Letter: Concerned Parents Raise Alarm About Lake Forest High School

From Concerned Parents of Lake Forest:

Dear Lake Forest High School Community:

This is an open letter from a group of concerned LFHS parents. We are writing to share our sincere misgivings over the direction in which our public high school is heading and to offer several recommendations for how to get LFHS back on track.

Many of us have been members of the Lake Forest / Lake Bluff community for decades, raised our children here, and sent them to the public schools from kindergarten through high school. Some of us are even LFHS alumni ourselves. We’re all passionate about LFHS and consider ourselves diehard Scouts. Others of us are newer to the community, having relocated our families here, in large part, because we believed in the District 65, 67, and 115 public schools.

Like most parents, when it comes to educating our kids – preparing them to be leaders in an increasingly competitive world, helping them grow and develop into the best versions of themselves, and equipping them with the skills they’ll need to achieve their goals and find happiness in life – we’re fully supportive. We believe our role is to give our children every opportunity we can, within reason, to help set them on a path toward a bright future. Providing a first-rate education is one of the most important gifts we can give.

Unfortunately, we believe that the District 115 administration and Board of Education have lost sight of what matters most and are leading LFHS – to the detriment of the community, parents, families, residents, taxpayers, and most importantly, our children – down the wrong path. This really hurts to write, but continuing to remain silent is no longer an option. It is beyond time that we have an honest, open, forthright discussion about the state of public education in our community and where we are going.

Concern #1: Academic Achievement and Excellence are In Decline

There is growing, and now nearly universal agreement (except from public teachers unions), that across America, public schools are not providing our children with the skills they’ll need to be successful in life. We’ve all seen report after report warning that American kids are slipping further each year behind their international peers in math, science, and reading. But how many Lake Forest and Lake Bluff parents are truly aware that right here, in our own community, LFHS is failing in its core educational mission, and many of our kids are being left behind?

Here’s the stark reality, and it’s high time we tackle this head-on: According to the most recent Illinois State Board of Education (“ISBE”) annual Report Card, only 61% of LFHS students are proficient in reading. Only 64% of our high school students are testing at grade level in math.

Put another way, roughly four out of ten LFHS kids don’t meet state reading standards. More than one-third of our children score below state math standards. This is appalling.

Scores no doubt took a hit as a result of Covid-related school lockdowns, but the fact is, LFHS scores were sub-standard even before the pandemic and have been steadily declining for a number of years. In 2017, more than 80% of LFHS juniors scored at or above state standards in reading and about 73% met math standards. Today’s worrisome scores mark a new low in a years-long downward trend.

How do our students’ proficiency scores measure up to the scores at other area high schools? We are trailing schools like New Trier, Stevenson, Deerfield, Glenbrook North, and Hinsdale Central in both language arts and mathematics. To be blunt, we are trailing badly; our scores aren’t even close. So, not only are LFHS’ scores shockingly low in absolute terms, but relative to high schools in other nearby communities – whose students will compete with ours in the college admissions process and later, in the job market – LFHS is not faring well.

This can only be described as a crisis. Yet, District 115 continuously showers us with communications giving the impression that things are going exceedingly well and that our District is hitting unprecedented heights of academic excellence. When we’ve raised concerns about the results detailed in the ISBE Report Card, District administrators have dismissed or downplayed our concerns with a variety of excuses, implausible explanations, and more assurances that the District is performing better than ever.

Perhaps the least convincing and most intellectually dishonest claim offered by the administration is that our District has been awarded an “Exemplary” ISBE designation, the highest possible in the four-tier rating system. But “Exemplary” compared with what? There are 30 schools in Illinois where not a single student can read at grade level, and 53 schools statewide where not one kid is proficient in math. At 622 schools – 18% of the state’s 3,547 schools that tested students in 2022 – fewer than 1 out of 10 kids can read at grade level. And at 930 schools – more than a quarter of all schools in the state – fewer than only 1 out of 10 kids can do math at grade level. Unbelievably, a good number of these schools were designated “Commendable,” just one notch below our “Exemplary” rating. Our District’s performance may be above average statewide, but this isn’t saying much.

We are continually amazed by how few Lake Forest / Lake Bluff parents are aware of the gravity of our situation. Even as we write, the Lake Forest High School Foundation – comprised of engaged, volunteer-minded, hard-working, well-intentioned individuals whose contributions to our community are too many to be listed here – is planning to host a spring luncheon to “celebrate educational excellence at LFHS.” How can it be that even the most engaged and interested among us aren’t aware of our high school’s steady decline in student readiness?
There are a number of possible reasons for this, one of which is that the District administration and Board do practically nothing to bring the issue to the community’s attention. In any case, we hope that this letter will open a few eyes, as we cannot begin to turn things around unless and until more of us recognize and accept that we have a real problem.

