U-46 bias suit about more than just race

When I read in The Daily Herald that a federal judge granted class action status to the racial discrimination lawsuit against Elgin School District U-46 and that is has cost $4.6 million to defend thus far, I was appalled.

We are a working class Caucasian family that has also been grossly affected by the district boundary changes in 2004. Our children attended a high achieving school in our neighborhood that is considered our home school.

After the boundary changes our children were forced to be bused farther away from our local school to a school without walls (an open classroom design) an underachieving school after the "stats" were removed from the gifted program and very little stability in leadership. The new school is now on its third principal since 2004, while our home school is continuing on its second principal since our oldest attended as a kindergartner in 1999.

At our new school our children are removed from class 10 minutes early a day to get on their respective buses. You do the math on how much learning is lost over six years.

We had no playground equipment until a mother from our neighborhood took the bull by the horns and now it's done.

A class-action lawsuit was granted, and from the outside looking in I see that many more families were affected than meets the eye. I do not believe for one minute that this is wholly a racial issue, and if settlement is reached as granted in a class-action status for unfair movement of our children and the change of school conditions that have occurred, we all should look beyond our own front steps. Many more families than I know of probably have stories of their own.

Cathy Schmidt

Streamwood