Posted: Friday, July 11, 2008 12:00 am
One can understand the frustration which some residents of Caledonia are expressing about the Racine Unified School District, but the proposal to split the schools into Caledonia and everyone else is bad.
The primary problem is cost, always the major complaint from Unified's critics. The process of splitting from Unified would cost each Caledonia homeowner an extra $1,000 over the course of a dozen years - assuming present estimates of future costs are correct.
Beyond that is the question of what Caledonia citizens would gain from their own district. It's easier to provide specialty programs - such as Chinese, advanced mathematics, or an international baccalaureate program - in a larger system where there are enough students to justify them. At the same time, Caledonia parents will retain the option of sending their children to private schools, setting up a charter school, or enrolling their children in an online school, in other words opting out if they also dislike the Caledonia district.
It is important to bear in mind that Unified works well in educating most students. In the latest round of state tests, 52 percent of Unified 10th graders scored advanced or proficient. That's not nearly as good as the state's 74 percent average, but a more detailed examination of the data shows that the difference lies in two areas: there are many minority students in Racine who don't score well, and there are fewer students overall in the advanced category; percentages of proficient students are almost equal across the county.
Caledonia residents dissatisfied with Unified have other options. They can bring their new ideas and passion to the school board either as candidates or as motivated, involved citizens. They can petition the Legislature to enact changes they believe will drive success in Unified and other urban districts.
The sewer and water agreement reached several years ago among Racine and its suburbs recognized the notion that we are a small region within a larger region and must stand together in order to reach mutual goals. The same is true for education.
Turning Caledonia into an island is not the answer because it is not an island. The problems which a Caledonia-only district would avoid will not go away. Eventually they will return in another form, as a shortage of skilled workers or as higher taxes to deal with alienated, unproductive people and criminals. All the energy being spent on isolating Caledonia from its neighbors would be better spent fixing Unified. Then everyone would be better off.