Concern #2: Our District’s Financial Management and Judgement are Unsatisfactory

Our District administration and Board of Education are asking families, parents, residents, and taxpayers to support a $105.7 MM referendum for improvements to the LFHS building. We acknowledge that there are certain repairs and upgrades that should be made to the building. But asking the community to dig into its collective pockets to support such an astronomical bond issuance (each District 115 household will end up paying literally tens of thousands of dollars in higher taxes over the life of the bond) seems crazy in light of the following:

• Lake Forest High School District 115 is already one of the most generously funded school districts in Illinois. Our teacher and administrator salaries are among the highest in the state. We have more administrators per student, by far, than any district in Illinois. No other district spends more annually per student than ours ($32,000 at LFHS vs. $30,000 at Highland Park, $29,000 at New Trier, $27,000 at Hinsdale Central, $26,000 at GBN/GBS and Libertyville/VH, and $23,000 at Stevenson). Can’t our administration and Board find ways to reduce our administrative footprint and reduce wasteful and ineffective spending to free up funds for building improvements?
• This year, District 115’s operating budget (total disbursements and expenditures) has exceeded $60 MM for the first time ever. That’s a 24.2% increase from the $48.6 MM operating budget just four years ago. Over this same period, student enrollment at LFHS has declined nearly 11%. How does the administration and Board explain this alarming rise in spending? Why is our spending increasing at such a rapid clip when enrollment is declining? Where is the money being spent? Are we really to believe there’s no room in this budget for any of the needed building improvements?
• Any owner of a physical structure, whether a home, apartment building, industrial facility, office complex, etc. knows that building improvement needs like a new roof, new HVAC equipment, and new windows don’t sneak up and suddenly appear without warning. These needs can be foreseen many years in advance, and it’s the owner’s duty to plan and budget accordingly. Yet, our administration and Board act as though these needs were totally unforeseeable. They would have us believe that critical equipment has reached the end of its useful life without warning. Nonsense. How could our District have been caught so totally unprepared for these eventualities? How is it that our leaders so clearly failed to plan and budget appropriately? How can they now, in good conscience, ask taxpayers to pony up $100 MM+ to cover for their irresponsibility?
• It’s worth repeating: Our student proficiency scores are unacceptable in absolute terms and conspicuously trail those at other area high schools that we typically include in our peer group. And when you consider that we spend more per student each year here at LFHS compared with perhaps every other high school in the state, our test scores look even more unsatisfactory on an equalized, apples-to-apples basis. In other words, our high school is producing a poor return on investment. How, then, can the community be asked to entrust this District administration and Board with $100 MM+ in additional funding? And how can our District leaders prioritize spending such a huge sum on a building when we should be laser-focused on addressing our widening student achievement gap?

Concern #3: Our District is Embracing Divisive, Destructive Woke Ideology

We believe our children’s education at LFHS should be based on scholarship and facts and should support their development into the happy, resilient, free-thinking, educated citizens every democracy needs. Our classrooms should include rigorous instruction in math, science, history, civics, literature, foreign languages, and the ideas and values that enrich our country. We want our kids to be fully prepared and ready to make their way in the world, to be contributing members of society, and to achieve their goals. These kids are the next generation of leaders who must make America stronger, more secure, and more harmonious and prosperous for all.

Yet, in recent years, activists have targeted public schools across the country with a campaign to impose an ideologically-driven curriculum with an alarming and divisive emphasis on students’ group identities: Race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender. Many school districts have spent large sums of money on these efforts, and many more are preparing to do the same.

Couched in vague, innocuous-sounding slogans about “social justice,” “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion,” the new curriculum divides our children into “oppressor” and “oppressed” groups. To one, it teaches guilt and shame. To the other, grievance and resentment. More broadly, throughout schools, this creates distrust, unhappiness, confusion, and fear. This new educational mission is at war with basic American values, and it’s poison to our public schools and our society at large.

We fear that District 115 (as well as 65 and 67) is steadily – but very quietly and without any open discussion or debate – slipping down the path toward inserting this progressive political ideology and agenda into every facet of LFHS’ curriculum, pedagogy, and programming.

• How many Lake Forest and Lake Bluff parents know that there are sexually explicit, if not outright pornographic, materials in our high school library (and, for that matter, in the District 65 and 67 elementary and middle school libraries, as well)?
• Do parents know that LFHS is enabling, promoting, and encouraging LGBTQ+ and transgender agendas to be pushed upon our students in a variety of ways?
• Are parents aware that the fashionable racism inherent in Critical Race Theory (“white privilege” and the rest) is seeping into classrooms at our high school?
• Are parents aware that our kids are being subjected to invasive surveys and questionnaires, developed by outside “Social-Emotional Learning” consultants, that ask them deeply personal, private questions, and that their “anonymous” data is then collected and used in ways that our District has never explained?

The reason most Lake Forest and Lake Bluff parents aren’t aware is that there’s no open, honest, transparent discussion or debate about any of this. The vast majority of parents haven’t been asked if they want our public high school’s core mission to be revamped from education in core academic subjects to political indoctrination. The District 115 administration and Board have simply plowed ahead and begun this transformation with little, if any, parental input or consent.

