Naperville Dist. 203 supports education reform legislation

Naperville Unit District 203 officials say they try to stay out of state politics — but felt the voice of the state’s sixth-largest school system needed to be heard as education reform legislation heads to the House.

Board members voted 5 to 1 Monday night to support legislation that ultimately would reduce teachers’ job security and put more weight on their performance. Suzyn Price was the lone dissenter.

The legislation would make it harder for teachers to achieve tenure. Even after earning tenure, bad teachers could be fired.

If a district has to do layoffs, jobs would be protected based on classroom performance instead of seniority.

“What we do may mean nothing anyway, so even though we’re pretty proud of ourselves, I don’t want to overstate one district’s weight on this,” Jaensch said. ”But for this state, I think it’s a huge step in the right direction.”

Board member Jim Dennison agreed, but stressed there is plenty more work to do.

“I think this is a good start, and I would hope our message to our legislators is ‘This is a good start,’ and to the people who crafted this, ‘Congratulations,’ Dennison said. “But this has to be an ongoing, evolving process. We’ve addressed some touchstone issues here, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

For Price, there’s too much work to do for her to support the legislation that unanimously passed the Senate Thursday night.

“There’s a lot of problems that education has, and I don’t know you can blame it all on tenure. I think it seems facile. They’re not really tackling the tough issues. They’re not talking about financial reform. They’re not doing anything to help students get ready for school,” Price said. “They’re not talking about the issue of poverty in education. This is a feel-good kind of thing that they can feel good about because they got something done, but is it really solving a problem?”

Superintendent Mark Mitrovich said the board would have been remiss not to weigh in on the legislation.

“We are constantly hearing ‘Tell us what you’re thinking. Let us know what you’ve got going on,’” Mitrovich said. “I don’t think you pass on the opportunity when they’re asking. To pass on it is not sending the right message.”