At the recent CPS Board Meeting, a CPS official said “ it could [be] that our parents are voting with their feet,” by way of explaining why enrollment is declining at some under-performing schools. At Commons we have also seen more of our pre-school graduates going to schools outside the neighborhood, BUT the majority of our students still go to their local school.
Someone recently pointed out to me that the schools with declining enrollment are also in neighborhoods where foreclosure rates are off the charts. So it is important not to get caught up in the rhetoric. There are several reasons for declining enrollment in underperforming schools, and it is not only parents voting with their feet.
The bottom line: We do need to strengthen school management and that takes the right people and resources. And we, the community neighbors, must lend a hand to the school managers and teachers by engaging parents to be supportive of the school and students. It must be a unified effort.
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