Chicago residents began a journey Sunday that their mayor vows will lead the city on the road to effective reform of their public school system and prepare their children adequately for life in the 21st Century.
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Mayor Harold Washington`s summit on education-called in response to the outcry over a teachers strike that pushed back the start of classes by a month-was dominated by rhetoric, with doses of verbal commitment and hope, but it also was the most remarkable gathering to focus on the Chicago public schools in at least 25 years.
The mayor, aldermen, state legislators, Board of Education members, the school superintendent, teachers, parents and other concerned citizens were in the same room together for the first time in a town-meeting atmosphere committed to reform the public schools.
It was a standing-room-only crowd-some estimates approached 1,000 people- at the University of Illinois-Chicago. They heard the three-hour meeting described as a ”momentous occasion” by Jacqueline Vaughn, Chicago Teachers Union president, and as a ”historic occasion” by Warren Bacon, president of Chicago United, a coalition of 77 top businesses.
But they also heard Washington declare that ”a thorough and complete overhaul of the system is necessary” and pledge to begin a ”journey” to reform.
”I`m not going to turn around until it`s resolved,” he said.
The session, the mayor promised, was only the first in a citywide debate on the schools that will take shape in neighborhoods across Chicago in coming weeks and months. A 50-member parents advisory council, to be selected within two weeks by the mayor from nominations made at the meeting, is to meet in the next 120 days to refine and disseminate proposals, the mayor said.
Much of the impetus for the session came from parents who, in the words of one at the session, Becky Wrigley, ”had a hard time getting past anger”
at the record 19-day strike by teachers and other school employees.
Frank Gardner, school board president, said, ”Administrators and principals must go out into the community and convince parents that their presence is wanted and that their presence will make a difference.”
Vaughn agreed with parents and others who are saying, ”Enough is enough. We must do something different.”
But she also emphasized that teachers have supported past efforts at reform. ”You don`t have to start reinventing the wheel,” she said.
Bacon, a school board member during the 1960s who since has been an influential member of numerous school improvement commissions, said, ”We have had talk about what ought to be done about the schools since I was a pup, and that was about 90 years ago, and not much has happened.”
He called for ”revolutionary change” in the schools and was optimistic that, finally, the time may be ripe for effective reform.
In 13 workshops between two general sessions, summit participants expressed their grandest hopes for the shape that reform would take. Often straying from a set of prepared questions, they called in spirited discussions for more parent and community participation in the schools, greater accountability at every level of the system and guarantees of more funding from the state. One group even called for a boycott of the Illinois State Lottery to force the state to channel more of its funds toward Chicago schools.
And, if the rhetoric was without substance, it was because ”reform right now has not taken form,” said Leon M. Finney Jr., president and executive director of The Woodlawn Organization.
”The key to any reform is that you must put together a mechanism at the local level that involves community, administrators, parents and students to hold the education process accountable,” Finney said. ”Two goals of reform are to increase the achievement level of kids and to drop the dropout rate.” The average 8th grader in city public schools reads six months below national norms. The dropout rate is estimated at 43 percent.
Specific ideas for reform came from:
– State Rep. Ellis Levin (D., Chicago), who said he will press again in the General Assembly as he did last spring for legislation setting up an elected school board, with one member from each of 20 districts. What`s needed, Levin said, is ”the perception of change” to help reverse the thinking of Downstate legislators who refuse to vote more money for Chicago schools because they feel the system is a failure. Board members now are appointed by the mayor.
– Slim Coleman, of the Heart of Uptown Coalition and an ally of the mayor, who had a different view of reform. ”Principals, with an advisory committee of parents, ought to be able to pick their own staffs,” he said.
”There ought to be a board of standards, of the principal, teachers and parents. They ought to meet three times a week and review every class. If there is a class below standard, they ought to find out why.”
– Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3d), who used the latest fashionable school reform term: School-based management.
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”School-based management is where you bring together the parents, the community, the businesses in the community, the principal, the teachers, the nutrition worker and the janitor, and they assess their needs,” Tillman explained.
Once the needs are established, they all work together to find the money, she said, either through the normal ways of state and local tax funds or perhaps with businesses contributing in a limited financial way to the schools.
While all the school reform rhetoric and ideas were flowing in the workshops, one man moved quietly along the sidelines.
”I am not going to jump to any conclusions,” said School Supt. Manford Byrd Jr., who was not asked to address either of the two general sessions. ”I want to listen to what is being said.”