Going door-to-door on the campaign trail, the first question people ask Ryan Spain is “What are you going to do about the schools?”
Spain, a 7-year, at-large city council member up for reelection, said the wrong answer would be “I don’t know. I’m not running for school board.”
The right answer is seeing school problems as a Peoria problem and working collaboratively to fix it, the councilman said.
Photo by Clare Howard
Sandy Farkash, left, and John Meisinger, former principals in Peoria public schools, stand in front of the shuttered Greeley School on NE Jefferson Avenue. The two retired principals are meeting with business, political and community leaders to coordinate efforts to remove incumbents from the School Board. They are urging people to vote on April 7, but they are not endorsing a candidate.
“The most important challenge facing our community is how we improve our schools,” said Spain, a graduate of Richwoods High School. “We need significant changes, and we need leadership from all areas of the community whether that’s from elected officials, business leaders, community leaders or private citizens. If we don’t improve our schools, we can’t improve our city.”
Whether District 150 is open to community collaboration or not is irrelevant to Spain. A community-wide approach is clearly needed, he believes.
Sharing that conviction is the Peoria Area Retired Administrators, an organization of former principals and administrators alarmed at the decline of Peoria public schools and the damage that decline inflicts on the city.
Spearheading that organization’s efforts are Sandy Farkash and John Meisinger.
Including their wives, these two former administrators count nearly 80 years of commitment to Peoria School District 150. They were boosters, teachers, coaches and principals. Now they are back from retirement, fighting for what they see as survival of public education in Peoria.
“It broke my heart when my family pulled the plug on District 150,” said Meisinger, former principal at Richwoods High School, referring to his grandchildren transferring from Peoria schools to a suburban district. “But you can’t counter the facts and the data. Peoria schools are not performing.”
Meisinger and Farkash, former principal at Manual High School, are making the rounds, talking with civic and business leaders, city officials and citizen groups about public schools in Peoria. They see a full-blown crisis that will suck the city, real estate prices and economic development down with it unless voters in the April 7 election vote for change.
“The incumbents got us into this mess, and they can’t get us out,” said Farkash. “We need new people on the board. The current superintendent (Grenita Lathan) believes in the chaos philosophy. Keep all the pieces moving. But it’s more like the Saturday night massacre.”
District 150 did not respond to a request for comment.
Farkash and Meisinger highlight their concerns:
* Two Peoria schools (Harrison and Roosevelt) are now ranked the worst two schools in the entire state. Test scores throughout the district have dropped markedly and truancy rates have skyrocketed.
* Only three principals out of 28 have more than three years experience. Mobility is extraordinarily high.
* About $2.8 million is being spent by the central administration and that’s before the district hired a full-time Chicago attorney.
“We’ve got to get the City Council to make a commitment about the schools,” Farkash said. “They can’t stay on the sidelines and expect this to work out. The health of the city is tied to the health of the schools. Eighty-nine percent of the schools in the state do better than Peoria.”
Both men refer to anecdotes and statistics showing lack of discipline in the schools and lack of support for teachers.
Peoria Area Retired Administrators is not endorsing candidates other than advocating for new people on the board. Change150, a grassroots group advocating for leadership changes in District 150, is endorsing Ernestine Jackson and Dan Adler. The Peoria Federation of Teachers is endorsing Dan Adler and Dan Walther.