District 54 candidates debate future improvements
While acknowledging the current financial and academic strength of Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54, the five hopefuls for the school board shared their differing views on how best to prepare for future growth and challenges at a candidates forum Tuesday.
Incumbents Bill Harper, Barbara Hengels and Mary Kay Prusnick are vying with newcomers Johannes Laun and Joseph Wein for the three available seats on the board in the April 7 election.
“I think the biggest challenge in District 54 is going to be an external challenge,” Prusnick said, describing the unknown impact on school finances of potential changes to the funding formula currently being discussed by state legislators.
Prusnick also stressed a need to be sensitive to the district's growing, low-income population and the career readiness of its students.
Wein said that more voices from the community have to express themselves — their goals and priorities — for District 54 to be ready for the future.
“From my perspective, an area of growth for the district is more participation by both parents and residents,” Wein said, stressing that even those without children in the district have a stake in its success. “Never can we have a time when too much involvement is a bad thing.”
Harper stressed keeping a focus on academic achievement for the district's students. He specified maintaining the board goal of “90/90 schools” — having each of the district's 27 elementary and junior high schools performing at or above the 90th percentile in the nation in individual student growth targets in reading and math, as measured by Measures of Academic Progress.
Harper also defended standardized testing against a current wave of criticism. He said that as uncomfortable as testing can be, it's a practical way of determining the district's strengths and weaknesses, including finding which students need more help.
Hengels said continuing to protect the district's balanced budgets and to even raise the “90/90 schools” goal to the 95th or 98th percentile in the nation could be paths for future improvement.
“It's challenging, but I believe we can do it,” Hengels said.
She added that she believes the district is already meeting the challenges of serving well a student population in which minorities are the majority.
Laun wants the district to look further ahead than he believes it is now in preparing students for future careers. Many of the jobs today's students are still aspiring to will be rendered obsolete within 10 or 20 years, he said.
Many of these jobs will be in the service industry — with even robotic chefs a possibility in the future, Laun said. He believes students should be educated for jobs that will benefit from such changes rather than be hurt by them.
“The rate of technology change is going to fundamentally affect our society,” Laun said. “Are we really preparing our students to meet those needs?”