Pushing the Boundaries

District 200’s between Franklin and Monroe Middle Schools has students upset and parents up in arms, to judge by the comments made at the well-attended January 11 board meeting.

However, a look at the current boundary map shows that students in the northeast corner of the District are already being treated like “step children” of the District, and have been for some time.  In the northeast corner, ominously marked with purple cross-hatching, young children from one small area are currently being farmed out to no fewer than SIX (6) different elementary schools.  Some attend Washington, which is closest, but others are split among Hawthorne, Longfellow, Pleasant Hill, Sandburg, and even Whittier.  How does this promote any sense of community in the neighborhood?  

Under the new plan, students would literally be “redlined” out of their neighborhood school.  The District claims that grandfathering students at Washington would lead to increased busing costs, but how many routes are already needed to get these kids to six different schools under the existing boundaries?

Right now, the most burden is placed on students sent to Whittier Elementary from Autumn Ridge.  They are first bused away from neighboring children where they live, at the far north end of the District, all the way to Whittier, which is south of Roosevelt Road.  Then they are again split from their friends at Whittier (who continue to Edison Middle School and Wheaton-Warrenville South) when they are sent back north, to Monroe Middle School and Wheaton North. 

The southeast corner of the District also suffers from dysfunctional boundaries; Lincoln, Madison and Whittier Elementary schools all have non-contiguous attendance areas, raising transportation costs.  But in February 2008, as part of redistricting related to the Hubble referendum, the Board redrew boundaries to move some Lowell students to Whittier, based specifically on the argument that elementary schools should not “split” at the middle school level.  Now the District is proposing to create again the exact same problem it wanted to “fix” in February 2008.  (The discussion appears in the minutes of the February 13 and February 26, 2008 Board meetings, no longer available on District web site.)  Moreover, the Lowell redistricting grandfathered students at their current schools, an option which is not being offered to displaced Franklin students.

The District spent over $58 million on a new middle school so students in the “southwest corner of the District” would not have to be bused to the old Hubble and there would be a school “where the children are.”  These factors do not seem to be a concern when dealing with the “northeast corner of the District.”

Northeast corner students have been shuffled around before.  Because of overcrowding at Longfellow Elementary, students from the French Quarter area who attended Longfellow for kindergarten were moved to Pleasant Hill for first grade after the 2007-2008 school year, despite strong opposition from some (Hispanic) parents.  Students in other grades were also redistricted but were given the “grandfathered” option to remain at Longfellow.  (See minutes of March 12, March 26 and April 16, 2008 Board meetings, no longer available on District web site.)  Yet at the January 11, 2012 meeting Assistant Superintendent Dr. Robert Rammer reported that other students are now being moved into Longfellow to address overcrowding elsewhere.

Why the extreme split in the northeast?  I’ve been around this process long enough to make a couple guesses.  These are my opinions, so I’ll leave it to the reader to evaluate them.  One is pure politics.  As a practical matter, the areas affected thus far consist largely of apartments, where the election results show that voter participation is very low.  Thus, the Board has little incentive to care what those residents think, compared with homeowners in established neighborhoods with more ability to participate in the political process.  I can’t imagine that the Board would ever try to split up a neighborhood in central Wheaton, sending students block by block to six different schools.  Apartment complexes make a much easier target.

The other is more cynical, but cannot be discounted in the era of No Child Left Behind accountability.  NCLB progress is calculated based on “subgroups” of low-income or minority students reaching a critical mass of about 45 students in a given building.  Students in these apartment complexes tend to be more mobile, lower income, and more in need of special services.  By splitting them among multiple schools, the District can dilute their impact and avoid creating “subgroups” at a given elementary school.

In my view, the District’s policies in the northeast corner could come back to haunt it.  The Elgin school district, U-46, has been embroiled in years of costly litigation because minority parents contend their children were treated less well.  If it can be shown that the northeast corner students are ethnically distinct from the overall district population, the District could face similar discrimination claims.  To avoid possible issues, I’d urge the District to adopt consistent policies, rather than moving lines on an ad hoc basis; to plan ahead, rather than waiting until the last minute; and to involve, and listen to, parents every step of the way, rather than simply announcing a decision that has already been made.