Suburban Schools Vs Chicago Inner City Schools

Money is a very important aspect in a school system. In fact, I think that the more money a school has, the better off it is. There will be more technology, more supplies, and overall, the building will be in good shape. Besides the school being well built and having safe physical conditions, the students have a better opportunity to learn. With money, the school will be able to buy books, computer programs, and other sources of learning that enables students to get a good education. Neuqua Valley High School is located in a very prominent city whereas Bogan High School is a school on the south side of Chicago. Just forty miles away from each other, these two schools are as different as the colors black and white. The money gap between these two schools is vital; it can make or break a person's education.

Neuqua Valley High School is in Naperville, a south suburb of Chicago. It is one of the two high schools that make up Indian Prairie Community Unit No. 204. It is a fairly new school; completed in August of 1997, and its capacity is 3,000. The total area of the school is 438,700 sq. ft. and it cost $63,000,000 to build. Neuqua Valley is the most expensive school in the country and is very technologically advanced (Banas par. 3).

Extending back from the main entrance, three academic wings house a learning media center, science, math, special education, and English on the first floor. The second floor houses four forum rooms, foreign language, social studies, driver's education, science and business education. An auditorium anchors the east portion of the building with a 65-foot fly space for theatrical and musical productions. Each classroom is equipped with a telephone, computer, and television. The learning media center provides print, audiovisual, and computer-related resources. There are three multipurpose forum rooms equipped with visionary computer, audio, video, and satellite technology. In addition heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and lighting are operated by a computerized-management system. Building security has been incorporated into this system (High Schools par. 4-10). Built in 1997, ""¦it was specifically designed to educated students with the emerging technology that's likely to dominate the early 21st century"� (Banas par. 3). Neuqua offers seven computer labs, a television studio, three forum rooms with seats on a grade, a pool that includes an eight-lane, 25-meter racing pool and a diving well, five gyms, a dance studio, and a top-notch auditorium that seats 850 (Coen par. 3). According to a Naperville citizen, Terry Friedman, "Neuqua is the Taj Mahal of high schools. It really is beautiful"� (qtd in Coen par. 8).

The district gives a certain amount of money to the school each year. For the 1999-2000 school year, Neuqua Valley got $295,371. That budget got divided into each department. Keep in mind that these are rough estimates. The principal's secretary, Angie Constatinedes, was able to provide this information for me.

Athletic- $70,000 Academic- $93,6000 Music and drama program- $15,000 Library- $25,000 Supplies & reconditioning/maintenance- $55,000 The athletic program is made up of many sports. During the fall, there are: cross-country, guy's soccer, cheerleading, golf, poms, girl's swimming and diving, girl's volleyball, football, and girl's tennis. For the Winter sports""basketball, ice hockey, wrestling, poms, and cheerleading. Finally, during the spring, there are track and field, girl's soccer, guy's tennis, girl's gymnastics, boy's swimming and diving, water polo, guy's volleyball, and again, poms, and cheerleading. The athletes practice in the weight room and in one of the five gyms, which include the wrestling balcony, gymnastic gym, dance room, the main performance/game gym, the auxiliary gyms, five tennis courts, the track and field/football fields, soccer fields, and the two baseball/softball diamonds.

The music program at Neuqua is one of the best in the country. In fact, the band/orchestra/chorus are so excellent that they won a Grammy for being on the top ten in the country (Austin). There are several bands in the music program that pertain to each individual's interest and ability level: concert band (freshmen band), symphonic band, wind symphony, wind ensemble, jazz ensemble, jazz orchestra, freshmen honors band, pep band, marching band, and steel band. The wind symphony often plays with the chamber orchestra. Besides there being a chamber orchestra, the smallest orchestra with the most talented players, there is the symphony orchestra, the middle orchestra, and then there is the concert orchestra, which mostly consists of freshman. There are also many choirs: cecilian singers, treble choir, concert choir, bass chorus, chorale (freshman), and varsity singers, the top group. There is a special room for each program, band orchestra and chorus along with six sound proof practice rooms that enables musicians to practice their instrument without being disturbed or disturbing others. The rooms also allows them to choose an environment to play in""as in it sounds like they are practicing in Carnagie Hall, a cathedral, a football stadium, and other settings.

As for educational courses, I asked a few of my friends that still attend the school about the classes they are currently taking and what they are learning in the classes.

