Blogs

I met with Philip Hampton and Amy Sue Mertens of the office of Family and Community and Engagement Friday. They are both new to the office, and the goal was to find out what they are working on and make some suggestions on how to improve the process of parent and community engagement next year at CPS. I received a lot of good feedback from RYH members on suggestions to offer and while many parents are skeptical about this office every working to truly positively impact real engagement, my personal view is it’s better to try and offer feedback and see if it’s taken than to not engage at all with CPS. It’s also important to know the limitations of the office –they don’t set policy at CPS.

This year was beyond frustrating for many parents at CPS, so many who felt shut out of a process of policy making that they wanted to be part of on different levels and concerns. Those of us who were invited to be part of the process even felt shut out. We felt that our concerns and ideas were not really listened to, that CPS had an agenda set before they ever scheduled their first meeting with the community –f or example on school closings and the extended/longer/full day.

School budgets are out and most schools we have heard from did not get the big bump in funding that CPS reported they would receive. It is great that our school day is going to be longer than the current 5hr45 minutes. In fact as we’ve said all along, most parents want an extension of time for their kids, but it is very sad for many of us that our kids’ schools will not even be able to pick up a half-time position with the funding we received. In the fall, most of us will still have schools without many basic programs.

All week the mayor has been asking the people of Chicago to hold him accountable, and parents of CPS students want to do that. Many of our schools, especially level 3 schools, lost positions due to CPS projecting severe under-enrollment – up to 300 students with a loss of 10 teachers in some cases. Can the mayor account for that? Most high schools lost many positions this year. Can he account for that? School budgets are all over the map and most people do not want to go on record with the cuts, because in the process schools will have to go through of begging CPS to return some of the positions, they do not want to be penalized for going public with information, especially if they are "Level 3" schools, which could easily be on next year's school closing list.

A week ago Friday, a group of dedicated, Spanish dominant moms from Albany Park Neighborhood Council hosted a meeting with CPS CEO Jean Claude Brizard. They politely and patiently assembled clear and concise testimony and recommendations for the district to better serve the 65,000 English language learners, 85% of whom are from Spanish-speaking homes.

As the saying goes, “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Running for Local School Council (LSC) or CEL (Concilio Escolar Local) is an invaluable step you can take towards being ‘at the table.’

But you being at the table does not effect positive change in and of itself. For that, you need teamwork. So what makes a good governance team at a public school? No doubt you’ve heard of dysfunctional or moribund LSCs. This handful of Councils live in infamy as the only kinds that wind up in the media. I guess no one wants to read about how a school facilitated a really smart budget in a fiscally trying year, or how a new principal worked with school leadership to create a transformative SIPAAA (school improvement plan).