Overriding the will of the local, rookie alderman – and selectively ignoring one of its own conventions – the City Council’s Zoning Committee will hold a special meeting Thursday to vote on a charter school proposal from an organization with close ties to Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Ald. Nicholas Sposato (36th Ward) delayed a scheduled committee vote last week, saying he was undecided on the plan for a site in the Galewood neighborhood, on the far Northwest Side. Normally, his reticence would be enough to put the project on hold indefinitely, given the council’s tradition of letting aldermen make real estate decisions in their wards.
But the Zoning Committee’s chairman, Ald. Daniel Solis (25th), told the Chicago News Cooperative on Monday afternoon that he would carry out his threat to discount Sposato’s wishes in this case and had called the special meeting just to vote on the matter at 10 a.m. Thursday at City Hall.
The United Neighborhood Organization has put forward the charter school proposal. Solis was UNO’s leader before becoming an alderman, and the clout-heavy Latino group’s CEO, Juan Rangel, was co-chairman of Emanuel’s campaign in the February mayoral election.
Under the unwritten council rule known as “aldermanic privilege” or “aldermanic prerogative,” the Zoning Committee customarily would not even hold a hearing on a development proposal without the local alderman’s express backing. Solis countered that the UNO school proposal was “too important to leave to protocol.”
“This issue just overrides [aldermanic privilege], when you’re talking about kids — kids who have to go to overcrowded schools — and when you’re factoring in the track record of UNO in most of the schools they have opened,” Solis said.
Solis said he brokered a meeting between Sposato and UNO leaders, but when that did not lead to a solution, he said, “I decided to push it.”
His arguments in favor of the UNO plan echoed comments last week by Emanuel, who has been a vocal proponent of charter schools and has forged a strong relationship with Rangel and UNO, speaking at the group’s annual dinner gala last month. Last week, after Sposato deferred a committee vote, Emanuel said he hoped that a deal could be worked out to allow UNO’s Galewood proposal to become reality.
Solis predicted that the UNO zoning change request would win preliminary approval from his panel. He said aldermen could schedule a special meeting of the full council solely to give final approval to the plan before the next regularly scheduled meeting, which will be next month.
Rangel had said any further delays would make it impossible to construct the school in time for the 2012-2013 school year. Chicago Public Schools officials already have given their support to the plan, but a zoning change is required to allow construction of a school on the site.
On Monday afternoon, Sposato again said he wanted more time to consider the UNO proposal. He said he only learned of the special zoning panel meeting announcement from a reporter: “I’m surprised and disappointed [Solis] didn’t call me.”
Sposato acknowledged that six members of his own zoning advisory panel recently voted unanimously to support the proposal from UNO, but the first-year alderman added that he has received petitions with “hundreds of signatures” of constituents who opposed the plan. And he said most speakers at a recent community meeting on the topic also voiced dissent.
“I was hoping to have another community meeting, but I guess not now,” Sposato said.
UNO officials have accused Sposato of bowing to pressure from the Chicago Teachers Union, which organized opposition to the Galewood plan and opposes the proliferation of charters in general. Sposato replied that he feared the new charter school would not perform well, noting that three UNO schools recorded results below the district average on standardized exams.
In recent memory, the precept of aldermanic privilege was violated only twice: to defeat a Wal-Mart proposal in the 19thWard on the South Side in 2004 and to approve the now-abandoned plan to move the Chicago Children’s Museum to Grant Park in 2008. The Children’s Museum plan was championed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley over heavy opposition from environmentalists, neighbors who live near Grant Park and their alderman, Brendan Reilly (42nd).
As a resident of the 36th Ward I am very disappointed with Ald. Solis. While I have mixed feelings about the UNO proposal I do not like the way the city has handled this issue at all. At the very least the UNO representatives should give the community an opportunity to have input not just a last-minute meeting in which less than 200 people were able to attend. Ald. Solis, who is the co-founder of UNO, is denying a whole community of people their voice and that is plain wrong.
I am also a resident of the 36th ward and there has been plenty of community input. There has a community meeting, petitions, advisory committee meetings of the 36th ward. Enough already let’s build this school now. A new school is needed. We need competition to make our area schools better.
As has been published elsewhere, area schools run at about 77 percent capacity.
Quit lying.
There is no reason to build this school. Please consider the following:
The primary issue according to Alderman Solis is school overcrowding. There are 11 schools within 2 miles of the proposed UNO school. These schools have almost 13,000 seats which are used an average of 71% of the time. Using the 80% ideal capacity there are almost 1200 unused seats in this area. In the area 1 mile or less from the proposed UNO school there are 5300 seats with an attendance of 77%. Using the 80% ideal capacity there are 162 unused seats.
The four schools closest to the UNO site average a 76 overall score for all state tests, which is 10 points better than the district’s average score of 66. The 76 average score is also better than the UNO network elementary score of 73.