Call for Chicago students to skip 1st school day

[July 29, 2008]  CHICAGO (AP) -- Community leaders on Monday called on students from poorer parts of Chicago to protest inequalities in school funding by skipping the first day of classes.

State Sen. James Meeks wants students to spend Sept. 2 trying to enroll in a suburban school district that spends much more per student than Chicago Public Schools does. Critics of the planned protest say it will send the wrong message to children and undermine campaigns to get as many students as possible to attend the first day of classes in the nation's third-largest school district.

Protest organizers, though, say their message about unequal funding trumps any on attendance.

"Today we are back to two-tiered schools -- white and affluent on one side, and black, brown and poor on the other," said Meeks, who also is a minister on the city's South Side. "That's an injustice and it's immoral."

Meeks said he expects several thousand Chicago students to travel in a caravan of buses to New Trier Township High School in the leafy, North Shore suburb of Winnetka, where they will attempt to enroll.

State statistics indicate that the New Trier district spends around $17,000 annually on each of its students compared to the roughly $10,000 a year spent for each student in Chicago public schools.

"We, as a civilized people, can't do it this way," Meeks said. "We're doing irreparable harm to hundreds of thousands of kids."

Officials at New Trier Township High School District 203 said it wasn't yet clear how they'll deal with so many Chicago students showing up at one time to attempt to enroll at the high school.

"We have sympathy for the issue of school funding. ... But I think (Meeks) is harming his cause by doing this," said the district's superintendent, Linda Yonke.

Meeks said the protesters would seek to enroll based on state rules allowing students to transfer to another district if their safety is at risk. The inferior education they receive in Chicago, he said, "was not good for the safety of their futures."

Yonke said she would have to consult lawyers to see if the district might be obliged to enroll any of the Chicago students.

Overhauling how public schools are funded in Illinois has been hotly debated for years -- but to little avail. Critics want the state to move away from a system where money for local schools derives largely from local property taxes, saying the status quo results in vastly better funding of schools in property-rich neighborhoods.

Officials at Chicago Public Schools said they sympathize with the planned protest but don't support it.

"We appreciate Rev. Meeks' efforts to spotlight the inequities in our state-funding structure, but we want our students in our schools on Sept. 2," district spokesman Mike Vaughn said. "We want to make sure students hit the ground running, and that starts with being in school the first day, the first week, the first month. It sets the tone for the rest of the school year."

[Associated Press; By MICHAEL TARM]

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