Community leaders called on students from poorer parts of Chicago to protest inequalities in school funding by skipping the first day of classes.
State Sen. James Meeks wants students to spend Sept. 2 trying to enroll in a suburban school district that spends much more per student than Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third-largest school district. "Today we are back to two-tiered schools — white and affluent on one side, and black, brown and poor on the other," said Meeks, who also is a minister on the city's South Side.
Meeks expects several thousand black Chicago students to travel in a caravan of buses to New Trier Township High School in the white, North Shore suburb of Winnetka, where they will attempt to enroll.
State statistics indicate that the New Trier district spends around $17,000 annually on each of its students compared to the roughly $10,000 a year spent for each student in Chicago public schools.
"We, as a civilized people, can't do it this way," Meeks said. "We're doing irreparable harm to hundreds of thousands of kids."
Officials at New Trier Township High School District 203 said it wasn't yet clear how they'll deal with so many Chicago students showing up at one time to attempt to enroll at the high school.
"We have sympathy for the issue of school funding. ... But I think (Meeks) is harming his cause by doing this," said the district's superintendent, Linda Yonke.
Meeks said the protesters would seek to enroll based on state rules allowing students to transfer to another district if their safety is at risk. The inferior education they receive in Chicago, he said, "was not good for the safety of their futures."
Yonke said she would have to consult lawyers to see if the district might be obliged to enroll any of the Chicago students.
Overhauling how public schools are funded in Illinois has been hotly debated for years — but to little avail. Critics want the state to move away from a system where money for local schools derives largely from local property taxes, saying the status quo results in vastly better funding of schools in property-rich neighborhoods.
The Center for Perpetual Diversity advises the white schools to cut funding to an equal amount or the Chicago schools should increase there funding. Each jurisdiction must decide how much to spend on its students. It is a travesty to for blacks to spend less on their schools and then try to get whites to pick up the difference. White students would be far better off if they spend less money rather than accepting large numbers of hostile racist blacks in their system. Safety will not change, Meeks' plan may distribute the danger more equally but it can not be reduced and may even get worse as the bad students will have more unsuspecting whites to prey on.
posted by Jim 5:52 AM