Chicago Public Schools plans to add thousands of full-day kindergarten slots along with more seats at magnet and charter schools for the upcoming school year, CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said Wednesday at the Chicago Board of Education meeting.
The preliminary budget for fiscal year 2012 includes money for an additional 6,000 full-day kindergarten seats as well as 2,300 slots at magnet schools and 5,500 at charter schools.
The additional full-day kindergarten seats, which will cost $15 million, will be added to schools where low-income children are most at risk for falling behind. The full-day kindergarten program was saved from on the chopping block during last year’s budget crisis following outcry from parents. Not all CPS schools have an all-day kindergarten option. In some areas, principals use discretionary funding or parents cobble together the money themselves to pay for the program.
The magnet seats will cost the district $5 million and will be used to expand current programs and open new ones. Brizard also announced a 35 percent increase in the number of teachers participating in the Academy of Urban School Leadership training program.
Brizard made the announcements before unveiling a reorganization of the district’s management structure and an overhaul of how schools are divided regionally.
The preliminary budget will be made available to the public at CPS’ central office on August 5. Three public hearings have been scheduled:
· Wednesday, Aug. 10 at Lane Tech High School (2501 W. Addison St.)
· Thursday, Aug. 11 at Westinghouse High School (3223 W. Franklin Blvd.)
· Friday, Aug. 12 at Simeon High School (8147 S. Vincennes)
Last month, the board voted against a 4 percent contractual pay raise for teachers, citing a $712 million budget deficit. The Chicago Teachers Union and other labor unions requested to open and negotiate the section of their contracts that deal with wages. CTU spokeswoman Liz Brown said the first negotiation meeting has been set for August 1.
Other actions at Wednesday’s board meeting included:
Reorganization raises questions for Community Action Councils
Members of several community organizations and representatives of aldermen asked that the district not eliminate Community Action Councils as part of the new reorganization. The councils were created last fall to bolster community involvement in schools.
Chris Harris, a pastor and council member in Bronzeville, commended the district’s decision to create a Chief Family and Community Engagement Officer, but said the Community Action Councils have had early success and should not be diminished or eliminated.
“CAC’s are not broken, so they don’t need to be fixed,” Harris said. “We’re just learning to crawl. Please don’t break our legs.”
Teachers upset over ‘Do Not Hire’ list
Prior to the meeting, teachers and community members marched outside the central office building, although it was a smaller and quieter event than last month’s protest, which engulfed the entire block.
More than 10 teachers signed up to speak out against the district’s ‘Do Not Hire’ list. At the end of this school year, roughly 50 non-tenured teachers were placed on the list due to unsatisfactory evaluations or because their contracts had not been renewed for a second time. Non-renewal is not always an indicator of performance and can be the result of budget cuts or school closings.
Second-year teacher Raquel Garcia said her principal discovered she was on the “Do Not Hire” list after trying to recall her this summer. Garcia said the policy is unfair because teachers are not informed of their placement on the list.
Jennifer Johnson, a history teacher at Lincoln Park High School and union representative, said the “culture of CPS is to dismiss instead of support” and criticized the new school board’s lack of CPS experience. Only one of the seven new board members appointed in April by Mayor Rahm Emanuel had been a principal or teacher in the district. Mahalia Hines, a former CPS principal, fired back at Johnson. “I feel you,” she said. “But you need to give this new administration and the new board a chance.”
No to Google@CPS
Board members again voted to table a resolution that would have approved a contract with Google for cloud computing services, replacing the district’s current email system.
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said teachers and students have been excited about the change since district officials announced it in March. Now, it appears CPS will undergo another Request for Proposals process to identify a new email system. Board members did not discuss their reasons during the open session.
“We went through the whole process and now it’s been scrapped, just to start all over again,” Lewis said. “We had an opportunity to do something for free. It’s a waste of taxpayer time and money.”
Code of Conduct revised
The district voted to approve a new Student Code of Conduct, but a group of students that released a report critical of the district’s discipline policies were left unsatisfied.
Among other changes, the new code calls for suspensions to be issued less frequently and classifies more offenses as punishable by in-school, rather than out-of-school, suspensions.
However, students with the group Voices of Youth in Chicago Education said the new policy does not go into enough specifics and still leaves room for administrators to implement their own rules about what deserves suspension and what doesn’t.
“It’s like they just did it to shut us up,” said Maria Degillo, a former CPS student and VOYCE organizer who now attends Truman College.
VOYCE reiterated its call for a meeting with the new CPS administration to discuss disciplinary policy. Board president David Vitale rejected the group’s renewed request, though Brizard said he would “be in touch.”
Incredible. Everyone knows that the the most challenged and neediest children are in the neighborhood schools. With the new RTI mandates for additional academic interventions, neighborhood school are strapped as they are. They need more qualified staff to deal with the tasks of supporting children. This is a travesty that magnet school will get more money!
Lack of leadership in the top offices again screws the staff and students from using Google Apps. When folks talk about the importance of technology, the Chicago tax payer is paying right now for fifth rate web services.
Even though the Google Apps is free, there would have been costs in bringing authorized Google Apps integrators. The fact is that we need a news email and collaboration system. The one we have was fine for the last century not the present one. This tells the children they don’t count. They use modern system gmail at home and a sorry system at school.
CPS has had incompetent heads of technology for the longest time. They do a disservice!