by Suzanne Elder
More than a year and half ago, the faculty, parents and students of Senn High School, in partnership with neighbors and community stakeholders embarked on a strategic planning process. The purpose was simple: Make Senn an even better neighborhood school.
Anyone who has even worked through a full-blown strategic planning process knows that if you do it right, it’s wrenching; you’d sooner have a root canal. The process challenges deep-seated assumptions, personal beliefs and drives participants to focus instead on objective, fact-based assessments that lead to change.
It's hard work and the process participants at Senn tackled the work with courage and a clear-eyed commitment. They embraced the idea of change. What they didn’t expect, though, is to get sandbagged by their Alderman.
Alderman Mary Ann Smith initially supported the Senn Strategic Planning process but reversed course suddenly late last year and chose instead to promote a different plan. Her plan is not a product of collaborative process. It’s a personal plan, one that was hotly debated and roundly rejected years ago. It’s also a plan that will devastate the diversity and community that is Senn and replace it with four selective enrollment schools.
Alderman Smith points to Senn's test scores, as though somehow these measures justify her intervention. The analysis, if indeed there was any, is limp.
Senn is remarkable amalgam of different cultures, languages, nationalities and religious faiths. Many Senn students are recent immigrants who struggle with the transition from their country of origin to the U.S. but also struggle to learn English while they attend a U.S. high school. When population specific variables are included in the analysis of Senn’s test scores, the aggregate test scores are nothing short of remarkable.
Can Senn be improved? Of course, all schools can improve and sharp administrators and faculty search out those opportunities continually. Senn has not suffered on that account.
No, Senn faces more idiomatic challenges. The school lies within the 48th Ward, which eschews open process in favor of clubhouse politics. It’s an oxygen-deprived environment where participatory politics don't stand a chance, or a very slim one. Instead of advocating for fair tax policy and smarter development, the Alderman has facilitated policies that have further burdened property owners with even higher taxes, and, given the discretionary nature of TIF revenue, with little to none of that revenue reaching our schools.
Frankly, this makes the Alderman's use of TIFs and her position on Senn not unlike capping someone in the knees and then complaining they can't run. It's unacceptable.
I support Senn's Strategic Plan and the open, inclusive process that was employed used to create it. I also support smarter, fairer tax policy to make it happen.
7 comments:
News Star covers the Senn issue today.
Still, NOTHING from the Steans Camp.
Nothing!
wow, a candidate who gets it: the trade-off between schools & TIF
even mentioning TIF in an essay on schools is unique, it's progress in terms of straight talk
Google VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS: "Heather Steans"
IP Address: 156.33.26.7
Country: United States
Region: District Of Columbia
City: Washington
ISP: U.S. Senate Sergeant At Arms
Returning Visits: 3
Visit Length 48 minute 3 seconds
Wow, the United States Senate, 'Sergeant at Arms' spends 48 minutes reading about Heather.
I'm flattered.
Still nothing from the Steans Campaign.
I still do not know where Heather stands on the dismantling of Senn High School.
Doesnt it make sense to let the people who work inside Senn High School day in and day out to have a say instead of the changes all being top down. While there is much info floating around about the Rickover Naval Academy.(that Jan Sahnkowsky regularly shows up supporting the program) there is little to be said about the Senn Achievement Acdemy.
Throughout the city of Chicago there lies a unique group of students that for a multitude of reasons have had to fight their school program from day 1.
These students eventually wind up in an Achieventment Academy ( formerly know as Transtions, Academic Preparatory Centers)!
These students, not unlike their IB PREP peers are in need of an education.
No they aren't the group every selected school enrollment seeks during the competitive 'come to my school' fiaso created by the Chicago Board of Education.
Students attending the Achievement Academy score below the 24th quartile in Reading and or Math!
Research shows we need to continue to focus on the top quartile and the 2nd quartile. No one cares about the rest!
There happens to be an Achievement Academy located within Senn High
School.
It has a proven track record of success, but I never saw Jan Shakowsky visit the Achievement Academy. I never saw Alderman Smith visit the Achievement Academy!
These students are needy! They don't follow the rules.! They march to a different drum. They need to remain at Senn High School.
They have played in the band, entered the National Honor Society, played sports, earned many Service Learning Hours, excelled in sports, gotten into fights, cut classes, and succeeded!
Don't dismantle Senn High School, and please for the love of life leave the
Achievement Academy alone!
Steans campaign team reads - yet still ignores the questions.
mail.personalpac.org
IP Address: 66.72.178.57
Country: United States
Region: Illinois
City: Chicago
ISP: Personal P A C
Date: 01/31/2008
Returning Visits: 2
Visit Length: 12 mins 58 secs
Is this what you want in your next Senator?
When it comes to Rickover, no one ever asks the teens who chose this education or who sign up and go through the process to enroll in this program and are excited by this education.
At any of the meetings about the process, it seems the Rickover children and their parents aren't included. So, the anti-Rickover folks don't seem to think this is a flaw in their exclusionary meetings.
The liberals, the vast majority being white, of Edgewater, they know whats best for the little minority chittens. You never see the minority parents being asked or included why? Cause only the liberals of Edgewater knows whats best for all the little people, isn't the message on the other hand, we don't want your children to have a choice or voice and we don't want you in our schools, unless you follow what we feel should be your education choices. All 300 of us in Edgewater.
I'll vote when I see fair and equal reporting, both sides should be able to voice their opinion. Liberals sometimes are just "polite racists."
Dorothy, Just so you know, Rickover is a selected school enrollment meaning that the majority of minorities that attend must have a stanine of 5 or higher.
Many of their parents as well many of the students that enroll there are conned into thinking their kids will get college scholarships. What the parents aren't told is their wonderful child with military training can stop off in Iraq or anywhere else the Bush team is trying to play guns and bombs.
There is another program inside Senn called the Achievement Academy. No one with any clout from outside ever comes to visit this program. As a matter of fact students were displaced by Rickover Students on a bus headed for a school rally for funds last spring to Springfield!
The students from the Achievement Academy traveled the farthest to get to the bus on time!
They were bumped off their bus because Rickover's bus never arrived!
Talk about injustice!
You should have seen their work and their papers that they wrote about their experience. Alderman Smith never visited them.Neither did Mayor Daley or Jan Shakowsky.
They know noone cares about them except their parents and their teachers.
This program will be disbanded in a heartbeat if someone with the right clout can edge them out.
OOPS! They are the bottom quartile!
NO ONE CARES!!!!!!
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