Do we want just a few sustainable schools?
By Jim Vail
The Chicago Teachers Union has been promoting its Sustainable Community Schools Initiative in which neighborhood schools compete to get grant money won in the last teachers' contract that will disburse about $10 million to about 20 schools.
Certainly, we all can use the extra money in our schools to hire more teachers, buy more textbooks, fix leaky roofs and crumbling walls, add more after-school programs, etc, etc.
But what message is the CTU sending by promoting a competition in which of the hundreds of schools encouraged to apply, only a fraction will win the grant money. Don't we all need this money for our neighborhood schools? Every school deserves it!
This whole Sustainable Schools initiative sounded a lot like the Race to the Top in which the winning schools and its students go to the top, while many children in the surrounding failing schools fall down.
Public education was never about winners and losers as the corporate entities want us to believe today with the over emphasis on standardized testing to prove what everybody already knows - those with more resources test higher. A union represents all its teachers, while a public education educates all its students.
The problem today is that the funding mechanism is skewed toward different gimmicks that promote a gap between the schools of haves and have nots. Take the Tax Increment Financing or TIFs scam in which tax money can be used by the mayor as a slush fund to finance his own pet projects at the expense of democratic control. A majority of the TIF monies - which rob from the schools overall - is given to magnet schools at the expense of the neighborhood schools.
The Sustainable Schools model is laudable - a model that recognizes 'transformative' services with 'family and community partner involvement at the core.' The idea is to promote lower class sizes, a broad and rich curriculum, extracurricular activities, wrap-around services, additional support for English learners, better access to early learning, parent engagement, etc.
But this initiative is not combating 'the chronic defunding' of public education. Many schools will not win this grant money - are they any less deserving?
A more equitable way to fund public education is to fight for all the public schools we have to be fully funded and not dangle some grant money to a few lucky ones.
The CTU states: "The current CTU contract with CPS includes a provision to pilot 20-55 Sustainable Community Schools by 2019. In reality, however, every school in the city needs to be an SCS. The ultimate goal is for all schools to have robust staff, programming and parent and community engagement."
Some sustainable schools sends the wrong message.
By Jim Vail
The Chicago Teachers Union has been promoting its Sustainable Community Schools Initiative in which neighborhood schools compete to get grant money won in the last teachers' contract that will disburse about $10 million to about 20 schools.
Certainly, we all can use the extra money in our schools to hire more teachers, buy more textbooks, fix leaky roofs and crumbling walls, add more after-school programs, etc, etc.
But what message is the CTU sending by promoting a competition in which of the hundreds of schools encouraged to apply, only a fraction will win the grant money. Don't we all need this money for our neighborhood schools? Every school deserves it!
This whole Sustainable Schools initiative sounded a lot like the Race to the Top in which the winning schools and its students go to the top, while many children in the surrounding failing schools fall down.
Public education was never about winners and losers as the corporate entities want us to believe today with the over emphasis on standardized testing to prove what everybody already knows - those with more resources test higher. A union represents all its teachers, while a public education educates all its students.
The problem today is that the funding mechanism is skewed toward different gimmicks that promote a gap between the schools of haves and have nots. Take the Tax Increment Financing or TIFs scam in which tax money can be used by the mayor as a slush fund to finance his own pet projects at the expense of democratic control. A majority of the TIF monies - which rob from the schools overall - is given to magnet schools at the expense of the neighborhood schools.
The Sustainable Schools model is laudable - a model that recognizes 'transformative' services with 'family and community partner involvement at the core.' The idea is to promote lower class sizes, a broad and rich curriculum, extracurricular activities, wrap-around services, additional support for English learners, better access to early learning, parent engagement, etc.
But this initiative is not combating 'the chronic defunding' of public education. Many schools will not win this grant money - are they any less deserving?
A more equitable way to fund public education is to fight for all the public schools we have to be fully funded and not dangle some grant money to a few lucky ones.
The CTU states: "The current CTU contract with CPS includes a provision to pilot 20-55 Sustainable Community Schools by 2019. In reality, however, every school in the city needs to be an SCS. The ultimate goal is for all schools to have robust staff, programming and parent and community engagement."
Some sustainable schools sends the wrong message.
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