As reported in last week’s Park Ridge Journal & Topics, Elementary School District 64 is in the process of re-evaluating its Foreign Language in the Elementary School (“FLES”) program, which has been in effect for the past 12 years.

Recently questions have been raised about why each school offers only one language (either French or Spanish), why French is offered at all, and why the language instruction is being watered down with instruction on foreign cultures. 

School Board president Sue Runyon got it right when she suggested that every school should offer both languages or all schools should offer the same one; and that greater emphasis should be placed on language instruction rather than culture study.  The first order of business should be to get the students reading and speaking the foreign language.

So with President Runyon clearly on target, why does D-64 feel it needs to spend up to two years on a “study” to re-evaluate the language program?  Here are four suggestions that don’t need a 2-year study:

1.      Make Spanish the only language taught at all schools. French may sound classier and have more snob appeal, but with the U.S. Government predicting that our population will be almost 25% Hispanic within the next 25 years, the untility of Espanol over Francais is indisputable.

2.      Ask the Spanish teachers at Maine South, Maine East and a couple of the local Catholic high schools for their analysis of what the D-64 graduates have mastered and what they are lacking when they get to high school.

3.      Get rid of the foreign culture studies. Save the mysteries of the pinata and the origins of the serape for exploration by any curious student on his own time.

4.      Set proficiency goals for reading and speaking the language based on recognized national standards, and then commit as many classroom hours a week as can be made available after such core subjects as math, English, science, etc. are accomodated.

This isn’t rocket science, folks. And for the children already in the D-64 FLES program, 2 years is far too long to wait to figure out something this easy.

In the Spring of 2002, a group of Park Ridge citizens – Democrats and Republicans alike – formed an organization they named “Citizens for Responsible Government,” which soon became known by supporters and detractors alike as “CRG.”

It articulated a set of governing principles:

• Responsible government requires broad public participation by an informed citizenry that can be achieved only through the timely dissemination of complete and accurate information and vigorous public debate.

• Government operations must be transparent so that both our elected and appointed officials can be held strictly accountable to their constituents.

• Fiscal policies must be value-based and focused on common sense cost-effectiveness that, whenever possible, complements rather than competes with private enterprise and investment.

• Government initiatives that further special interests or place long-term demands on public resources require the highest level of public scrutiny.

• The best way to maximize the value of our public resources is through synergy and cooperation between the units of local government who consume them.

• Partisan party politics have no place in local government, which should operate free of external political influences.

Armed with those principles, CRG members set out to put three referendum questions related to the Park Ridge Public Library on the November 2002 ballot.  3,000-plus petition signatures and one petition challenge later, those issues were on the ballot; and the voters overwhelmingly voted to maintain the current library on its current site.

That referendum also served as a catalyst for several “Independent” aldermanic candidates to challenge the hegemony of the Homeowners Party, four of whom defeated their Homeowner opponents in April, 2003.

Unfortunately, CRG fell victim to petty partisan political differences and disappeared almost as quickly as it emerged.  But hopefully its founding principles will live on in Park Ridge.