Seventeen people representing Independent School District 166 and the three Cook County charter schools – Great Expectations, Oshki Ogimaag, and Birch Grove – met at the Cook County Community Center on October 27, 2011 to build some bridges.
The creation of charter schools over the last several years has generated a lot of conflicting opinions in a district struggling with funding challenges partly related to declining student enrollment. Before the last school board election, one of the hotly contested topics was whether ISD 166 should allow charter school students to play on its sports teams.
At this point, collaboration might make more sense for everybody than competition, however, and the school administrators and board members at this meeting spent four hours figuring out how they could benefit each other.
Nobody was trying to sweep any old garbage under the rug. Great Expectations Director Peter James said they should be clear about why the charter schools separated themselves from ISD 166. The focus has changed, however, he said, from wanting to be separate to supporting parent choice and providing educational alternatives. “I also think that hangover is still there. There’s still a cloud over the charter schools,” he said, calling it a “battleground.”
ISD 166 Superintendent Beth Schwarz said she often hears digs made at the charter schools but recognized their significance. “Twenty percent of our kids are not coming to our school. That’s a lot of students,” she said. “We need to be able to figure out how to work together. …A kid is a kid is a kid. …I went into education because I wanted to help students. … Our county has 600 kids. We need to educate every one of them, and we need to educate them well.”
Schwarz said an increasing number of people seem to be open to the idea of the school districts collaborating because they’re thinking more about what is in the best interest of the students.
ISD 166 board member Terry Collins said acknowledging how the charter schools could be threatening to the traditional educational system is important.
Indeed, the picture isn’t all rosy. ISD 166 school board member Deb White said some people have hard feelings about Great Expectations, feeling it was a slap in the face for ISD 166 and came out of a belief that ISD 166 wasn’t good enough. Some people would resist the notion of ISD 166 sharing any of its resources with Great Expectations, she said.
With reality in mind, the meeting focused on three areas: saving money, improving student achievement, and generating community support.
Saving money
Ideas on how working together could help everyone save money included: . Special education – Having a common entity do third-party billing for services that qualify for payments by outside entities; sharing special ed classroom space and staff; sharing continuing education workshops. . Writing collaborative grants. . Increasing mental health services. . Working together to administer and interpret standardized testing. . Sharing payroll/ benefits/health insurance administration. . Sharing school nursing staff. . Sharing facility amenities.
Third party billing costs small schools a lot of administrative time, James said. The smaller schools could benefit ISD 166 by helping share this cost, reducing redundancy and creating more of a job in one place.
Oshki Ogimaag Director Fred Kasianov suggested that the Grand Portage pool and gym could be made available to the other schools.
Improving student achievement
Ideas included: . Sharing results of achievement testing and how they can use the data to finetune their teaching to increase learning. . Helping smooth the transition from charter schools to Cook County Middle/High School, such as having visiting days with student mentors or shared activities such as track and field, cultural awareness education, or just plain fun. Making the transition from the charter schools to ISD 166 can be “a really hard transition for those kids,” said Birch Grove Administrator Diane Blanchette. Whatever they can do to ease that transition, she said, would be worth their time and effort. . Teachers visiting other schools to observe their peers or meeting with others who teach the same grades or subject areas. . Increasing participation in Early Childhood/ Family Education (ECFE). Superintendent Schwarz said research shows early education increases academic achievement down the road. ECFE is a program of Cook County Community Education, which serves all people within the ISD 166 service area. . Collaborating on extracurricular activities. . Working together to keep up with evolving technology.
Generating community support
Ideas included: . Countywide fundraising. . Reviving district sports teams such as the Grand Portage Thunderbirds. . Encouraging multigenerational teaching, such as elders teaching students and vice versa. . Community-based service learning opportunities. . Maximizing use of Cook County Community Education. . Setting up a community advisory panel. . Students in different districts participating together in community service projects. . Students visiting each other and/or participating in a buddy system years before the charter school kids would be joining ISD 166; increasing student orientation efforts. . An Ojibwe language club for community members of all ages. . Countywide youth council; youth participation on committees.
Moving ahead
The consensus of the group was to begin more regular collaboration among the school administrators, with the understanding that they need the permission of their boards to move forward with initiatives. The boards will be discussing the ideas generated at this meeting.
The group identified some priorities and numerous volunteers agreed to work on them over the next several months. Another meeting is planned for sometime in February.
ISD 166 Superintendent Schwarz hopes the schools will become a model of collaboration written up in professional journals. She sees the potential for Cook County becoming a draw for families outside the county looking for quality education for their children.
Collaboration is good role modeling for their kids, Amy Henrikson of Great Expectations said. James agreed, saying that a good attitude about the existence of the separate school districts is good for the kids. “It does build a stronger community,” he said.
Leave a Reply