Is Jonathan Y. Scammon your neighborhood elementary school?

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

About 2 years ago I posted a rant on the Old Irving Park Facebook page regarding my neighborhood school Jonathan Scammon Elementary (CPS). A parent told me to shut up and do something about it. Well, it might be 2 years later but I'm finally getting around to doing it. My oldest daughter is 5 and started kindergarten this year. We applied to 20 schools through Options For Knowledge and DID get into one that I was happy with, however, it was over 5 miles away from our house. Suffice it to say, after 2 weeks we made the decision to take her out and move her to a parochial school in our neighborhood. This is not the ideal solution for us. I think that CPS is capable of, and in most cases does offer a top notch education, so why have we abandoned our neighborhood school? I would hope that families are doing their due diligence. I never did my homework and relied on word-of-mouth to determine that our school was un-desireable. Tour your neighborhood school. Go to an open house. Speak with the administrators. Go to an LSC meeting. I've now done all of these things, have you?

Amongst other things, this survey is going to help me determine where the families in our neighborhood that AREN"T sending their children to Scammon ARE sending them and why. First and foremost, the argument that I am trying to make to CPS is regarding the overcrowding at the school. If those of us who are SUPPOSED to be sending our children to that school actually DID, how would they accommodate them. I want to be able to have some more concrete numbers to illustrate the severity of the problem in our neighborhood specifically and the north-west side in general.

That said, I have put together an online survey regarding Scammon Elementary school. PLEASE take a few minutes of your time and help me make my argument.

Here is the link:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X2SJ6TS