By: Diane Benjamin
Last school year Unit 5 has over 1000 fewer students than they had in 2018:
As of October 1 of 2021 enrollment was 12,499. I FOIA’d it but was told is was still changing daily. The above number for 2021 is for school year 2020-2021.
Whatever the current number is, Unit 5 has around 850 fewer students. 25 kids per class, means they don’t need 34 teachers and at least 1 Administrator.
The above information is from this site: https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=studentcharacteristics&source2=enrollment&Districtid=17064005026
Refer back to this story: https://blnnews.com/2022/03/04/unit-5-spending-history/
Salaries keep increasing, so staff hasn’t already been cut.
i realize this in part can be attributed to parents deciding to home school or sending their kids to private schools, but how does this align with the current population of the area? is there enough of a decline locally to have a significant impact?
Aging is part of it, I know many people who have left the state!@
Bloomington census shows an increase of 1,000 from 10 years ago but there is a decrease in the county from its peak of 173,000 to 170,000. A large portion of Bloomington residents reside in the Unit 5 school district.
Unit 5 is also in the process of phasing out its Orchestra program, and I think its Band program, using the excuse that they don’t have enough money. Perhaps they should instead try cutting their Racism, Division, and Victimhood program that is harming their students and driving them away rather than something that benefits the kids and helps keep them there?
I agree with Karl. Unit 5 should focus more on teaching the 4 R’s and less on “wokenes” programs.
Unit 5 schools are not ranked very well. Most score 5/10. D87 scores are worse.
https://www.greatschools.org/search/search.zipcode?sort=rating&zip=61761
The US spends more per child on education than anywhere else but our test scores in Math and Science are among the worst.
https://rossieronline.usc.edu/blog/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/
FF -100%
The ISBE puts out very detailed data on scholastic performance by school and district (but there is a lot of missing data for some reason). The state/nation overall is pathetic and the data shows clearly that the majority of our kids are not proficient. You can see the discrepancy between white and non white kids (except kids from Asian, and Africa).
Will telling our kids and teachers that the failure is because the system is racist and the white kids are racists and black kids can not succeed in the racist system solve the problem?
The state is proceeding with this Equity “solution” but where is the data that shows it’s success?
https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/School.aspx?source=trends&source2=isa&Schoolid=170640050260001
They will not measure the success because they would have to admit their effort to turn kids against each other is working.
Unit is taking a page out of the Town of Normal playbook: If they get feedback they don’t like, declare it ‘not valid input’. If they don’t get 5% participation (unrealistic given general public apathy imo) they won’t consider the survey result valid.
https://survey.5-essentials.org/Illinois/ .
Remember you can fill it out once per child you have in school, not just once per household. Remember how they kept kids out of school when they were in essentially Zero danger of dying from the virus. Remember how they demanded face-swastikas and “just follow orders” in response to continued science showing they were not only not needed, but in many cases harmful to students’ mental and emotional health. Remember how they outright lied about legalities of quarantines and school bus face-swastika mandates. Remember how few if any teachers provided pushback against this systemic child abuse. Fill the survey out accordingly and hit them where it hurts the most – their egos.
This survey covers more than just Unit 5, so if you have kids in another school district, please complete the survey for your school(s) as well.