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Hinckley-Big Rock loses to Newark in tournament play, 58-45 / B1 daily-chronicle.com
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State mandates can sap schools Local educators say they strain budgets, take time By KATIE DAHLSTROM kdahlstrom@shawmedia.com GENOA – DeKalb County school districts will spend a couple months in the spring interrupting regular classroom instruction with state-mandated tests. For the first time, students will take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for
College and Careers exam, commonly known as PARCC. It’s one of dozens of unfunded mandates – educational requirements without state dollars – that school officials have to juggle every year. “Sadly, we’re so used to it that it’s part of our culture,” Genoa District 424 Superintendent Joe Burgess said. “It’s a part of education in Illinois.”
Superintendents across DeKalb County said although the mandates are imposed with good intentions, complying with them can strain budgets and take away from instructional time for students. The Illinois State Board of Education said school districts had to adapt to 24 new mandates this year, ranging from showing students how to use automatic external defibrillators and training for emergencies to curriculum changes. Local school leaders, though, say the most pressing mandate is the PARCC assessment.
The PARCC assessment replaces the Illinois Standards Achievement Test and the Prairie State Achievement Exam. The latter also includes the ACT, the test most high school juniors take and many colleges use in their admissions process. PARCC will measure students and the districts. DeKalb County students will start taking the PARCC assessment in March. The exam is administered electronically, meaning districts have to shuffle students through computer labs or buy acceptable mobile
devices in order to get done within the four-week testing window. The ISAT and PSAE could be administered to entire schools within a week, officials said. In District 428, students will rotate through computer labs, Superintendent Doug Moeller said. The district thought that Samsung tablets students at Lincoln Elementary School have would work, but PARCC officials recently decided those devices wouldn’t be acceptable. “It was like a kick in the stomach,” Moeller said. “You
just have to bite the bullet and go forward.” Chicago Public Schools leaders have said they plan not to administer PARCC, which State Superintendent Chris Koch said would result in sanctions, such as withholding state funding. Forgoing funding is not an option for local districts, officials said. Moeller acknowledged the PARCC assessment has its advantages. He thinks students will fare better on the electronic test than the ones who take it
See MANDATES, page A7
Day care spotlighted in Palatine measles case By LINDSEY TANNER The Associated Press
an restaurant near Rockford. Sometimes, she makes Indian dishes at home. “We can’t really be Indian for our kids,” she said. “But at least we can say to them, ‘India was important to you, it’s important to us. However we can help you with that transition to the American culture and still respect the Indian culture, we will do that.’ ” Until she came to the U.S.
CHICAGO – Measles infections in five babies at a Palatine day care center reveal a potential weak link in public-health efforts to contain the disease, officials said Friday, explaining that infants who are too young to be vaccinated and in close quarters are among the most vulnerable to the virus. “They’re sort of like the canary in the mine,” said Dr. Tina Tan, an infectious disease specialist at Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital. State regulations in Illinois and elsewhere generally require vaccinations for older children in day care centers, but measles shots are not recommended for children under age 1. And like most states, Illinois does not require vaccinations for day care center staffers. “Unfortunately, there is no requirement. But this is on our radar,” said Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health. The cases are among more than 100 nationwide this year, most of them linked with a Disneyland outbreak. Ten other young children at the suburban center were exposed and are being monitored for symptoms. This year’s cases also include an infant at a Santa Monica, California, day care center that closed temporarily this week. Fourteen infants from that center have been quarantined at home for three weeks. Dr. Julie Morita, acting commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said this year’s outbreaks highlight the major reasons for immunizations against a rare disease. The shots are not just for self-protection. They also provide what experts call “herd immunity” – protection for those too young or too sick to be vaccinated, including infants in day care. “We have always felt like this was a vulnerable population ... in a potentially risky setting because there are a lot of kids who are together,” Morita said. Measles can cause a cough, runny nose and rash. Infants are vulnerable to rare but
See CHILDREN, page A7
See MEASLES, page A7
Photos by Monica Synett – msynett@shawmedia.com
Diane DeMers of DeKalb made two trips to India to adopt Pooja Ballantine and Keerti Ballantine from India. Pooja, now 22, was adopted from New Delhi at the age of 10, and Keerti, 21, was adopted from Hyderabad when he was 2.
Crossing continents for family DeKalb County parents look abroad to find children By DARIA SOKOLOVA dsokolova@shawmedia.com
children every year, according to data from the U.S. State Department. For DeKalb County families with children adopted from abroad, a cornerstone of raising international children is helping them remain in touch with the cultures into which they were born. Nearly 7,100 children were adopted internationally in the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2013. It’s a sharp decline from 21,654 in 2003. Illinois accounted for 319 of the adoptions in fiscal 2013, making it the state with the fourth-highest number of adoptions. In 2013, there were 119 children adopted from India, down from 461 in 2002, when Pooja came to the U.S. DeMers, who also had adopted her son, Keerti Ballantine, from India in 1996, said the choice of the country wasn’t coincidental. “When we were looking at
Voice your opinion Would you consider adopting a child from another country? Vote online at Daily-Chronicle.com. adopting, we became interested in India because my husband and I had good friends who were Indian and felt that they had introduced us,” she said. “We had enough knowledge of the Indian culture that we felt comfortable to be able know how to find more.” Another DeKalb resident, Kate Noreiko, adopted her children Jennifer and John from South Korea when they were infants in the 1990s. After investigating a variety of countries and programs, Noreiko said South Korea seemed like the best fit. “I’m parenting the children I was meant to parent, although they are from South Korea,” Noreiko said. DeMers, who lost her biological son, Kevin, to leukemia in 2012, said initially, she and her husband decided on international adoption because it
was supposed to take less time than a domestic adoption. Once they adopted from India, she said they decided to stick with the same country. “We were really happy to build our family that way,” DeMers said. “I have no regrets.” The walls of DeMers and Ballantine’s home are adorned with pictures of India. Miniature elephants line the mantel. On special occasions, DeMers takes her children to an Indi-
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DeKALB – Pooja Ballantine came home from school, grabbed a bagel and sat on a couch in the living room, surrounded by her adoptive family. Pooja is a 22-year-old Kishwaukee College student. In her free time she likes to hang out with her friends and play outdoor sports. In 2002, she was adopted from an orphanage near New Delhi, India, by Diane DeMers and Dave Ballantine, a DeKalb couple. But despite spending the past 13 years of her life in the United States, Pooja said she still feels more Indian than American. “I kind of miss my culture, like all the traditions that we did when I was in India,” she said. American citizens adopt thousands of international
The DeMers-Ballantine household has several hints of India – seen in trinkets, maps and more.
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