Choice schools

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Asked why he thinks fewer and fewer parents choose Feitshans each year, Milton emphasizes the importance of marketing and perception. “It really required an intense marketing scheme-up to say ‘OK, we have this fine arts academy and our goal is to let the world know that we exist.’ In our community, you have to continuously put it out there, and that’s where I think Feitshans may not have had the opportunity to expand,” Milton says. “But then there’s a reality too. I think perceptions are made through history, so the history kind of produced this belief that Feitshans was not meeting the demands.”

Thome says her biggest disappointment with the upcoming changes is the way in which the district handled its decision. She says Feitshans parents should have been consulted last year when the district approved the school as the place to house CCPA, and she adds that she, like many parents, was caught off guard this winter when the district decided to start phasing out Feitshans to make room for CCPA.

Thome also suggests, however, that perhaps the district could have put more effort into improving and promoting Feitshans. “It doesn’t seem like the school district as a whole has really focused on Feitshans as much as they should have,” she says, adding that when she talks to other parents about the school, they often haven’t heard of it. “They don’t know about the programs. Lots of people don’t know it’s a magnet school. I don’t think the district itself really utilizes Feitshans as an asset, even from the beginning.”

Thome is supportive of the CCPA program, but she’s disappointed that her youngest child of three will not be able to follow in her siblings’ footsteps to Feitshans next year, and she offers words of caution as she wonders if the district put enough effort into Feitshans throughout its short existence. “I’m worried that maybe CCPA could have the same fate eventually,” she says. “Instead of focusing on schools and programs we have in place, they keep trying other things.” She adds: “I hope that the school board, that if this is a program they want to focus on, that they continue to put forth the effort that it needs to succeed.”

Regardless of how Feitshans came to decline in popularity, Milton is focusing on its fall as an opportunity for growth, not for the elementary school but for the eightmonth-old Capital College Preparatory Academy that now hosts fewer than 110 sixth-grade students. Each year, CCPA will add a new grade level, each with 120 students, until it eventually serves students all the way through high school. Grades six through nine will be housed in the Feitshans building, and grades 10 through 12 will attend class on a college campus, possibly at the University of Illinois Springfield.

Uniforms, extended school days, Saturday academies, and an emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum complement CCPA’s single-gender classrooms. CCPA’s mission is to see every one of its “scholars” not only gain admission to college upon completing high school but also graduate college.

In addition to exposure to “a rigorous curriculum,” CCPA students each morning recite the tenets of their program: prepara tion, respect, excellence and productivity.

Parent Robert Ogden says that he, his wife and his 12-year-old daughter, Amber, chose CCPA over other magnet schools in the district because of its main mission. “Based upon having talked with Amber and letting her understand, this is what it’s about, you’re going to be wearing a uniform, you’ll be in gender-specific classes, but more importantly this is the goal of the school you’re going to be attending – to prepare you for college. That goal is the reason for the choice of the academy.” Already, Ogden says, he can see change for the better in his daughter’s study habits, which he attributes to CCPA’s team mentality and high expectations.

While CCPA students only just took their first ISATs and results won’t be available for months, CCPA principal Chris Colgren says he’s encouraged by results of a type of practice test, designed to match up with the ISAT, that students took in February. Based on those tests, the company that writes them predicts that in math and reading about 94 percent and 92 percent, respectively, of CCPA students should at least meet ISAT standards. On last year’s ISATs, only 71 percent of those who became CCPA’s first sixth grade class met standards in both reading and math.

As for the idea that CCPA could end up one day in the same situation in which Feitshans now finds itself, Colgren says that potential is always a concern for any school, but he adds that he’s confident CCPA’s fidelity to its mission will carry it forward. “The key is to remain very focused to the mission and the vision that you have for the program. As a magnet school, we are a college preparatory program and pursuant to that mission we need to make sure that along this journey we remain committed to that and don’t stray in other directions,” Colgren says.

Milton emphasizes that CCPA is the result of much deliberation and development. When explaining the school’s origins, Milton explains that he’s worked in other districts to introduce single-gender classrooms and rigorous curriculum, but he also credits district staff and the aborted work of three community members. Before Milton arrived in the district, retired educators James Forstall, Allan Woodson and Gordon Smith worked to open a college preparatory program to run within Washington Middle School. Though fundraisers and development workshops brought the proposed program within reach by the end of the 2006-2007 school year, their program was never implemented. Former superintendent Diane Rutledge, who served as superintendent from 2002 until 2007, suggests that the school-withina-school format they planned, versus the independent program now being built, probably led to the proposal’s end. Though Woodson, Forstall and Smith remain puzzled at the district’s decision not to use their plans, they’re all pleased to see a version of them in place in District 186.

When it comes to adding even more choice to Springfield public schools, not everyone is as eager as Milton. School board president Bill Looby says he supports CCPA as well as the district’s other magnet schools, but he’s cautious about the idea of expanding the district’s choice offerings. “I’m not a big believer in theme schools,” he says. “I think we need to focus on all of our schools.” He says he supports targeted magnet schools that exist to serve a specific group of children in need of a different type of environment, but he adds that choice schools can have a negative effect on the rest of the district.

“You get a sifting effect when you create some of these types of schools. You get higher achieving children and more involved parents that attend or seek to get into those schools,” Looby says. “If we continue a strong, robust investment in all of our schools and neighborhood schools and don’t continue chasing the shiny object, I think that we’ll eventually continue to bring the whole district up.”

As for the Feitshans building, it’s undergoing just another transition, Looby says.

Once a high school, it then became a fifthand sixth-grade attendance center before Edison took it over as a kindergarten through sixth-grade elementary school that, when the district took it over again, later became a kindergarten through fifth-grade elementary school. “They’ve been through transitions already from several setups. I just think that we’re ready to transition and utilize that facility better. … We have to be realistic – we only have so many buildings, we only have so much space.”

Contact Rachel Wells at rwells@illinoistimes.com.