Recently, District 115 rolled out its new “Charting our Course to Success” 5-year strategic plan. Our read, unfortunately, is that the administration and Board are moving further toward implementing an activist agenda and de-emphasizing academic rigor and excellence in favor of greater emphasis on race, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We encourage every parent to read the plan, and when you do, you’ll see repeated references to “diverse,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “inclusive environment.” Nowhere in the document do the words “math,” “science,” and “reading” appear. There is no discussion at all about instilling in our kids the joy of reading; promoting learning, curiosity, or independent thinking; discovering math and science; or exploring world languages. This is a real shame. We believe the focus should be on academic excellence and improving student readiness.

More than anything, though, we worry that increasingly making diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice the centerpiece of our school’s curriculum and programming means that, inevitably, our children will be asked (or required) more and more to see themselves and others through the lens of racial and sexual identities. This totally flies in the face of what we teach our children at home: That we live in a beautiful and diverse world; that every individual is unique and has gifts; that we should look beyond skin color and sexual orientation to see the quality of someone’s character; that we should do our best to love and care for each other as neighbors and fellow Americans; and that we have a responsibility to try to make the world a better place. Any efforts by LFHS to instruct or encourage our kids to view and prejudge each other on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc., are diametrically opposed to the morality we are trying to instill in them at home.

Recommendations for Getting LFHS Back on Track and Restoring Confidence

In response to the serious issues facing Lake Forest High School, we believe four important steps are necessary, and we outline them below. We hope this might begin an open, free-flowing, spirited exchange of ideas in the community.

1. First and foremost, the District 115 administration and Board must refocus on the LFHS’ core educational mission. This means prioritizing instruction in math, science, reading, writing, and world languages above all else. The clear emphasis of our curriculum, teaching, and programming must be on delivering a first-rate education in core academic subjects and closing the student achievement gap. Boosting student proficiency scores would be one way to measure success.

2. The administration and Board – the stewards of the taxpayer dollars entrusted to the District – must improve financial performance immediately and regain the community’s confidence. We cannot continue to increase spending at the rate we’ve seen in recent
years. We cannot continue to outspend comparable school districts yet produce inferior student achievement scores. We cannot continue to support a bloated District administration; it must be right-sized quickly and brought into line with other comparable districts. In general, the District must start using its considerable resources more wisely, efficiently, and effectively.

3. The scope of the proposed LFHS building improvements and $105.7 MM bond issuance must be scaled back. It simply isn’t realistic to expect District families and taxpayers to pony up such an enormous sum of money when (a) the District’s annual budget has ballooned in recent years, and the District is, by almost every measure, already one of the most generously funded school districts in Illinois; (b) LFHS is struggling with academic achievement, both on an absolute and relative basis, and addressing this must be our top priority; (c) there is good reason to believe that the District administration needs to be rationalized; (d) an outstanding balance still remains due and owing on the District’s last bond issuance; and (e) families have been hit by surging inflation and borrowing costs, and we are all staring down the barrel of a possible economic recession. Resources, even in a very fortunate community such as ours, are not unlimited. District leadership needs to think long and hard about its physical building plan, and engage in an exercise of ruthless prioritization. Come back with a plan that addresses the most pressing needs. Nice-to-haves must wait.

4. The role of a school is not to indoctrinate politically or to push rote learning of boring, pessimistic, divisive political ideologies. Schools should be focused on opening kids’ minds to the wonders of the world and to learning; on sparking curiosity and creativity; and on teaching kids how to think critically and independently. A good school is a place where rigorous pedagogy, critical thinking, and free and open discussion are the norm; where students of all backgrounds feel safe and valued; and where diversity of opinions, perspectives, and views is celebrated and protected. Accordingly, we recommend in the strongest possible terms that the District 115 administration and Board take proactive steps to ensure that controversial, divisive, activist, political ideologies and agendas (BLM, CRT, DEI, “anti-racism,” social justice, etc.) are kept completely out of LFHS’ curriculum, pedagogy, grading, discipline, and overall mission.

In Closing

Thank you for caring enough about Lake Forest High School to read this letter.

Our school is heading in the wrong direction. Only by finally acknowledging this in a very honest way and having a candid discussion can we begin to address the issues.

We can get our high school back on track by focusing, above all else, on academic excellence in core subjects, by operating in a financially sound manner, and by rejecting the teaching of pessimistic political concepts that so often focus on skin color and sexual identities. Together, as the Lake Forest High School community, let’s rededicate ourselves to delivering a solid education
that immerses our kids in the beauty and joy of human civilization, the wonder of science and nature, and the meaning and power of words and math and music.

If you’re a member of the LFHS community and share our concerns and the opinions expressed in this letter, please find the courage, time, and energy to reach out to the District 115 Board of Education, share this letter widely, and make your voice heard.

Respectfully,

Concerned Lake Forest Parents

This open letter was provided by the group Concerned Parents of Lake Forest. The views expressed here are the author’s own