Group hopes to get community involved in public schools

By Paul Sloth

March 25, 2008 - A group of former Racine Unified School Board members are working to get the school district’s $16.5 million maintenance referendum passed on Tuesday. They’ve financed ads on local radio and mailed fliers to local voters.

It’s part of a larger effort to help secure community support for issues that affect the public school system.

Three former School Board members — Doug Andrewski, David Isaacson and Bill Schalk — last year started the Council for Effective Public Schools, a 501(c)3, and a parallel organization, the Fund for Effective Public Schools, a 501(c)4.

It is the first organization of this type in Racine, Schalk said. The nearest would be in Madison. The organization will be different from others that have cropped up in Racine during School Board elections. The two organizations are operated as one under the same umbrella.

“The impetus for this organization is to help the school district move forward. The board can’t do it alone. They need community support,” Schalk said. “We’re one of the vehicles to help get community support.

“Our ultimate goal is the betterment of public schools in Racine.”

Foundations like these usually start because of a need in the community, said Arnold Fege.

Fege is director of public engagement and advocacy for the Washington, D.C.-based Public Education Network, an association of local education funds that work on behalf of school districts throughout the country.

“Frequently the reason that they spring up … they’ve been successful. They’ve had major impact in engaging the public around schools,” Fege said. “They provide a service. That is not a strong suit of the public schools.”

Through the 501(c)4, the nonprofit Racine group can raise money and advocate for issues, including promoting referendums and school board candidates. The group isn’t promoting any candidates in Tuesday’s election.

Both organizations will share the same board of directors, Schalk said. They want to get everybody they can in the community on the same page about the direction they think the district should take in terms of improving public education.

Some of the work they hope to do is work they couldn’t do when they sat on the School Board, Schalk said.

“We no longer have to react to the political realities of being a School Board member. We’re working to build relationships within that board of education,” Schalk said. “I think we can provide a more realistic view of what is happening in the community and the school district.”

The main effort of the council would be to monitor board performance and district programs and provide constructive criticism when required, while keeping an arms’ length from the school district, Schalk said.

The local education fund movement, as it is known, was started by the Ford Foundation in five communities in 1983, following the release of “A Nation at Risk,” a national report that sounded a warning about public education.

The Public Education Network now represents 85 local education funds, started mostly in poorer, urban school districts.

While many are focused simply on fundraising, others work on reform efforts in their school districts.

“School districts and superintendents come in and they think they are hired to make change without educating the community about why they need to make change,” Fege said.

The foundations are generally started by community members as a way to involve the community in their public schools, Fege said.

They’re started around a broader set of school decisions, but also to be friendly critics of public education, he added.

“Superintendents and school boards sometimes forget that they don’t own the schools — the taxpayers do,” Fege said. “If there is any institution that the public still believes in it’s public education, so you can’t toy around and change it without bringing together the community.”