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the educational improvements made in re cent years. The desegregation-integration conclu sion, one of several, was based on 59 in depth interviews with district parents, residents, and employees, as well as school principals and parent-teacher group presidents during the 1975-76 school year. Additional interviews, in person and by telephone, were also conducted with private school principals, newspapermen, and real estate personnel of the school district. ADDITIONAL AREAS explored in the survey included the district's human rela tions program, curriculum discipline, school loyalties, and the future of District 144. Among the conclusions were: As the fear of integration has been sub siding, attention to the quality of education has increased. Teachers are confused as to what is expected of them and complain of a lack of continuity or of focus in setting district goals and priorities. Parents have a high regard for the teachers, principals, the board of educa tion, and the superintendent. The basic loyalty and primary interest of parents, teachers, support staff and students, as in other school districts, lies with the ‘‘home”’ (not necessarily ‘‘neigh borhood’’) school, not with the school dis trict. This loyalty can have positive re sults, the survey report says. There is more apprehension about the future of the school district than about the educational services. This is not simply the result of racial change. ON THE integration-desegregation question, the survey described racial at titudes as ‘‘pragmatic, pliable and subject to compromise.” “Educational concerns are overtaking racial concerns. Active hostility is absent. A rock-like, unrelenting opposition toward another race is a rare occurance,”’ the survey report states. Racial polarization is not overt, but la tent, according to the survey. None of the survey respondents used ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them”’ when referring to non-whites and whites. There is no evidence of a mass flight of whites from the school district, nor is there any sign of a white blacklash in any of the three schools with a black principal, ac cording to the survey. Some questions, though, are raised hesitantly about the overall percentage of non-white prin cipals. In general, non-white ad ministrators are viewed positively, both by whites and non-whites, the survey Says. ONLY AT ONE school does the feeling about ‘‘outsiders’’ appear, but it is not primarily racial, the survey states. “In this case, the whites and non-whites who live in the vicinity of the school regard themselves as the ‘insiders’ who ‘own’ the turf together against the ‘‘outsiders’’ who are the non-white students bused in. On the negative side of the integration program, bussing was the issue. The most vocal expression came from non-white parents in Markham who complained of ‘“compulsory’’ bussing for non-whites and “voluntary’’ bussing for whites. Some white parents still regard bussing as a threat to their school and neighborhood while some older, non-white residents say bussing ‘‘breaks up the neighborhood sense.” ‘Significantly enough, none of the non white paints expresses a desire to return to the pre-1973 neighborhood school, whose obituaries eae ee 4 Editorial ee 6 eee Society 10-11 Sports sae te cake ae Tat 13-16 Classif ed 20-28
Newspaper Details
Markham Star Tribune
Markham, Illinois, US
Sun, Jul 11, 1976
Page 49
Full Page
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USA 10 Dec 2025
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