Junior Marissa Stokes is currently taking: Honors math analysis, Spanish III, Honors English, U.S. History, Physical Education, and psychology. In her Hrs. math analysis class, they are currently learning about exponents and logarithms. Math analysis is the standard class for junior standing. In physics, they are discussing electromagnetism and wavelengths. In Honors English, the students are reading or have read Farwell to Arms, Beloved, The Crucible, House on Mango Street, Catcher in the Rye, and The Great Gatsby. In U.S. History, they are in the Cold War Unit, the Spanish III is reading a book in Spanish and they learned three new tenses this year, and finally, in psychology, they are going over different disabilities.

Senior Donna Verga is taking: AP English, physics, calculus, P.E., and Spanish IV. This semester in English, the classes read Daemen by Hesse and are now currently reading their literature textbook. Each regular physics class discusses the same topics. physics is a junior/senior standing class. In May, all the physics classes, including the honors physics classes, go to Great America for Physics day. There, they will do different tests on roller coasters. Donna's Calculus class is now talking about derivatives, in Spanish IV, the teacher speaks nothing but Spanish to the students, and for P.E., the juniors and seniors are able to choose what units they want to participate in. Third grade swim (teaching third graders from the elementary schools how to swim), bowling, hockey, self-defense, tennis are some of the units they are able to choose from.

Senior Kristen Petersen is taking very different classes from Donna Verga and Marissa Stokes. At this time she is taking: Clothing I, Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM), Senior Foods, Algebra II Trig, P.E., and Film Studies. Clothing I consisted of making many projects such as a skirt, a jacket, pants, a purse, a t-shirt, and a tank top. INRM consisted of material such as biology, evolution, and environmental science. Many field trips took place such as visiting Dragon Lake and Treehaven, WI where they learned classification of plants and organisms. Basic cooking skills and nutrition were taught in senior foods along with baking pancakes, cookies, lasagna, and pies from scratch. Algebra II Trig consisted of angles, the quadratic equation, and sin, cosine, and tangent. Film Studies is an elective English course. In this class, the students were taught about different movies from each movie era. They watched and analyzed silent films, propaganda films, animation, science fiction, and had the opportunity to write, act, and produce their own horror movie.

Each class has something unique about it and is somewhat advanced. The juniors are reading Hemingway whereas there are middle-aged people who cannot analyze it and be able to understand what is happening. There are many, many levels of math classes at Neuqua such as regular, Honors, and AP. Alone, there are seven algebra classes available, three geometry classes, three math analysis classes, two statistics classes and that is just math. There are several vocational and art classes, too. Auto class, ceramics, clothing, foods, painting, art, jewelry, woods, television classes. There is so much to choose from. The reason why there are so many levels of classes is because each person exceeds in one class more than another and everyone learns at a different rate. The more levels there are, the better chance the students will place into a class that is right for them and be able to succeed.

Bogan is a Chicago Public School that is located on the west part of 79th street. It is a part of region 5 and of school district 1230. According to a link in the Chicago Public School website, "Bogan is a modern masonry building with double-hung windows and a central boiler. It received a renovation in 1998, which included Pool Rehabilitation, a Science Lab, and an MEP upgrade. It also previously received new windows, rook and tuckpointing. ADA Accessibility upgrades are underway, including an elevator. The building was re-assessed in 1998 and found to have repair or renovation needs in the following areas: roofing, auditorium"� (Bogan-1230 School Assessment). For the year 2000, with about 2,800 students in attendance, the average class size was 27.1, the dropout rate was 13.4%, graduation rate- 78%. Most of the people attending the school are from a low- income family (80.9%), 14.7% of the population are white, 56.9%- black, 3.6%- Asian, and 24.6% are Hispanic (Bogan-1230 School Assessment). About 63% of the population at Bogan is in poverty, less than 1% of Neuqua families are considered low-income (Dell'Angela par. 12).

I interviewed Gabe Harper, a student that graduated from Bogan just last year. I asked some questions about the physical conditions of the school, what kind of classes he took, sports and facilities, and the environment of the school. As for the facilities, Bogan has only two small gyms, a tiny weight room that is located in the basement, a decent sized auditorium, one classroom for the band, orchestra, and choir to share; a small library, two tennis courts, a television and a computer in every classroom which are broken for more then half the time (Harper). While the teachers at Neuqua are usually very organized, calm and always ready to teach, the teachers at Bogan teachers were always running out of books and other supplies to hand out.

