Chicagoans, concerned about the poor quality of the city`s public schools, are willing to pay more in taxes to improve them, a Tribune poll has found.
In addition, there is strong support among major Chicago-area businesses for a tax increase for the schools, especially if it is linked to improved student performance, according to a separate Tribune survey of top corporate leaders.
The school system has evolved, over the years, into a case of institutionalized child neglect because no one who has the political muscle has cared enough to force the schools to provide an adequate education. But the Tribune poll and survey findings, as well as other hopeful signs, such as the outcry of parents at the 19-day teachers` strike last fall, suggest that potent political forces in favor of school improvement may be coming together.
Politicians have long contended that a referendum to increase local property taxes would fail because most residents send their children to parochial schools or do not have children of school age. In addition, city and state business associations have consistently lobbied against tax increases for education.
Spokesman Robert Saigh said the School Board has not polled Chicagoans about a tax increase because ”there were enough indications that it wouldn`t be supported.”
But the Tribune poll conducted in mid-February found that 56 percent of the Chicagoans surveyed said they would vote in favor of a referendum that would raise more money for the schools by increasing their taxes.
Thirty-seven percent said they would vote against the proposal, while 7 percent were not sure how they would vote.
”Is there anything better to spend your money on than education?” asks Henry Kutyna, 64, a bachelor in the West Ridge area on the Far North Side who said he would vote yes. ”Education is a terrific thing.”
Support for a tax increase was weakest among parents with children in private schools and among people who had no children. But even in these cases, the yes votes outnumbered the no votes by slight margins.
In the poll, 399 Chicagoans and 300 suburban residents were questioned on a wide range of education issues. The margin of error was 3.8 percentage points for the entire sample, 5 percentage points for Chicagoans, 6 percentage points for suburbanites and 7 percentage points for white Chicagoans or black Chicagoans.
Survey questionnaires were sent to the top executives of 100 businesses in Chicago and its suburbs, and 68 returned them. The group surveyed is not representative of business overall-some business lobbies continue their long opposition to school-tax increases-and is weighted toward major employers in a broad range of businesses.
Forty-one percent of the corporate leaders said they would vote for a school-tax increase if they could vote. Forty percent said they would vote no, and 18 percent were not sure.
”We support higher taxes,” says Merrill Zenner, president of Reliable Corp., a privately held catalog house in Chicago that employs about 450 people and distributes office supplies.
”You`ll get the money back because, if you get a better qualified person answering a job in the first place, they`ll be easier and faster to train.”
The approval rate was even greater in both the poll and survey when it was tied to a requirement that the schools improve student performance.
Asked about a referendum that would require more taxes only if the local schools improved student performance, two of three Chicagoans said they would vote yes and only 25 percent would vote no.
Business leaders were even stronger in their support on this question.
Nearly 74 percent said they would vote yes on such a proposal even if it would mean higher taxes for their companies. Only 13 percent said they would vote no, and 12 percent were not sure.
”I think business people believe we`re underfunding education in Chicago,” says Loren E. Smith, chairman and chief executive office of Citicorp Savings of Illinois.
”Having said that, you don`t dump a lot of money into guys who haven`t done well with the money they`ve got in the past. You don`t rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.”
The poll found also that Chicagoans want to have a greater say about who runs the schools and how.
For more than a century, the system has been run by a school board appointed by the mayor, but 52 percent of the Chicagoans polled said they would favor an elected board. Only 29 percent were opposed.
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A major reason for the strong support for an elected board appears to be a feeling among residents of being locked out of school decisions. Three of 4 Chicagoans who expressed an opinion said they didn`t have enough control over what goes on in the schools.
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The poll and survey suggest that the money-starved system might be able to parlay the support for higher taxes into more funds.
More significantly, the findings suggest that citizens and businesses are willing to take responsibility for the schools-a responsibility that politicians have assiduously sought to avoid.
It is also a recognition of the economic threat that bad schools pose to the Chicago region if they cannot turn out enough qualified young people to meet the demands of the work force.
The corporate survey turned up a stunning measure of just how poorly the schools are doing in this regard.
Not even one of the 68 business leaders surveyed said the school system adequately prepared job applicants for work in entry-level jobs requiring less than a college education.
And one of four said the applicants weren`t prepared at all.
”We`re simply appalled at what they can`t do in the way of reading, writing and arithmetic,” says John R. Conrad, president of S & C Electric Co. The school system`s failure has long exacted a human toll as its students have been unable to live up to their potential. It also has levied a high social cost in the form of greater welfare costs, higher crime and lost taxes. ”The thing we`ve got to focus on is the children,” says R. Kenneth West, chairman of Harris Bank Corp. and a member of the executive committee of the mayor`s education summit.
”We`re not getting those children adequately educated, and it`s desperate that we do so. Otherwise, we`ll have disadvantaged kids growing into disadvantaged adults, and that`s just not acceptable.
”These are people who aren`t getting a chance. If they fail on their own, that`s one thing. But, if they fail because we haven`t given them an opportunity, that`s our responsibility as citizens of this community.
