SPRINGFIELD | Union leaders, interest groups and employees say the State Department of Juvenile Justice has a teacher shortage that leaves imprisoned youths without the full-time schooling they need to set their lives straight.
But Illinois Department of Corrections officials counter that inmates at five of the state's eight juvenile prisons are receiving full-time schooling.
The Department of Juvenile Justice was split off of the Department of Corrections in 2006. Since then, Gov. Rod Blagojevich hasn't appointed a permanent director for the new department.
But while the department has hired 12 people since the beginning of the year, and the new superintendent of schools Lanée Walls starts her job Tuesday, a spokesman for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, said the union has shown great concern with the way the state runs the department.
"In general, we're extremely concerned with what really amounts to a neglect of this department since its creation," said Anders Lindall, the union spokesman.
Teachers already working in the system say their jobs are tough.
Susan Sidwell is a teacher at Illinois Youth Center-St. Charles, a youth prison in the Chicago suburbs that holds about 300 inmates on a given day.
Corrections spokeswoman Januari Smith said the St. Charles facility and four others, including ones in Harrisburg, Joliet, Murphysboro and Warrenville, have full-time school for inmates.
That is not the case at St. Charles, said Sidwell, who described the inmates there as living in seven separate housing blocks. Students from three of those housing blocks attend half-day school. The rest attend a drug education program.
Sidwell teaches remedial reading five days a week in four 90-minute blocks a day. She teaches 10 to 12 students in each class.
"Reading is something they felt a failure at all their lives, and they're only with you a short period of time you don't even have time to earn their trust," Sidwell said. "Trust doesn't come easy for these kids; they've had too many adults fail them."
The teacher shortage can cause some to remain incarcerated longer, said Jan Bradley, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 416 at the Illinois Youth Center-St. Charles.
Some youths have been handed a court mandate to obtain a general equivalency degree before being released -- a difficult achievement in a system that only offers half-day school, she said.
Hiring teachers to work in the year-round programs is more difficult than at regular schools, said Gov. Rod Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff.
"The challenge that the state faces in hiring teachers isn't related to budget constraints," she said. "It's related to a shortage of interested teachers."
Still, Sidwell and the union blame Blagojevich.
"We've never been hurting for state employees like we have under this governor," Sidwell said. "He boasts how many thousands of paid positions that he eliminates. What he's failed to mention is you can't get the job done with that few people."
