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...continues
More than 35 years ago, Phoenix parents and community members filed lawsuit challenging the practice of isolating their school-children in the town's all-black school. Meanwhile, white students from two neighboring suburbs attended all-white schools in the district.
Not only was the segregation illegal, but the Phoenix parents contended that their children weren't getting as good an education, pointing to the hand-me-down textbooks the black school inherited from the white schools. In 1968, a federal judge handed them a victory: the region's first federal court desegregation order.
In 2003, Phoenix residents earned another victory by overwhelmingly supporting a referendum to increase property taxes to provide more money for schools in South Holland School District 151, which includes all of Phoenix, portions of South Holland, Harvey and Dolton. Nearly 55 percent of district voters outside Phoenix voted against the tax increase, but voters from the three Phoenix precincts approved the referendum by a 3-to-1 margin-with 375 voting in favor of the measure and just 122 voting against it. That cushion was enough to help the referendum pass by 110 votes. "Phoenix put us over the edge," said Superintendent Doug Hamilton.
While District 151 has a higher tax rate, it has less to spend per pupil than many southwest suburban school districts do.
That fact has galvanized Hamilton and District 151 residents to jump in the thick of another divisive issue: Getting the state to provide more money for public education and narrowing the disparity in spending between Illinois' richest and poorest school districts.
Last year, Hamilton campaigned for a school funding reform bill. But that bill, like similar efforts in the past, failed. While Hamilton believes it would have solved some of the problems, others thought the measure would have created even more.
Concerns about school funding come from every corner of the state: Chicago, the suburbs and downstate. Calls for reform come from districts serving the poor, blacks and Latinos as well as those serving mostly whites and the middle class. But the concerns are not always the same, and neither are the suggested solutions. As a result, lawmakers, advocates, parents and teachers will have a hard time resolving the funding issues to the satisfaction of...
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