John, the issue of AYP specifically deals with the ACT performance in the area of Math. The missing the mark is ony at HP due to diversity/language differences. When all you do is look at test scores for a definition of AYP, this is the crux of the issue of NCLB. However, when educators are excluded from defining progress you get these issues.

re: Broken stair treads. It wasn't the STAIRS that were broken, but rather the plastic covers that were glued to them - I have pictures. The bullnoses on those covers cracked from pedestrian traffic, and it has nothing to do with the underlying stairs. They're made of steel and concrete and perhaps a bit worn where people have been walking for many years, but it's not a difficult or costly fix. WW Grainger or another MRO supply house (McMaster Caar) has packs of stair treads. Either the appropriate size, or ones that can be cut.

Pry off the old broken tread, apply mastic liberally, apply new stair tread, wait for mastic to set. Done.

Banisters: Again, I have pictures. The underlying metal attachment points were STILL attached to the walls, so it has nothing to do with water damage. And the wall that the banister was missing on? It was an interior wall - one that apparently wasn't affected by water damage (that was on the other side of the building/stairwell - exterior wall). Only the banisters were snapped off - likely someone snapped it off. So somewhere, I'd expect that banister to be in storage with the underlying metal brackets still attached. Again, it's not that difficult to go to a MRO supplier, get some banister brackets, remove the old ones, and install the new. OR, weld the old one back together, grind down, paint. Done.

NCLB: Somehow, before this inane Federal law - we got a top notch education. And now somehow, we're not. The goals of NCLB are laudable, but requiring 100% of all students to achieve the metrics specified in NCLB is unworkable. Out of any group of students, there's going to be some subgroup which has some particular characteristic that prevents them from hitting the target, and somehow the whole school is supposed to be considered lousy, and in need of restructuring. Ludicrous.

Personally, we have a $92 million annual budget. About $3 million of which comes from Federal and State sources. If we don't take that money, we don't have to comply with their policies that come along with the money. Turn down the Federal money, forget this NCLB nonsense, and get back to educating students the way we know how to do it, and the way we had been doing it for decades. I'm not saying we shouldn't adopt new innovative teaching techniques, or use technology - what I'm saying is that we need to get away from teaching to the test, and get back to teaching critical though and life skills.

I'm sure someone will say "But where will we make up that $3 million?" We just spent about $6 million on Wolter's Field over the past few years, so there's money there. We spend hundreds of thousands on interscholastic athletics - so there's money there. We spend gobs of money on administrative salaries - so there's money there. We could make it work, if we desire to.

Stair Treads:

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/stair-tread-covers-and-nosings/ecatalog/N-ijo?fromViewAll=true

http://www.mcmaster.com/#stair-treads/=jcd3zu

(Item E looks vaguely familiar)

Yes, it does, but I'm inclined (no pun intended) to say that there's a reason those won't work. Don't quote me on this, but I think there was some correlation to the type of tread and how the stairs were built - i.e. it would require some reconstruction in order to replace the tread since they were put on back in the 50s...

There's also epoxy leveling compounds that could be used on some of the more worn areas, once that dries, a replacement tread would work quite well.

in all fairness to D113 though, I believe they were looking at some treads prior to replacement for evidence of asbestos (which as t turned out, didn't exist there)

Ashley: with all due respect, your posts are getting harder and harder to understand. I've seen the letter as I received a copy via email. The elections were one of five different venues in which the information was mentioned. That should address your last point. Lastly, the "non-compliance" has not been a secret. Most parents of children at the school know about it, and have educated themselves on the reasoning. I invite you to once again check out the report card (2011 is the most recent one available): http://dist113.org/aboutus/School%20Report%20Cards/2011%20Report%20Cards/Highland%20Park%20High%20School%202011%20Report%20Card.pdf

It is not the district's responsibility to throw every bit of information they have into the community's face. As in a student's education, responsibility also falls on community members to educate themselves by using easily available data and information. We're taught and expected to do this in our schooling through research papers and more, into college where assistance in self-advocating and seeking resources is not offered by teachers at all.

Bryce, I have to agree with Ashley that the NCLB adequate yearly progress metric worries me about HPHS. After five years, this year the school is required by law to be planning a restructuring. If the results do not improve this year, the school will be forced to implement the restructuring. That could involve (hypothetically) replacing significant portions of the staff/faculty, sending everyone to DHS, or reopening as a charter school (!). It may not have been an issue for the first four years of this, but the penalty for missing a fifth time is very very severe.

