February 21, 2014
Hyde Park/Kenwood CAC 3-Point Plan
Overview
Although we are young and this is a working document, the Hyde Park/Kenwood CAC has started discussions on what our priorities will be. After brainstorming sessions, email communications, whole group discussions, we have narrowed our priorities down to three: Middle School Experience, Early Childhood Education and Social Emotional Development. We need to mention, however, our over-arching, large-picture goal—to create a Pre-K to 12th grade continuum that is consistent, networked, supported, and available for our students in our community. Each of our priorities in this brief plan feeds into this umbrella statement.
To this end, we believe that neighborhood schools should receive the same publicity and exposure. Recently, CPS flooded local media, CTA busses, and the voicemails of current CPS parents with robo-calls and advertisements promoting the New School Expo which was held at Soldier Field on January 25th (the 7th year for this event). The special programs and unique events which occur at our schools should be showcased at an annual fair. Just as a college fair helps parents and students gather information on their options, parents should be granted the opportunity to attend an organized event at a public venue where they can meet current neighborhood school and teachers.
This not only balances the playing field, but supports the true notion of “school choice,” since so much of the promotion of neighborhood schools purports them to be failing (suggesting no choice). Marketing our neighborhood schools would help to address the notion that enrollment is dropping in our public schools across the city. Neighborhood schools should have equal access to the amount of funds “new schools” receive for marketing.
A separate capital request should be for an increase in per-pupil budgeting, which would provide flexibility to think about meeting these requirements as well as parent/community needs. Each individual school would benefit (perhaps one would add pre-k, another restore art, another get a counselor to work on SEL, etc.). This additional flexibility would give the schools a chance to differentiate themselves and their offerings, which would feed into our marketing priority, and help us meet the expectations of Hyde Park families. It would also give us a chance to coordinate among schools to make sure that solid Pre-K to 12th grade continuum gets established as we move forward with strategic planning.
Middle School Experience
The middle school experience in Hyde Park/Kenwood has been in flux, in some ways, for many years. The CAC would like to prioritize creating a stable middle school experience within our neighborhood.
This is an urgent situation requiring a long-term solution. The recent phase-out and closing of Canter Middle School has directly affected Ray Elementary, Harte Elementary, and Shoesmith Elementary. As it currently stands:
Although more research is needed, it is apparent that some residents in the neighborhood would like a separate middle school building for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders while other residents would like to have Pre-K to 8th grade at Ray and Harte. This is not a fractured community but a community which values individual needs with regards to education. With the University of Chicago in the neighborhood, some families are transient and may like to minimize the transitions for their children, valuing the Pre-K to 8th grade model. Other families see the value in a separate building that is focused on adolescents and what comes with that in a traditional middle school model.
How can we deny any family their right to a quality public education even if their educational philosophies, pedagogies, and practical needs may vary? We can’t. And with the perspective that we need to strengthen the Pre-K to 12th grade continuum, the issue of the middle school experience needs to be addressed immediately to plan for Fall 2014.
One plan is to allow Shoesmith the space to build their Pre-K program by extending their 6th, 7th, and 8th grades into the Canter building. It is paramount to not leave the Canter building empty, especially when Shoesmith is crowded with mobile units on their grounds. (Mobile units are built to be a temporary fix to overcrowding and were never meant to be permanent classrooms.) Then, Shoesmith 8th graders could feed into Kenwood High School next door, with Kenwood using the Canter building for overflow as needed. With at least two new large, multi-unit residential buildings being constructed in the Shoesmith/Canter/Kenwood area, overcrowding at Shoesmith and Kenwood will certainly be an issue at the forefront.
Although planning takes time, we know the community is ready to give input (which is evident by the development of this CAC) and that the process can be accelerated (as is proven by the timeline for the hearings and closings last spring). Utilizing the Canter building in Fall 2014, in whatever way, supports our goal for a strong Pre-K to 12th continuum. Knowing that we have that facility available to us in some capacity gives time over the next months to create a plan for it with community input and support.
With this idea explained, it is not necessary to close out those parents and community members who prefer Ray and Harte to have 7th and 8th grades. Let Ray and Harte maintain these grades, well-supported, on a smaller scale to help with overcrowding.
By maintaining the option of an actual middle school for those who believe this fits their needs and keeping 7th and 8th grades at Ray and Harte, our community’s needs are met.
Beyond where the facilities come into play, the needs of middle schoolers are specific and unique. All of our neighborhood schools which support middle school students-- Reavis, Murray, Kozminski, Ray, Harte, Canter-- require certain elements to meet those needs. The consistency of all of these schools feeding into Kenwood creates a potential for a community-wide strengthening of our Pre-K to 12th grade continuum.
This is not an exclusive list of what is needed to have an effective middle school program:
- An administrative position focused specifically on the middle school grades (6th, 7th, 8th) to develop and implement an effective discipline/positive behavior reinforcement program. This could be an additional assistant principal or a dean.
- A counselor dedicated to the middle school grades who is able to be “on-call” for non-academic challenges of adolescents, as well as a resource for the high school application and decision process. This counselor would not be responsible for testing, special education case loads, or other school-wide paperwork.
