Oak Park and its schools talk a good game about race and equity. We make it seem that we are determined to close the discipline and academic gaps between white and black students, between more affluent and poorer students. We live off of 40-year-old press clippings lauding vision and boldness in our schools.
But every time we let a principal with the fire and the force of LeeAndra Khan get away, we give the lie to the whole enterprise. For two boat-rocking years, Khan was the principal of Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School at Washington and Kenilworth. Did her pragmatic solution to a dearth of black kids in honors math — she put the top-credentialed black kids into the classes — offend some of her veteran teachers? Yep. Did her effort to create a teaching moment about discipline and perceptions after a troubling incident at the school enflame some mainly white parents? Yes, and overdue.
Superintendent after superintendent, District 97 fires, urges on, hangs out to dry principals who worry their teachers, get a rise out of parents. It is hard to create change if you are afraid of conflict. Sounds like something Dr. Khan would say.
This isn’t how Oak Park schools are going to get where they need to go. Maybe we don’t really want to go there.