The lines extend from the auditorium out into the corridor of Stockton Elementary School, a microcosm of Chicago’s population. There are blacks, American Indians, Romanians, Poles, Southern whites, WASPs, Jews, Irishmen, Latins and Asians from a dozen different countries–all living together in a four-block square area. There are elderly, disorderly looking residents of the Wilson Club Hotel and svelte young home owners from the Dover Street Neighbors Association; there are welfare mothers and professional people, janitors and landlords, babes in arms and ancient ladies. There are people whose children have come along to translate for them and drunks who are “assisted” to vote by their mentors from a local political organization that has a full slate of candidates running.
Judging from the lines of people waiting to vote, the turnout seemed good this year, though it was clearly swelled by soldiers of the neighborhood’s political battles. One election judge, overcome by the alcohol fumes of a number of voters who arrived together, estimated that drunks were 30 percent of the vote. (It seemed to me that they were in fact a small minority, but they did make an impact.) The Dover Street regulars, whose children are either too young, too old, or too good for the local public school, voted as community residents, which is their right.
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Inside, the building recalls that glory. It’s an elegant old structure with miles of wood trim and spaces that can only be described as grand: 16-foot ceilings, huge classrooms, wide corridors, a lovely old auditorium, and a huge gym. There are big windows everywhere, many of them curtained and decorated. Throughout the school the walls are covered with all manner of attractive educational materials, including a tribute to Dr. Seuss and a decorated bulletin board featuring student essays. The corridors and rooms, including the washrooms and the cafeteria, are clean, quiet, and attractive.
In the huge gym, a dozen kids are playing ball with a teacher. In the auditorium, another dozen are working on the stage with a teacher aide. The library is filled with kids and books. On its door is a line quoted from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Even more important may be the fact that more than half the students at Stockton are not English speakers. Forty percent are Hispanic, 12 percent are Asian, and there are small percentages of various European immigrants. Twenty-three languages are spoken in the school. Lieberman explains, “These kids think in their own languages, but the tests are given in English. These kids, even the ones who are reasonably fluent in English, have a lot of problems with those tests. They think in their own language and they have to translate the English into that language in order to understand it. Then they have to translate the answer back into English. That takes time and puts them at a disadvantage. And there are nuances, interpretations that they miss. Words don’t always mean the same thing, something that is usually hard for a foreign speaker to handle.”
As the result of a cockamamy compromise arrived at by the legislature to save the School Reform Act after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, each LSC has two teacher members elected by the school staff subject to the approval of the Board of Education. Joyce Davidson is one of the teacher members of Stockton’s council. A primary-grade teacher who has been at the school for 17 years, she has for the last 10 years been coordinator of a special enhancement program for the primary grades that is tied to the Child Parent Center. She works closely with the primary teachers, she says, doing whatever is needed to keep the program going.
After the ’89 LSC election, Shiller supporters held five seats on the council and the Dover Street regulars had three. As a consequence, there were disagreements in the council in its first two years. But Lieberman says the members were “always civil” and worked together very harmoniously to make several dramatic changes in the school. Most members attended every meeting, Lieberman says. “They worked in committees and reported back to monthly meetings, the way things should be done.” Jeri Miglietta, the member most closely identified in Uptown with Shiller (she directs the Uptown Learning Center, a Fair Share project), was the acknowledged leader of the council last term. She says her political opponents balked at some of her proposals “just to oppose me,” but eventually gave in because Lieberman supported the ideas.