Ed, it's definitely a valid concern, but my point is that this isn't a case of poor teachers or unmotivated students. It's the system working against us. Yes, there needs to be a fix. NCLB effectively punishes districts who welcome non-standard learners into their classrooms... I'm not writing to change the law (although it definitely could use some revision), but the author's statements that the district "hid" the NCLB results are disingenuous on her part.

In regards to declining enrollment a study by District 113 earlier this year projected an 8% decline at HPHS through 2020 and a 17% decline at DHS during the same period (http://highlandpark.patch.com/articles/district-113-projects-enrollment-drop-by-2020). Granted, these are projections, but they come straight from the District and really ought to be considered in future planning on how best to utilize the space at both schools as the projected drops are significant.

BTW love all the back and forth over the stair treads. How hard can it be to fix them? I have worked in buildings in Chicago built pre-1950 where the mangement company managed to replace worn stair treads without any problem or reconstruction. Seems this issue was more of a talking point to help sell the referendum than anything.

Average Joe and Ashley:

I can tell you with certainty that demographic information is factored into the needs analysis and will continue to be so. I will also tell you, however, that almost every projection I have seen, except for one that assumes the real estate crash will result in a precipitous drop in High School enrollment 15-20 years down the line, does not support closing a school as some people have advocated. Therefore, the need to plan for improving both schools continues to exist.

I would also remind you that the Task Groups have called on the District to ensure that facilities will be maintained appropiately and avoid deferred maintenance.

The point that I was making was that the forecast was not the same as the one that the district received, it was the writer making stuff up to obscure the issue. We should also note that within the presentation that you reference there are pages of disclaimers. These refer to the probability that the reduction seen in the feeder districts is an anomaly due to the low turnover in homes. As the turnover increases as we now see the trend will reverse. This decease in enrollment will not happen.

It is also important that the objective of the study process is to plan for facilities that will last for the next 25 to 50 years.

Oh, you know better, Richard. According to these goofs, accountability is only a one-way street. The district can present facts in triplicate and it's still not acceptable.

In the meantime, when you ask for any accountability on any stats or - let's say - a complete 30+ page plan, the general answer is, "Huh?"

I don't think that any of us can say with certainty that not releasing the survey data will fatally affect a future referendum or not. Certainly some voters will look at a future referendum with skepticism because the data wasn't released, and that may affect their vote.

Certainly some will look at a future referendum with skepticism for other reasons and that may affect their vote.

One thing is for certain - NOT releasing the raw data is more injurious than releasing it. If D113 had released the data and detailed the evaluative methodology, others could review that data/methodology, perhaps come up with their own documented methodology - and we could all have an opportunity to compare/contrast.

In my opinion, laying everything out on the table for all to see and decide is infinitely better than trying to keep things hidden. At least then D113 could fall back on the statement of "We released everything. Others vetted it too. We've hidden nothing.". Instead we have the concept "We released what we wanted to release. Only certain selected individuals got to vet the data. Trust us, we're not hiding anything."

Some people are going to say "uh huh, yeah right.", and some people will say "Well, I trust the School District." - how it all plays out in the voting booth? Unless Dr. Who shows up with the TARDIS, we won't know until some future time :-)

When Ashley says “the deck was stacked from the start,” she means the process (that you, David, participated in) is illegitimate and, by implication, anything coming out of the process is “fatally tarnished” (my words) and shouldn’t be accepted by the voters. I don’t know if a future referendum will pass or not but Ashley (and others like her) are establishing a story line for voting no – regardless of the future referendum’s merit.

Beyond the message “Chevy not Cadillac,” what did the Survey really tell us? Not much. Is the Survey going to directly and materially affect the parameters of final recommendation? No. The Survey (specifically the way it was conducted and the non-disclosure of the raw data) has largely become a way for certain folks to attack the good intentions of other well-meaning folks who simply want to fix our schools. If just to quell the conspiracy theorists out there, I agree that the Survey raw data should be released.

Dan, I totally understand what Ashley meant by "stacked from the start" - but at least in the Study Group I was in, what resulted wasn't "stacked" or "tarnished". There were many, many opposing viewpoints that were brought out for lots of very long discussions, and while everyone didn't agree with everyone else all the time (it might have happened once that I recall) - we were able to reach a middle ground that gave us a consensus on the rankings.

