Over the protests of parents, community members and teachers, the Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously approved the closure or overhaul of 17 schools.
The move by a board whose members are selected by Mayor Rahm Emanuel advanced the mayor’s agenda of holding schools accountable for performance, and turning to outside operators when necessary to improve test scores and other measures of achievement.
Hundreds of people attended the Board’s monthly meeting, most of them opposed to the closings and turnarounds, a process in which existing staff is fired and new leadership takes over.
Those who spoke at the meeting called the Board’s actions “damaging” and “pure evil.”
Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, likened the state of Chicago Public Schools to “Little Rock in 1957,” referring to the Arkansas city’s segregated schools, because the closings and overhauls disproportionately affect African-American and Hispanic communities. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said the city is facing “educational apartheid.”
The school board’s action Wednesday ratified changes for 21 schools that were proposed last November. They included seven school closures, 10 turnarounds and three will share locations.
The following schools will be turned around by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, a non-profit organization that also runs a teacher-training program:
• Pablo Casals, 3501 W. Potomac Ave.
• Melville W. Fuller, 4214 S. Saint Lawrence Ave.
• Theodore Herzl, 3711 W. Douglas Blvd.
• Marquette, 6550 S. Richmond St.
• Brian Piccolo, 1040 N. Keeler Ave.
• Amos Alonzo Stagg, 7424 S. Morgan St.
The schools that will be turned around by the CPS Office of School Improvement are:
• Wendell Smith, 744 E. 103rd St.
• Carter G. Woodson South, 4414 S. Evans.
• Chicago Vocational Career Academy, 2100 E. 87th St.
• Tilden Career Community Academy, 4747 S. Union Ave.
Schools that will close at the end of the school year:
• Simon Guggenheim Elementary School, 7141 S. Morgan St.
• Florence Price Elementary School, 4351 S. Drexel Blvd.
• Julia Lathrop Elementary School, 1440 S. Christiana Ave.
• Walter Reed Elementary School, 6350 S. Stewart Ave.
• Best Practice High School, 2040 W. Adams St., which stopped serving students in 2009.
Two schools will be phased out, which means they will stop admitting freshmen until no students are left. Those schools are:
• Richard Crane Technical Prep High School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd.
• Dyett High School, 555 E. 51st St.
Six schools will co-locate, which means two schools will share one building.
• Henry H. Nash Elementary School, 4837 W. Erie St., will share with ACT Charter School
• Doolittle East Elementary School, 535 E. 35th St., will share with Chi Arts High School
• Richard Crane Technical Prep High School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd., will share with Talent Development Charter High School.
Oliver Sicat, the CPS Chief Portfolio Officer, outlined several adjustments to the schools’ transition plans. He said the district would maintain the Montessori program at Stagg Elementary, continue to offer career and technical education at Chicago Vocational Career Academy and would allow students currently attending Price to go to nearby Mayo Elementary School, rather than National Teachers’ Academy. The academy is an AUSL school that originally had planned to absorb the students from Price.
The Board’s action means that in the future, children living in Price’s attendance boundary will attend either Fuller or Woodson South, both slated for turnaround.
CPS announced on Tuesday that Crane High School would reopen in the fall of 2013 with a focus on health sciences. District spokeswoman Marielle Sainvilus said the “goal for this school is to be a quality neighborhood option for students on the Near West Side.” She did not say if there would be an attendance boundary.
Many people who spoke at the meeting said they did not believe that CPS officials were listening to them.
Marcy Hardaloupas, a teacher at Marquette Elementary, called the district’s public hearings a sham. “The outcomes were already decided beforehand,” she said.
A state law passed last year requires CPS to follow a more open process when deciding which schools to close. State lawmakers who serve on a task force overseeing the law’s implementation said the district is not in compliance. The task force recently issued a report outlining irregularities that indicate “an attempt to ‘skew’ the results of the lawfully required public input process.”
CPS chief executive Jean-Claude Brizard defended the process, saying it was “the most respectful” he had ever seen, and Board President David Vitale said both board members and CPS officials attended “countless meetings.”
“You can hear what people say, and just because you don’t draw the same conclusion doesn’t mean you didn’t listen,” said board member Henry Bienen.
After the vote, Mahalia Hines, a Board member and former CPS principal and teacher, said she would not voted for the actions at Crane and Stagg only after district leaders adjusted their plans based on community feedback.
District leaders will likely still face a backlash from the communities affected by the actions. Jitu Brown, a member of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which has been pushing its own plan for improving schools in the Bronzeville neighborhood, said the Board still doesn’t understand “that people have had it.”
After the Board vote, Brown and several others left the chamber booing and shouting “Rubber Stamp!” at the Board. After Mayor Richard M. Daley took charge of Chicago’s schools in 1995, the unelected school board almost always voted in favor of the mayor’s proposals, a practice that has continued under Mayor Emanuel.
Brizard and other top officials said they would be meeting with parents at the affected schools to answer questions and help them make the transition to new schools.
CEO Brizzard said students at Price that will we relocated as part of the closure would have the option to attend NTA. He said CPS took them to NTA to see the school and they aid they were sold in going there. However he said some parents still asked if they could attend Mayo, so CPS agreed to make Mayo an additonal option as part of their relocation.
Sorry “aid” should be “said”.