The DPS Chalkboard 2030 Plan
Duane and I were encouraged when the School Board discussed the Roadmap 2030 plan for well over an hour at the last board meeting. Despite some of the strange comments, it was refreshing to hear a broad and deep conversation about something that matters so much to the community. And kudos to the Roadmap 2030 team for making it easy for all of us to follow along with their progress on the DPS website.
While we support many aspects of the Roadmap 2030 plan, Duane and I believe we can improve it by focusing on what truly matters for our students' futures. Our alternative proposal (at the end of this article) maintains the K-2 and 3-5 attendance centers but diverges in three critical ways: reducing to two standard middle schools instead of three magnet schools, consolidating to one high school, and most importantly, integrating comprehensive Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs at all levels. (More information on CTE can be found in our articles here, here, here, and here. Wow! We’ve written about CTE a lot!) These changes to the current plan address our teacher shortages, maximize our resources, and prepares the 95% of our students who won't complete four-year college degrees for successful careers. Let me explain why these changes make sense for Decatur. But first, here’s the Roadmap 2030 project’s most advertised building utilization plan to date (Scenario #8E):
Grades PK-2
Grades 3-5
Grades 6-8 Pathways of Choice (Magnet/Choice/Options)
Grades 9-12 (Current Configuration)
Grades PK-8 Montessori (Current Magnet Status)
Regarding our middle school proposal, most people think we still need to keep some semblance of the magnet school philosophy in the plan because the students (or more succinctly put – the parents) need more choice. But counterintuitively, creating (seemingly) more choice by having more middle schools would unfortunately leave the kids with less choice, because the smaller the building the less opportunity we have to offer a diverse curriculum. Two 900-student middle schools will provide more opportunities for CTE prep work, or high-level math courses like Algebra, or band, or girls’ soccer, or maybe a chess club because we will be more likely to meet the minimum number of students required to make those activities economically viable. Dividing our middle school students among three 600-student buildings will have the unintended consequence of limiting opportunities for each student to find programs that match their unique academic abilities and extracurricular interests.
Additionally, how would three magnet middle schools function in practice? I imagine the programs to be STEM, Arts, and (hopefully) a CTE influenced curriculum. But separating students into specialization areas for a school’s primary focus seems absurd. Do kids in sixth grade know which magnet program will be best for their growth? And literally every one of the 1,800 middle school students should have the opportunity to take CTE prep courses (and arts classes too). All of them! Magnet schools might make people feel good, but what do they really accomplish? Here’s what Duane and I believe: first, middle school should be designed so that kids enjoy it (yes, we believe that is possible) and want to stay in school – or at least not be bored; and second and equally as important, we should introduce the CTE curriculum to every single student in middle school.
OK. This is a good time to address the hypocrisy of many of the people advocating for their personal favorite school because “kids need a magnet school experience” or whatever. I ask you: where was the outcry for the total wrecking of the fundamentals of the magnet school concept when a previous school board took us down the path of “every child must learn the same thing (taken from ISBE Common Core standards) … at the same time… every day?” That type of curriculum cannot coexist with a specialization/magnet school philosophy, but we did not hear anything from the magnet school proponents then. Nobody was calling for board members to resign, or calling for the end of the micromanaged plan used to make every Principal in the district kowtow to that directive. If you’ve been a long-time reader, you know that there are few things that concern us as much as that 'same page' policy. But now! Now, when a plan is presented that involves closing a school that you care about… now we MUST have magnet programs?
So, this is a plea to the Roadmap 2030 people, to the School Board, and to Central Admin – if you have sound reasoning behind middle school magnet programs: let’s hear it. But if the only reason is to appease some vocal critics – that’s not good enough. It will come down to the school board to ask the hard questions about the necessity of this concept, and we hope they ask them.