Even after that - we were given the opportunity to tell the Architects anything we wanted - whether it was the 'consensus' finding or not - so they'd have even more info to work with.

As anyone who knows me will attest - I'll be the first to complain about something done wrong or to compliment when done right. I don't have a thing to complain about how the meetings were conducted in the Study Group I participated in. In fact, I've publicly stated that once this whole process is done - we ought to condense it into a Case Study and provide the knowledge to other Governmental Entities wrestling with similar issues.

The only dim point in the whole process as I see it is the lack of transparency with the Survey Results. Claiming that no one else can evaluate the data because they're not "marketers" is laughable at best. Many of us out here (myself included) have the statistical analysis and/or marketing skills to make sense of the data and would welcome the opportunity to do so.

And isn't that much of the point, David?

There were more than 100 people participating in this whole thing. Maybe Ashley should consider for a moment whether more people would speak out if the deck was truly stacked. If those people didn't speak out, that's one h*ll of a coverup.

In the meantime, I've only known of one person with this complaint throughout the whole process, and I"m sure many of us know who it is.

Ashley, Tripp and I have had many discussions inside and outside of the Study Group that we served on, and while we sometimes disagreed - we were all able to work together to come to consensus, and while he'd advocate his position - he didn't advocate EVERY position the District came up with, so I never saw him as a 'cheerleader' of sorts.

Tripp is the guy who came up with the 'space is space' mantra - which basically means that we are willing to entertain new or different uses for the space we have BEFORE we consider building new space. In fact, that's one of the things we wrestled with at length in the 1914... Study Group - build new, tear down, rehab, how much space is needed, etc.

We had great consensus that a comprehensive maintenance plan needs to be put in place before we give D113 a dime - we told the new architects precisely that and we expect to see such a plan in the ultimate proposal. There's a lot of deferred maintenance that's occurred, but rather than beating a dead horse and go nowhere, we chose to move forward in the Study Group by demanding a plan/process be implemented in the future.

Everyone agrees that a long-term Master Plan needs to be created, so we know where we're going, and can allocate funding in the most efficient manner possible - rather than continuing the potchkey approach. We all agreed that we don't need a cadillac, but nor do we need a pinto - something in-between, and that's what we're expecting the architects to come up with.

1) I have talked with maintenance people in the school - they've told me they wanted to fix the problems, know how to fix the problems, and were prohibited by their bosses from doing so.

You don' t have to be a professional stair repair person to figure this out. Oh, and it might interest you to know that part of my background is in mechanical engineering.

2) Yes - you need a 'robust' facility. But we want to get it right so we don't end up overbuilding, and mothballing space - like Lake Forest ended up doing.

3) In general, yes. But the effects of "teaching to the test" to deal with NCLB can to some degree have an impact on facilities that are being built.

The whole concept behind the "Better Plan" is to have a master plan that we can grow with over the next several decades. And while the process may not be perfect, it's been working thus far. I anxiously await the results of the Architect's planning sessions...

Jesse:

The Patch didn't bill D'skidoc's post as calling for transparancy. And for the record, I have consistantly complained about pseudonyms being used. I also agree that District 113 undoubtably should look at administrative costs as well.

The BOE was at the last Community Presentation. They were scattered throughout the auditorium.

Jesse, I’ve tried to start a dialogue with Ashley above – so far, no response. I have no problem with challenging the BOE with a serious, thoughtful critique – in fact, I applaud it - unfortunately, most of Ashley’s points are specious and consist of throwing a lot of mud to see what sticks. The BOE went back to the drawing board to start over – as Ed1st and others wanted – and in return they get criticized by people like Ashley for spending money on consultants to explore alternatives. What chutzpah!

Dan, you should have learned by now: there's a segment of people who aren't really interested in a dialogue. If their lack of participation in the committees doesn't show that, I don't know what does.

These people want their ideas to be the foundation of everything 113 does. Two of the many problems with that desire: a) they have no clue how to lead a large group of people to their position and; b) they can only communicate one way.

But somehow, the community should roll over for them.

Thanks to people like Tripp and others like him who stand up before the community, engage ALL ideas and have the skills, patience and passion to work through this properly.

The costs seem high - but when you're talking about spending tens of millions, it's not much to spend to ensure we get this plan right, and have an efficient path to follow for the next 25-50 years.