- Security that is consistent, mentoring, trained in adolescents, and has a physical presence where the middle school students are in the school building.
- Extra training and team-building opportunities for middle school teachers and staff. This is necessary outside of normal professional development to train staff about the needs of adolescents and to build a team within the staff before the school year starts.
- Team-building programs for students offered before the school year starts to welcome students to the middle school experience.
- Smaller class sizes, 25 or below, to allow the teachers and staff to individually reach each students academically, socially, and emotionally.
- Common planning time with middle school staff (which is usually dealt with at a school-level).
- Options for physical outlets during the day, through physical education class, more open curriculum, departmentalized courses (ie- they physically change spaces throughout the day).
- Extra-curricular programs that include sports, social clubs, other interests like cooking, drama, mentoring. These options need to be non-academic in nature.
- An advisory or colloquium period to address the non-academic interests and needs that arise for adolescents (although this scheduling is a school-level issue, extra personnel could be needed to make it work).
- A specific structure during the day that preps the adolescents for their transition to high school, such as a bell schedule and passing time (without other elementary students impeding their freedom).
- Field trips and programs like career days, high school or college visits, and team-building opportunities.
Supporting the middle school student is a challenging responsibility that requires resources, dedicated staff and overall support beyond the individual schools. The Hyde Park/Kenwood Community is unified in their desires to create a quality middle school experience for all of the middle schoolers in our neighborhood.
Social Emotional Development
The current emphasis on children's academic preparedness continues to overshadow the importance of children's social and emotional development for school readiness (Raver &
Zigler, 1997). Almost twenty years later, this statement still holds true. With standardized testing and data-driven instruction driving mandates and policies, schools are forced to put social emotional development priorities behind others. We need not only social emotion staff (some schools only have .2 social worker), but we also need funding for social emotional curriculum, programming, professional development, services, rewards and after school development. This would include creating and/or expanding restorative justice programs in our schools. We want to ensure that we are creating a culture that cares for the entire child, and that students can remain in school and in class even if they've made a mistake as it relates to the rules. In addition, this would include having more staffed counselors and resources available to our students to deal with both grief and post-traumatic stress as it relates to the city's violence. Our children have to deal with the loss or injury of friends and family on a constant basis, and there needs to be consistent availability of counselors and resources for our children whose needs in those areas do not end when the school day begins.
This has implications at all grade levels. Without prioritizing the social emotional development of our students, their academic progress will surely lag. Many of the details noted in the Middle School Experience section overlap with Social Emotional Development; however, we would like to note that this support is needed Pre-K to 12th grade. This support will look different for Pre-K students than it will for 12th graders. And yet, the effect of ignoring this critical part of a child’s learning and personal development has dire results. Each and every educator can tell their own narratives of 1) how important social emotional development is and 2) how it is chronically overlooked by large urban districts.
Early Childhood Education
We know that early childhood education (ECE) is foundational to our children's development, and we want our ECE options to both grow in number and in impact. People who apply to an ECE program should be given first priority in their neighborhood’s preschool program. This should not be a centralized application/registration process. The elementary schools in our area should have preschools that offer child-centered programming geared toward the well-being of the whole child and not just their academic selves.
There is enormous pressure being put on schools to “lower the curriculum” so that younger children will begin to perform academically earlier than ever before. There is no evidence that this trend has any long range academic benefit to children. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence that the stress this inflicts on our youngest children has a backlash in lower academic performance starting in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. We would like for our early childhood programs, preschool and kindergarten, to have their programs built on the principles of “developmentally appropriate practice” as defined by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Curriculum should continue to be “child-centered” and geared toward the well being of the whole child, not just their academic performance. The high quality programming that has historically been the hallmark of Chicago’s Early Childhood Education Department should continue not just for preschool but for kindergarten as well. Kindergarten teachers should be given Early Childhood Education professional development just as preschool teachers have always received. Both sets of teachers should continue to receive high quality ECE professional development opportunities.
The Hyde Park/Kenwood community no longer offers any CPS tuition-based full-day preschools. In fact, South Loop School is the only school on the entire south side that offers such a program. On the other hand, there are several CPS tuition-based full-day preschools on the north side of the city (http://www.cps.edu/SiteCollectionDocuments/TuitionBasedPreschoolPrograms.pdf). The inequity in the geographic distribution of these programs should be addressed so that working families on the south side of Chicago also have access to affordable, high-quality, full-day preschool.
Preschool programs should have access to quality, age-appropriate outside play areas. These play areas should be seen as extensions of the early childhood classroom to promote nature study as well as gross motor play.
To that end, we want long-visioned programming across several schools from Pre-K to 12th that unites these schools via a holistic, vertical curriculum that develops both their humanity and leadership capacities. This will position them for college and to participate in Chicago's 21st century global economy -- including STEM, agriculture, and industrial/logistical areas. Access, powerful child-centered, holistic curriculum, and long-term stability across grades and school levels -- that's what we want for our little ones. We want our children begin their education in their neighborhood schools and complete it there.