Our next proposed change to the Roadmap 2030 plan is to bite the bullet now and go to a single high school. Look, one high school is inevitable, and it makes so much sense to do it now as part of this reorganization (because it also allows us to make the necessary middle school changes too!). Moving to one high school would make it logistically so much easier to create more opportunities for CTE, and at the same time we would help the teacher shortage issue by better utilization of resources, and we would be able offer a broader curriculum, and we could offer more possibilities for extracurricular activities. The only problem we have with this plan is the concern that MacArthur is not big enough to hold 1,800 students (or wherever our enrollment ends up in the fall of 2026 when this will be implemented). But the answer to this problem is simple: CTE (again!). With a heavy CTE curriculum, how many students will be out of the building – at Heartland, at the Ag Academy, at Richland, at job sites (!) – every day? At least three or four hundred juniors and seniors. Is this logistically difficult to manage? Yes! But is it worth the effort? Yes!
The reduction in the number of middle schools (from the proposed 3 to 2) and moving to one high school are our major changes to the plan, but beyond that we are very much in favor of the K-2 and 3-5 attendance centers. Attendance centers solve so many problems – from small group student instruction possibilities (RTI) to homogeneous reading and math classrooms, to helping maintain diversity in the schools, to helping with our teacher shortage problem by more efficiently utilizing our resources. I’ve had several discussions with people who are against attendance centers only to end up with another advocate for this option.
Before I present our plan, I’d like to address one more issue. I understand why the board would like to wait for the newly elected members to join before we move forward. To ensure long-term support from every board member, or perhaps simply to wait until the board has the votes to move forward, it makes sense to wait. But we can only wait a few months – no more. You’ve heard the adage about the frog in the pot of water that gets heated up so slowly that it never knows that it’s time to jump out. DPS 61 is the frog! The eventual boiling water is the teacher shortage, and the fact that we pay for the upkeep of too many buildings, and the necessity of implementing a CTE curriculum, and the possible and eventual reduction in funding from the federal government, and quite possibly even the reduction in state of Illinois funding, etc., etc., etc. We need to jump out of the water now! We must do something. Roadmap 2030 could be our path out of the water.
So, with all of that said, here's the DPS Chalkboard 2030 Plan. (It should go without saying, because I’ve made the following point in nearly all of our articles, Duane and I don’t offer criticism without laying out our own plan and opening ourselves up to your criticism.)
Get out of the business of Pre-K. (And no, the state does not require us to offer Pre-K. Other organizations could do it cheaper, probably better, employing people that need the jobs, and of course also receive state support.) See this article for more information.
K-2 & 3-5 Attendance Centers. If you want more information on this, comment below!
Two 6-8 middle schools. (Stephen Decatur and Eisenhower would work nicely.)
One high school!
Grades PK-8 Montessori (Current Magnet Status)
We didn’t address Montessori above because frankly we’re agnostic when it comes to whether Montessori produces better results. But there is one thing we know for sure – Montessori is good for Decatur Public Schools. More families will leave if we don’t provide this option, so we’re inclined to support keeping it in the plan. We would, however, still like to see a good statistically designed experiment to judge the effectiveness of the school. And we volunteer to help if you want some ideas!
Finally, while our Roadmap 2030 building utilization plan will certainly save the district operating expense money and significantly help with our teacher shortage problem, we also recognize the importance of making some major philosophical changes to affect the outcomes of our students. Changes like creating more opportunities for learning at different levels in the early grades (heterogeneous math and reading classes, for example), a transition to a CTE focused high school, and offering a wider variety of activities for our middle school kids are equally if not more important. But the building structure we advocate for – namely one single high school and only two middle schools - positions us to best implement those philosophies.
If you believe that, contrary to the Roadmap 2030 current plan, moving from three to two middle schools and allowing for only one high school will provide for more diverse experiences from grades 6 and up, please share this with a friend, a board member, or a DPS 61 administrator. We need to get the word out that we desperately need more options for our kids. And please comment below if you have any ideas or alternative solutions that could better address our district's challenges.