They can learn!

[Ted]

I believe the District 201 budget is operating at a minimal expenditure at this time.  The outreach that would be beneficial has been thrashed on this board - namely preschool for all.  A parenting academy would benefit in the long run as well but again - money.  It all takes money.  You can't implement strategies like this unless you have a long range vision.  Most leadership in education is shooting for short term gains and it just doesn't work.

  Given Berwyn's churn rate, pre-school for all in only Berwyn isn't going to improve ACT scores at Morton.  Only 30% of the kids entering kindergarten in Berwyn will be taking the ACT tests as juniors at Morton.  70% will have moved into Berwyn after the age of 5 - most of them from Chicago.

So, unless you have universal pre-school, including Chicago, the kids who go to pre-school in Berwyn will be achieving ACT scores as high school juniors in other school districts.

  btw, D100 does provide pre-school for at-risk kids today.

  One more thing on this - Some of us opposed the D100 pre-school plan in 2011 because it was fiscally irresponsible - it paid for teachers for only one year with no money for those salaries after 1 year, in a district facing increasing enrollments and a budget deficit in the millions of dollars.

   In my opinion, the superintendent wanted to get more cash and that was why he proposed the bond.  He needed some excuse to give to the board as a reason for the bond so that they would agree to increase the debt from $54 million to $90 million, so he came up with the pre-school idea.

Pre-school for all is a good idea as long as it is universal across all school districts in the state and funded properly rather than funded through huge increases in the debt.

[Ted]

Schools should be compared based on the community SE standards. Children living in Oak Park, Riverside, LaGrange and the like have many more opportunities than low income communities. I can teach a kid a lot, but if he or she has no support at home, they will not progress as fast as a child in a home where the parents help with homework and provide tutors, books, a home computer and educational programs, and trips to cultural institutions. This is something that many people refuse to admit. Part of the problem with education lies in the home and teachers can do little to overcome this.

However, I think voters do want to compare to surrounding districts because this is the area they moved into.  I think one big mistake the District 100 school board made in the referenda election was trying to compare Berwyn to Ford Heights.

  Berwyn isn't even close to Ford Heights or other communities like it.  I think it is a valid comparison to see how Berwyn school districts compare to Lyons and Brookfield, as well as Cicero, Oak Park and LaGrange.

  I also think the D100 board just plain asked for too much money.  They made the assumption that people would vote either for or against the referenda regardless of how much money was being asked for.  They were arrogantly oblivious to whether people could afford to such a steep increase, even people who would support a lesser increase.

  With 80% of the people voting NO, I think the board found out otherwise.   80% is a large percentage for a defeat of a school referendum.  The Morton referenda in 1993 lost with 93% because of the Klingenberg scandal, yet this defeat was only 13 percentage points less than that.