”We can`t blame anybody else.”
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The problems of the schools involve far more than just a lack of money.
Two of 3 Chicago students come from poor families. Seven of 8 are members of a racial or ethnic minority.
”The clients of the system are powerless,” says James G. Ward, an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana, who has conducted several studies of the Chicago public schools. ”The people who really care about this system don`t tend to vote, don`t tend to be parts of powerful groups.”
Nonetheless, the Tribune poll found that people who had voted in the last two years were stronger in their support of a school tax increase than people who said they hadn`t voted.
Of course, it is one thing for a person to tell a pollster that he`d vote for a tax increase and another to actually do it. One factor the poll could not take into account is that public opinion is invariably changed by the campaigns mounted by proponents and opponents of a real ballot proposition. The matter is further complicated because Chicagoans haven`t had a chance to vote on a school referendum in two decades.
Only 13 percent of the students in the public schools are white, but 48 percent of the white Chicagoans polled said they would favor a tax increase;
45 percent would oppose such a proposal. Blacks in the city favored a tax increase 67 percent to 27 percent.
If the tax increase were accompanied by a guarantee of improved student performance, whites would approve the measure 2-to-1, and blacks 5-to-1.
Linda Burkes, the mother of two public school students, was one of many blacks to favor increased funding.
”When I was in public school, the teachers were much better, they were stricter, and they cared,” says Burkes, 33, whose husband teaches in a private alternative education program.
Burkes has done volunteer work in many South Side schools and says she has seen much to persuade her that the schools need improvement. At Kenwood Academy, 5015 S. Blackstone Ave., for example, she met a counselor who had a poem tacked on his wall bemoaning the quality of the students. She ran into a similar attitude at Du Sable High School, 4934 S. Wabash Ave.
”All I heard from the teachers at Du Sable was how illiterate the kids are and how bad,” Burkes recalls. ”I heard nothing but negative things about the kids. If there wasn`t a law, I`d keep my kids home and teach them myself.”
Most white Chicagoans are highly critical of the public schools, but many of those who oppose a tax increase say money isn`t the problem.
”They`re wasting all the money,” says Genevieve Rodak, 73, of the South Chicago neighborhood, who put her two children through the public schools more than 30 years ago. ”I went to public school. My kids went to public school. We got a good education, but today they don`t want to. I don`t blame the schools. I blame the kids because they don`t want to learn.”
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From the start of public education in Chicago in 1834, public schools have been the poor relations of the political establishment. They have been used by political leaders as a source of patronage and contracts. Education of the children-particularly poor children-has been of secondary importance.
The system has been a fiefdom of City Hall, with politicians exercising indirect control without fear of being held accountable for the failure of the schools.
In some cities, such as New York, public schools are part of the municipal government and are the direct responsibility of the mayor. In most Illinois communities, local school systems are separate governmental bodies run by elected school boards.
In Chicago, the school system is a separate government but not answerable to the voters. The 11 members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed, and as a result voters have no direct way to express their pleasure or displeasure.
This political isolation has been increased over the last two decades by the refusal of school officials-and City Hall-to propose tax increases to the voters.
Such wasn`t always the case. In 1967, for example, a 15-cent increase per $100 assessed valuation was approved 63 percent to 37 percent.
A year later, another 15-cent increase-which had the backing of the Chicago Teachers Union, the business community and Mayor Richard J. Daley-was approved 52 to 48.
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Since then, the people of Chicago haven`t been asked to raise their own taxes. Even so, the school tax rate has increased by 49 percent since 1968.
(If the tax rate for the School Finance Authority, set up to bail the system out of its 1979 financial crisis, is included, the increase has been 65 percent.)
Those ”backdoor” school tax increases were approved by the legislature. ”What do (the state legislators) care?” says George Munoz, a school board member and former board president. ”They`re approving it for Chicago. They don`t have to pay for it.”
But Ald. Edwin Eisendrath (43d), a former teacher finishing his first year on the council, says: ”I don`t think it`s fair to go to Springfield to increase local property taxes. It takes the burden off the Board of Education. It takes the burden off the mayor.
”It would have been so much better-so much more honest-if we had a school board, with a product that the people would support, say, `Let`s go to a referendum.`
”They haven`t had the courage to do it.”
HOW THE POLL AND SURVEY WERE TAKEN
Findings of the Tribune poll are based on interviews with 399 Chicagoans and 300 suburban residents selected by random-digit dialing from all Chicago- area households with telephones. The interviews were conducted from Feb. 11 through Feb. 19 by Market Facts Inc., a Chicago-based market research firm.
The poll`s margin of error is expected to be no more than 3.8 percentage points for the entire sample, 5 percentage points for Chicagoans, 6 percentage points for suburbanites, a 7 percentage points for white Chicagoans or black Chicagoans.
The findings of the Tribune business survey are based on the responses of 68 top executives of a broad range of major Chicago-area employers to Tribune questionnaires.