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Photograph; Newly appointed board member, XX, is introduce at the Chicago Board of Education meeting Wednesday June 26, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Chicago Sun-Times
My name is Victoria Benson, I’m the Chairperson of the LSC at Portage Park Elementary School.
I’m here to advise you that after all is said and done our budget cut is a little over $900,000. This cut is massive, we have lost numerous positions and this cut will directly affect the students of Portage Park.
You encouraged the schools to find other ways to obtain resources for their schools, which we did with our cell towers. Now we are informed you will be taking 2/3rds of that money from our school. This is not reasonable and these funds should remain at Portage Park.
Our school does not agree with larger class sizes and I truly understand the effects it has on children especially raising a son with high functioning autism and observing and helping out in the classrooms. Children normally have a hard time focusing and adding more to a classroom makes it more of a babysitting service then actually educating the child. So our school chose to keep the teachers. However, after all the salaries are paid it leaves us with a little over $185,000 to pay for Substitutes, text books, basic supplies, after school activities, professional development, technology, cleaning supplies, toilet paper and soap, which averages out to $160/per child a year
The State mandates the new Core Standards onto the teachers and students, but gives no money to make sure we have supplies and resources to teach this new Core.
You mandate compliances but advise us we have to pay for it in our budget. For example you took away a .5 bi-lingual teacher however if we don’t fund it our school would not be in compliance. This money could have gone directly to the students.
In addition you want us to pay for our supplies yet we are required to use the CPS vendors so we cannot even find the best deal to make the money stretch. Where is the cost benefit analysis to determine that these are the best or the most cost effective vendors?
We will be depending on the parents more this year for supplies for our kids and while I believe in the parents helping out, in these hard times some parents can barely afford their own households.
I recommend you fight for the tax increment financing so the money is rightly allocated to our children and not to private organizations.
I’m here today to fight for my 2 sons and all the amazing kids at Portage Park School to make sure they get what they deserve, a great well-rounded education.
Without the proper resources and tools all these schools will fail.
As a mom, wife, full time worker, tax payer and a voter, I’m telling you I don’t buy what you are selling nor do I have trust in this so called system that is supposedly all about the children.
Thank you
Victoria Benson is a parent and the Local School Council Chairperson at Portage Park School, Chicago, Illinois.
This letter was reprinted by empathyeducates with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source. We thank the parent, and LSC ChairpersonVictoria Benson.