$300K out of the original $113M is only 0.265%

Let's assume an $80M price tag (the past referendum was $70M, so let's add $10M for the purposes of discussion). $300K out of $80M is 0.375%

Given all the money we poured into the past referendum ($70M) - and how it didn't seem to fix all the problems we were promised it would, spending $300K to get it right this time seems like a good risk. Is it a lot of money? Sure. $300K is a lot of money all day long - but in this case, I think it's the right investment to make.

Along those same lines - we also told some members of the Board that we wanted to see a professional property manager or two hired so we could avoid a repeat of the current deferred maintenance situation. Their response was "Well, then someone's going to complain about the salaries!". Our response is "Sure, but so long as you can demonstrate that the person(s) hired saved us their salaries in actual or future costs - we'll have nothing to complain about.

Hence the fact that they're planning on hiring a professional property manager as part of the proposed on-going maintenance plan. It'll save us money in the long run, so it's definitely the right way to go.

Good comment David - I hesitate to compliment you as I don't want you to lose your street cred with those with whom I don't see eye-to-eye.

*grin*

LOL - ohhhhhhh, poor Ed1st. You're so, right, Mr. Above-It-All. They operate with such an honest integrity and upfront intentions. How could I dare to question their direction?

Interesting how you didn't have a problem with the original editorial that does much of the same cheap, exaggerated mud-slinging.

But, thank you for helping me see the light, Mr. Above-It-All. I must somehow be angry and just plain wrong to look for an open and honest process without the disgusting lies, exaggeration and hidden agenda. I must be crazy or something.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. You'd never see another word from me if those who profess to demand an honest and open process operated by the same rules.

I have no problem with my anger, Mr. Above-It-All. I'm very comfortable down here calling out the hypocritical scumballs when I see them. Since you seem to know a lot about me despite your first few hours of posting messages (hmmmmm?), you keep an eye on me, and keep that odd pity coming. I've got no problem with that. You call me out when I'm wrong. But you make sure you're doing the same for ALL parties.

In the meantime, my positive vibes go out to the many people who have worked countless hours to actually discuss and work through this thing without stomping their feet. Whatever side of the discussion they are on, they have my complete trust and gratitude. Their efforts deserve more respect than many in the cheap seats want to give.

Seconded! There was nothing but the utmost professionalism exhibited by all members of our committee, even those who didn't agree. And by the end, we had many divisive viewpoints coming together into final recommendations. The process worked.

"I will not diginify the comments about the districts compliance with No Child Left Behind with an further comment."
The district is in restructuring. They have acknowledged this. If the scores do not improve this year they will be forced into restructuring by law. I realize this has nothing to do with the space issues but I am kind of shocked that anyone could simply dismiss that as an issue?

A couple things you might consider ...

1) Cheap comments come from BOTH sides of the discussion.

2) More than 100 people came together to discuss and worked through this with great intentions. All of them gave a great amount time over several months and quite a bit of free professional consultation.

Anybody who would focus on ridiculous message board squabbles instead of the effort of such a large segment of the community ... well, we'll just leave it at that.

I hope you'll also consider the poor example set for the kids with the clear lies and obvious misleading statements of many.

If I were to use this as an example with my kid, I would tell her the harmless name calling can be ignored. It's cheap, but in the end ... eh. People will always have different styles, and especially in the Internet age, it's something she will need to grow accustom to.

However, the flat-out lies to sway large groups of people and the inability to follow up on promises would be far more concerning to me with her.

On the other hand, there's also a great example for her on how sooooooo many people with so many ideas volunteered their time and came together for a great cause.

Jesse L ... Personally I do not communicate with my friends, loved ones, business relationships or even strangers on the streets in a nasty or negative manner. My children have learned to communicate in a respectful manner by my example. I will in all honesty admit that I have vented a time or ten in formats such as this. We humans have the luxury of a wide range of emotions and communication styles. I do not stand in judgement of how or why people choose to express themselves in any given moment. I do think that in general people take themselves and their opinions too seriously. Life is too fleeting dwell in negativity and one would best maintain an open mind and heart. So...to answer your question, do I think it is ok...my answer would be yes. Humans will be humans...in all their beauty and ugliness. I would rather people vent their frustrations here than on the people close to them...or in road rage...or physical confrontations where someone might get hurt. One has only one person to look at in the mirror...and that is oneself.