore. If your kid acts up, you come and get them. You have to miss work? Well, we aren’t a day care and we cannot afford disruption! Let teachers be free to create units to fulfill learning requirements. This is what they are good at. Focus on 3Rs. Slash and burn because we need all excess funds to repair buildings (and to pay for the ridiculous building that we can’t afford and now apparently won’t be much nicer than any other building)- I digress. Move to year round schooling. It’s radical, but if someone is correct that only 50% of Kingsley 1st graders can read- are we not in need of radical change??? Move to mandatory after school tutoring programs for anyone not meeting grade level requirements. Slashing and burning and eliminating everything not essential can help pay for this. The reality is most families supplement extracurricular arts and sports anyway, and this town is rife with scholarships. We are in crisis, and this can be a five year plan for improvement, not forever.
I know this is radical/crazy and would be difficult, and there are union considerations, etc. Again, it’s if I were king.
Frankly, we should be so disgusted with the performance of this district that we should be willing to open charter schools which could operate this way. The first one could open in the BR building. We should be so disgusted with the performance of this district that we demand vouchers. Private schools can do it better and everyone should have the option, not just the rich. There is no excuse for why so many kids are so behind. Even considering that indeed- the absolute biggest factor of success is home environment. If the home sucks, then we need to keep the kids in school as much of the time as possible. Year round, 8 hours a day, etc. I mean, our society literally depends on us not producing uneducated masses. And our kids deserve better.
The Hayden School of Jazz Charter School could be visionary.
The issue of paying elementary teachers the same as HS teachers has come up before in FOIA Gras comments. Teachers' expertise is in education, and that means different things at different grade levels. However, it doesn't mean that a K teacher's expertise is less valuable than a HS teacher's expertise. Commenters have been quick to jump on, "well an AP Physics teacher should make more than an elementary teacher because the subject matter is more difficult." First, I'm betting most of us had more than one teacher in HS who definitely understood the material, but couldn't teach it to save their souls ("Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?" trope). More to the point, center education as the expertise, not the subject. A K teacher is taking a group of 5 year olds, many of them who have never been in a classroom before, and not only establishing norms for classroom behavior but ALSO teaching the basics of math, reading, etc. That is centering education. As Mary Alice Off commented already on this, look at a 5th grade teacher who not only has behavior issues from some students, but massively different levels of reading (math, etc.) ability and is teaching to all of these kids at the same time. An argument could be made that elementary teaching is more difficult than high school, and we should be making more money. Instead, can we just get rid of the pay gap and pay all educators more?