Two items on the December 5’th agenda of the USD116 Board caught my attention.
Item One: The IGW Architecture presents their Concept-Plan of turning Wiley into the Sixth Grade Center. Here are the basic numbers:
They plan to spend essentially all of the $25 million Dr. Ivory-Tatum is borrowing (on our behalf, to be returned with interest, over the years by us, when retired, and our children). This money will expand the current 43,200 sqft of Wiley to a total of 74,672 sqft, adding 31,500 sqft.
If the administration instead spent $4mil on the updates (asbestos abatement, etc, as was originally planned), the remaining $20 million would be more than enough1the national average cost of building educational facilities is $243 per sqft to create a new building at least 55,000 sqft large, without eliminating Wiley.
But who cares?
Item Two: finally, the administration noticed something is not quite right in USD116: “Our current systems and the way we do school, especially in grades K-8, are not meeting, nor are they designed to meet the needs of 2023 students.” No kidding!2The administration blames the pandemic, of course.
The quote above is from the district’s plan titled “A Call to Action” (of uncertain authorship), to be discussed at the Board’s meeting.
As is typical for the prose originating from USD116, the document is spiced with bizarre grammar (“trained in and use of local district assessments“), pleonasms (“it will take time and will not happen overnight“), oxymora (“negative growth“) and a milquetoast quote by “Socrates,”3hint: it’s a different dead white man. like Castaneda’s Don Juan, Socrates of the Call to Action is one of those characters populating the 80-ies New Age-y personal growth literature… just google Dan Millman. but who cares? – at least they want to do something.
Something what though?
The administrators, at their core bureaucrats, see as their task number one to recognize the directives from above (Illinois State Board). Hence, the administration assures us that they will implement the “ISBE Literacy Plan” aiming “to identify the supports and resources necessary to ensure that EVERY student receives developmentally appropriate evidence-based literacy instruction.” This is either a) a subtle signal that before this wisdom was delivered, they were unable to identify these precious resources, or b) just a ritual offering to the minor gods of the State of Illinois. My money are on b).
The actual meat of the proposal promises another favorite bureaucratic game: restructuring.
Here’s the outline: the roles of “instructional coaches” and “literacy interventionists” will be eliminated. In lieu of those positions (which used to be add-ons on top of the classroom teachers), the proposal envisions a new cohort of “Tier One Intensive Teachers,” “Tier One Curriculum Implementation Teachers” and “Tier Three Intensive Intervention Teachers.” These TOITs, TOCITs and TTIITs are supposed to be more experienced educators, getting extra money for some extra work, and, most importantly, co-teaching English with the classroom instructors.
The probable intent of the reform is to replace the “literacy interventionists” (who aren’t really a match to the enormity of the loss of basic literacy in the district’s elementary schools) with presumably tested, experienced teachers who would be spending more time in the classrooms.
It is true that the district badly needs a radical improvement of its classroom teachers. But will the Call to Action work? who knows. Good teachers come and stay when the salaries are reasonable and the climate is good. It is not clear the district is ready to reorient its spending priorities from frenzied administrative maneuvers to hiring competent teachers. As for the climate, the farce of rapid hire-fires of clownish educational personalities, and the tragedy of dismantling an obviously well-managed school are hardly the hallmarks of the environment a self-respecting, experienced educator would be willing to subject themselves to.
I wish I could believe that the comically illiterate Call to Action to restore literacy will do the magic, so that good teachers would come and stay here. But creating a competent body of teachers able to address the district’s by now deeply entrenched problems requires competence from the district’s leadership. And at this point, the district’s administration is its weakest link.
So paint me skeptical.