The difference between the classes at the two schools are rather obvious. They both have some of the same classes but as for difficulty or ability levels, there are not too many available at Bogan. "As for my classes, I took physics where we learned the law of gravity, in Law/American society, we were taught how cops treated people and basic laws like how cops cannot search without a warrant. We were assigned to read Hamlet in English class but no one did the readings. In P.E., we played baseball, softball, jump rope, and socialized. We mostly just walked around and goofed off. Chemistry, there was the mole ratios; I don't remember what we did in Algebra II /Trig and I did take one of the few computer classes that were available which was data processing. There aren't many challenging classes like Honors or AP. There are just the regular, standard classes"� (Harper).

Neuqua Valley is a very safe school to attend. Parents have no worries of sending their children there and everyone, for the most part, got along decently. It is not a perfect school, not in the least, but compared to Bogan, it might as well be a perfect school. At Neuqua, Donna Verga stops by the band room to speak to her friends before her classes start. During passing periods and option (a free period that enables students to study or socialize in the cafeteria, library, or locker banks), she talks to her friends and does last minute studying (Verga). Forty miles away, Gabe Harper's day at school is very different. "I went to school in the morning and saw kids fighting outside on school grounds. The minute I walk inside I go through a metal detector and again, hear kids screaming in the hallways and teachers complaining about how immature everyone is. I fooled around in class with everyone else because the teachers were too afraid to say anything or attempt to discipline us, roamed around the hallways for a while and went home. I remember that last year four students got arrested because they beat up a teacher. No one really hangs out together""they're just in their own group, a group that shares the same race as them, and that's it. Everyone is very segregated"� (Harper).

A friend of mine, Leah Sukalo, lives just three blocks away from Bogan. I asked her that if she didn't attend private school St. Ignatius, would Bogan be the school she would have to go to because she lives so close and in response, she said no. Her family would have either moved or paid extra to go to school in Oak lawn, where her grandmother lives, and used that mailing address as hers. Also, her parents did not mind spending so much money sending her to a private school. Sacrificing money was not a problem to Leah's parents, knowing that she would receive a much better education at a private school rather than a public school in Chicago. Her neighborhood mostly consists of caucasians but once crossing the street and going a few blocks down right by the two interstates where Bogan is located, everything changes""a lot of African-Americans are coming in, a few Arabians, and more gangs are starting to hang out there. The only similar appearance Bogan has with Neuqua Valley is that both schools are horseshoe shaped and is built with bricks. Though Leah didn't attend the school, she has been in it several times for volleyball tournaments. It has been a couple years since she visited the school but she still remembers a bit about it""mostly the bad atmosphere and how dirty and beat up the inside of the school is. "Appearance wise, the outside of the school looks decent. If you were passing by it on the street, you wouldn't think twice about it""as in you wouldn't do a double take. Inside, the walls are metal-like, tiled floors, very dirty and scrubby, the lockers need to be replaced, and the sports equipment was really old and was in great need of replacement. The volleyball nets weren't even tight, they were dropping the in the middle and was full of holes"� (Sukalo).

Alma Rojas, one of the 24.6% of Hispanics that attend Bogan, is a friend of Sukalo and was kind enough to answer some questions. Rojas stated that the atmosphere at Bogan is full of violence, there is a lot of screaming and running around. The classrooms are very small, there is no air conditioning, security everywhere, everyone has to wear only black and white because of the several gangs at school, many of the light fixtures don't work, and there is one computer lab. There is also gang symbols are writing on all the desks. Lastly, the students are a few years behind on lessons. Sukalo and Rojas once compared the classes they were taking and a class that Rojas took her junior year, Sukalo took her freshman year.

Of course, Bogan is a rather old school while Neuqua, as of now, is four years old so there would be a difference between the facilities and the overall condition of the school. However, the age of the school does not have everything to do with the quality. A school can be very old but still be in rather good shape. It just depends on how the people that attend the school take care of it and if they respect it or not. Bogan does have a brand new cafeteria though after neglecting it after all these years. Apparently, the region is finally doing something about the school. As for the lessons at Bogan being a few years behind that is simply because there are no resources, books, and other supplies to teach the students and be up-to-date with what is going on.

