RUSD Listening Sessions - Part Deux

On Friday morning, I attended one of the RUSD listening sessions; I was hopefully optimistic that it would be a fruitful and interesting way to spend my morning. It was interesting, but how fruitful the meeting remains to be seen – it really all depends on what the board and administration will do with the information gathered at these listening sessions. Although there were a respectful number of attendees at the listening session I attended, many population demographics were not represented.

But even though the attendees did not represent the demographics of eastern Racine County very well, there were many good ideas and interesting observations made; I will try to summarize a few of them here, I will interject my thoughts (in a different color font):

1. RUSD needs smaller class sizes, especially in the primary grades (K-3).

There are many elementary schools in the central city that already have small class sizes due to SAGE and P-5 funding from the federal government. Other schools (like Gifford) are overcrowded due to the fact of the growing population in our western communities. Redistricting will alleviate the worst overcrowding.

2. RUSD needs to return to the Junior High grade configuration: K-6th grade, 7-9 and 10-12th grade.

Immediately after changing the grade configuration in the 1983-1984 school year, the 9th grade failure rate skyrocketed to 40%. This was expected, as 9th graders faced new challenges; it was also expected that this failure rate would level out over time. After 23 years, the district is still faced with a 9th grade failure rate that is not acceptable. Returning to the junior high configuration definitely cannot hurt the already dismal results we are seeing in our high schools and as an added bonus - this will also help reduce the overcrowding at many of our schools.

3. Like Kenosha Unified and MPS, RUSD needs to return to neighborhood schools. This would help engage more families in the educational process and save money on busing.

No one wants to see Brown vs. The Board of Education overturned; returning to neighborhood schools will not bring us back to a new age of segregation. On the surface, returning to neighborhood schools makes sense. Families will not be forced to send their children across town on hour-long bus rides. However, I feel the best answer to promote diversity in our schools lies between these two philosophies. If every school was a “choice” school and drew its potential population from across the district; diversity would happen naturally.

Obviously, after nearly 2 hours of discussion there was many more ideas discussed but the constraints of both time and space do not allow me to examine any more at this time. Perhaps I will revisit this issue in a future post….