U-46 superintendent named to national commission

Elgin Area School District U-46 Superintendent Jose Torres has been appointed to a national commission charged with examining school finance and its effects on equity and achievement.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan named 28 education advocates, civil rights leaders, scholars, lawyers and corporate leaders to the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission.

The commission will look at discrepancies in educational opportunities that lead to the achievement gap, with a focus on systems of finance. The commission will then recommend ways to restructure school finances to more fairly distribute education funds and further student achievement.

Torres, who worked with Duncan in the Chicago Public Schools system, said his experiences with U-46 would provide a useful case study for the commission.

“I think the focus of the commission is how do we differentiate funding to achieve academic achievement for all,” Torres said. “We have been struggling here with how do we do that locally. In the last couple of years, with the challenges in the budget, that is something we have been looking at very seriously.

“I am hoping to say yes, district inequities are real and difficult, but this is what we are planning to do. We are certainly not an example, necessarily, of someone that has arrived, but of someone that is on the journey,” he said.

Commission members include: co-chair Chris Edley, dean of University of California, Berkley law School; co-chair Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix; and Cindy Brown, vice president for education policy at the Center for American Progress.

The commission will meet for the first time on Tuesday at the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.

“I am honored, and if you look at who is on the commission it is very impressive list,” Torres said. “I look forward to contributing at the local level and I look forward to learning from people at the table.”