Comparing the assessment tests from the freshman and juniors of Neuqua Valley and Bogan, I found out that the test scores of the student from Neuqua are significantly higher than Bogan. One, Neuqua has more funding and money because the citizens of that particular district which Neuqua is a part of welcomed an increase of taxes and the sale of $97.3 million in bonds (Banas par. 16). Knowing that their children would have a fine education, they do not mind the increase of taxes just as long as the money goes to the school and the school uses the money towards books, computers and other methods of learning, the citizen would pay anything. Secondly, according to District 204 board member Owen Wavrinek, the staff at Neuqua Valley love being there and love teaching the students. In fact, he once said, "This is a marvelous place to learn, and that is the key. Every opportunity is here"� (qtd in Coen par. 17). The atmosphere at Neuqua is so bright and friendly that one couldn't help attending the school. Most of the students are decently behaved, except for the few troublemakers. The resources are well stocked like working computer labs, digital technology that enables teachers to teach the class from anywhere in the school, how could teachers not enjoy teaching at Neuqua Valley. For Bogan, the preliminary data on the math portion shows that 43.9% of the freshman students scored at or above the national norm. On the reading portion, 35.7% scored at or above the national norm. As for the juniors, 46.5% scored at or above for the math portion and 35.7% scored at or above for the reading portion (Student Profile 12). At Neuqua, 89.8% of the students scored at or above the national norm for math and 91.3% scored at or above the national norm for the reading portion (Illinois Board of Education).

For the year 2001, the total funds for the Chicago Public School, operating, capital, and debt service funds combined, is $4,399.9 million. Out of that some million dollars, a certain amount is given to each type of school (general high school, charter, special education, elementary, middle schools) and that amount is broken into smaller funds and given to each of the six school regions. In region five, the region that Bogan High School is a part of, gets $570,231 alone, but it also gets other grants from the federal department and from title one which adds up to $1,120,084 (FY2001 Budget Overview 31). Keep in mind that the city only gives the region that small amount and if it weren't for the additional grants, the region would not survive. As for District 204, the Board of Education approved a $109.5 million bond package for the schools that belong in that district (Coen par. 13). I was not able to get the budget for each department at Bogan, like I did for Neuqua, but I did get a rough estimate that region five gives to Bogan and that is about $375,000 from the $1,120,084 (FY2001 Budget Overview 54). Although Bogan does get $79,629 more than Neuqua, Neuqua is in much better shape and has much, much more resources and technology than Bogan does. Neuqua is bigger in size and has more students attending, also. Apparently, the use of the money also deals a lot with a good school. The cost of education each pupil per year in Chicago is $7,105 while in Naperville, it is $5,622, which is below the state average of $6,158 (Banas par. 16). The residents of Naperville that have children attending Neuqua pay $1,483 less than the residents of Chicago do but yet, the suburban public schools are better than the public schools in Chicago.

Reverend Jesse Jackson, for the past two years, has brought over a group of students from poverty-stricken schools to Neuqua Valley and students from Neuqua to visit those schools for a day. His intent is to have everyone see the gaps between the two schools and have them want to do something about those gaps (Dell'Angela par. 5). So far, students from Bogan, Harper, and DuSable High School have participated in this conquest. Harper students were in awe of the science labs at Neuqua Valley. At Harper, their labs did not have any running water where at Neuqua, there was a shower in every lab to protect the students from a chemical spill (Dell'Angela par. 2). The students at DuSable were amazed with the Olympic size pool, comparing it with their "tiny cracker-barrel pool"�(Charles Mingo, qtd in Banas par. 13). The students and staff at Bogan were amazed by the large library, the television monitors in every classroom, the weight room, and the way the lockers are not in the hallway, but in the alcove (Banas par. 16). "The CPS is the third largest public school system in the United States with over 400,000 students enrolled in 559 schools"� (Rubenstein 2). Despite the enormous amount of money the city gives to the public school, only a small amount is actually given to the schools. Chicago is in deep need of improving the conditions of the public schools. Here, we have Naperville, a fairly large city with a population of 130,000 while Chicago has about three million and Naperville schools are in much better conditions than Chicago schools are. Chicago has more money than Naperville does but yet, the Naperville schools are in much better condition. Yes, there are many, many more schools in Chicago then there is in Naperville, but there aren't nearly as many people living in Naperville then there is in Chicago. Chicago needs to find more ways on how to improve the quality of the schools. Naperville cares a great deal about its schools and provide money and security; therefore, the physical conditions are in better shape, safer, and according to test scores, Naperville schools, Neuqua in particular, provides students a better education.

Chicago is a rather prominent city, as in has its high places, its moments, and its charm but when it comes to providing public schools with the resources they need, Chicago needs some advice. The citizens of Chicago simply need to handle money better and decide how to use it and where the money is going to go. Once the details are all figured out, the people need to take some action and eventually, hopefully sooner than later, the Chicago Public Schools will be a great place to send people to school to receive an excellent education and no longer will Chicago have to hang its head in shame.