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D303 parents want answers on grade level centers

Parents of students at Davis and Richmond elementary schools in St. Charles Unit District 303 came loaded with both questions and anger during a community forum about combining the schools Wednesday night.

Superintendent Don Schlomann wasted no time in getting to the heart of the matter for many of the parents.

“This is the elephant in the room. ... Richmond kids are failing,” Schlomann said. “I just want you to know, that’s not factual.”

District officials want to create grade level centers at Davis and Richmond, combining the attendance areas of the schools. Kindergarten through second-graders would attend Davis. Then students would move to Richmond for third through fifth grade.

District officials now have less than three weeks to mend the divide between what they think is best for students and what parents bought into when they purchased their homes.

Schlomann argued that if you took the low-income and non-English-speaking kids at Richmond and put them at any other school in the district, those kids would have the same learning and testing struggles.

“It’s not a teacher issue,” Schlomann said. “It’s a student issue. Clearly, Davis is outperforming Richmond. And when you look at all students, they are. But let’s look at what the majority of students are at Davis. When you look at non-low-income students at Davis and non-low-income students at Richmond, you can’t tell the difference. So let’s not throw Richmond under the bus.”

The problem is many parents symbolically threw Richmond under the bus by leaving the school when given the choice as the building slipped below No Child Left Behind standards.

In fact, so many parents pulled their children out of the school, and enrolled them at Davis, that Davis had to add a trailer to accommodate them. Meanwhile, Richmond is a school with better infrastructure and technology but classrooms that, in some cases, are as thin as 14 students.

Many parents struggled with the idea Schlomann pitched that not making “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind law is not a fair measure of the quality of a school.

But other parents had emotional reactions leading to shouting and small arguments among themselves about longer school days, changes or absence of busing in the new plan and the idea of splitting up similarly aged siblings among two schools in some cases.

Schlomann told parents the idea of grade level centers is a tried and true concept in many Illinois school districts.

But when Schlomann discussed the sweeteners in the deal — iPads for all students, the only foreign language classes at an elementary level in the district, extended school days with more emphasis on reading and science — parents suggested turning Richmond into a magnet school. That concept would allow parents to opt in to sending kids to Richmond rather than being forced into the school, audience members said.

Schlomann countered that the district doesn’t have the money to create a magnet school. Plus, when asked if they’d be willing to change schools to attend a magnet school in a previous survey, the results suggested almost no parent was willing to make the move, Schlomann said.

A second community forum on the possible change will take place at 7 tonight at Richmond Elementary School.

Then the school board will have its first chance to publicly weigh in on the plan at a committee meeting Feb. 28. Schlomann said the plan is fluid and may change based on community input before a final decision is made in March.