I want to start off by saying that I had the opportunity to visit two schools recently – both Longfellow and the Simon Youth Academy at Circle Center Mall. I had great experiences at both schools. And although Longfellow has certainly been in the news a lot this year for a myriad of negative reasons, I walked away from that school visit feeling reassured by the new school leadership that I met there.
It is fitting that I end my tenure on the IPS board this way, visiting schools that are intended for those students who have life circumstances that require something different – an alternative. I haven’t talked about myself or my experiences as an IPS student much, but I graduated from an alternative IPS program, The Learning Center and Day Adult High School. I had the additional challenge of being a teen parent as I graduated high school. Because this was my story and my lived experience as an IPS student – of course when I joined the IPS board it was my intent to advocate for non-traditional students. Students that, like me, needed an alternative to the traditional model of schooling.
When I made a career change to become an IPS teacher, I was passionate about my work as a special education teacher. For several years I had the privilege of working with students who were in many ways gifted, but who didn’t fit the mold of what society and the system defined as “smart” or “capable” of academic achievement. They were labeled as deficient, but I didn’t see them as such. It was my intent to help them recognize their gifts, and build off of their strengths. I hope that I was successful with that, in some small way.
These life experiences have led me to view education, and especially IPS, in a different or alternative way. Because of this unique perspective on the district and the students in it, in many ways, I didn’t fit the mold of a traditional IPS board member, either. I didn’t come here to be popular and I also did not come here to be polarizing or divisive. I came here to represent the people of the east side – the parents, families, taxpayers and residents of the only place I’ve ever called home. I brought everything I had to this task…all of my life experiences. It’s impossible to make every single person happy every single time, but I did this job with passion, and I did it to the best of my ability.
It’s no secret that I have been the lone dissenter on this board for the past two years. I do feel that innovation and change in the field of education are necessary. Society has changed, technology has changed, and consequently the lives of children have changed. We should not be employing the same pedagogies of the 19th and 20th centuries. Offering an excellent education demands that we are responsive to the fact that no two children are the same, and the way that they learn best is also highly individualistic. For this reason, I have long supported a parent’s right to choose a school that offers a “best-fit” curriculum for their child; be that a Montessori program, a program focused on performing arts, physical education, an International Baccalaureate program like CFI, a career-focused curriculum or a traditional classroom setting. This is all programming that IPS currently offers.
The one point in which I have offered consistent dissent has been a recent string of decisions to partner with outside charter school agencies to take over the operations of some of our schools. In some cases, the decision has been more understandable than others, where there is a long history of a school being labeled as failing. But, I stand firm in my conviction that capitalism has no place in our education system. Capitalism works based on winners and losers, which is fine when you’re talking about McDonald’s or Burger King, but is completely inappropriate when we are competing for the hearts and minds of children. What I have seen, and remain extremely concerned about is a profit motive being embedded in the structure of these schools. A cursory review of the financial documents of many of these schools offers proof that too many of our tax dollars, intended for public education, are sent to charter school CEO salaries while teachers are underpaid and students lack resources. My conscience and my “teacher gut” will not allow me to support the conversion of our public school system to a corporatized, profit-driven system of schools built on this type of capitalistic foundation, a foundation that will be further expanded under the new leadership in Washington, DC.
This has been my one major point of dissension.
I fear for the future of our public school system. Money has become the driving force for education reform. There are a lot of challenges within our educational system; mostly originating from the premise that we should be standardizing achievement and holding all students of the same age or grade level accountable to the same metrics. Learning is a uniquely human process. We must do away with the idea of standardizing human development and learning. We must regularly ask ourselves, “Are we teaching content or are we teaching kids?” When we focus on teaching our kids to count and to be counted on, we will actually be able to embark on the task of providing a high-quality, meaningful education to all our students. That’s an innovation and an alternative I can get behind.
