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What do you think about neighborhood schools? Sure, students will be able to go to a school closer to where they live. Sure, they will be able to more familiar with their community as they will be going to school with other students who live near by. Sure, the district will save money on transportation. That all sounds good but....
What about students leaving the school they were at for 3-4 years? What about the connections and relationships made at the school with the staff? What about students moving to a school closer, but not safer? What about keeping Whittier a kinder school so all kinders can stay together and feel safer as they aren't with taller and older students?
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Will the tax dollars be distributed according to home school boundries? That would be most fair. Bottom line is this, a few years back Dr. Batiste was brought in to save the schools. He was some sort of educational wizzard that had the experience and know how to turn things around. Yet, has anything changed? Is the move to neighborhood school such a novel idea? How much have we paid in administration salaries to come up with this "new" idea which is really an old idea revisited? Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on administration when we should have been putting it into the classrooms where we would get the biggest return on our money. Perhaps we should have put it to the students. I bet a group of kids and teachers could come up with a much more feasible plan to help the schools for a ton less money.
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Nothing has improved except Dr. Batiste's office which I believe has been remodeled several times. Money is not accounted for and constantly mispent. The high school started the school year with 4 administrators and ended the year with SIX. The original SLC plan decreased the number of administrators. Hmmmmm? Neighborhood schools is nothing new and has been proposed many times before. I guess if things keep changing no one is responsible because proplems can be attributed to the effect of the change. The only things that never change is that the children don't have books and supplies and teachers are held responsible for bad administrative decisions.
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Good to see some of the kids will get a bit of excersise by actually having to walk to school. Poor kids!
It is unfortunate that some will be displaced, a casualty of this whole picture. All in all, I think it is a good idea, one that I lived in my youth in Waukegan. Correct me if I am wrong, this money isn't saved by the district because of this, is bussing not funded separately by the state? Therefore it would not directly benefit the bottom line of the district? Please advise.
Shawn White
224-381-2834
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What needs to be determined is how is the switch to neighborhood schools benefiting the district? I think it would be helpful if the Lincoln Center showed us how we are going to benefit as a community from the switch. It is going to cost money to make the switch (Mailings to explain the changes, moving of students records, etc) but is it really worth it? I think a few years from now we are going to hear that the schools have decided to move back to mixed area schools due to certain school becoming very high performing and others tanking. Certain dempgraphics ( low income, low parental education level, extremely young parents, etc) tend to be less involved in their childrens education. If you have a large group of these kids in one school the results could be really sad. I think that was one of the reasons for the switch away from neighborhood school - to create more diverse school communities.
