The newest battleground in the citywide conflict between the teachers’ union and charter schools has emerged at a parcel of vacant land near Chicago’s far northwest edge. And on Tuesday evening, rookie Ald. Nicholas Sposato (36th Ward) will find himself in the middle of the fight over a new charter school proposal for the site from one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s most prominent allies.
The United Neighborhood Organization, led by Emanuel mayoral campaign co-chairman Juan Rangel, wants to buy the land in the Galewood neighborhood and build a new school that would open next year. UNO first would need a zoning change from the City Council, which traditionally has deferred to the wishes of a site’s alderman.
Sposato said Monday he would withhold judgment on the plan until receiving feedback from constituents at a public hearing on the zoning change proposal. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Shriners Hospital for Children, 2211 N. Oak Park Ave.
Officials with Chicago Teachers Union said they were organizing a show of opposition to the proposal. The CTU does not represent teachers at city charter schools.
UNO is the most politically influential Latino community group in the city. It runs 11 charter schools with about 5,600 students in Chicago, and in 2009, the group received a $98 million state grant to expand its school network.
Overcrowded public schools on the Northwest Side, where the Latino population has grown, make 2102 N. Natchez Ave. a natural spot for a new UNO school, Rangel said Monday.
“This is the new frontier for the Latino community,” Rangel said. “We’re trying to bring quality choices to the public school system there and across the city.”
The new school would be one of three that the Chicago Board of Education has allowed UNO to open in the fall of 2012, he said, and the group hopes to receive permission to operate another three new schools starting in 2013.
But CTU organizers Matthew Luskin and Kathy Murray said they have reached out to members at six public schools in the area, urging them to appear at Tuesday’s zoning meeting and to talk to parents of their students about how the new charter could negatively impact neighborhood schools.
“The big concern always with charter schools is that they come in and cherry-pick the best and the brightest in the schools,” Murray said. “All the regular neighborhood schools then lose enrollment and their scores drop.”
Luskin said he thought UNO would have a harder time winning support from Sposato than it would from the Board of Education, whose members are appointed by Emanuel.
“I think it makes it much more likely that he is going to make a decision that reflects the interests of the people in the community than an ideological decision to just support the expansion of charter schools at the expense of neighborhood education,” Luskin said.
Sposato, a former firefighter who defeated the incumbent alderman in the April run-off election, said he was pro-union but had not made a decision on the UNO zoning change request yet.
“I’m a big CTU supporter, but I have to weigh all options and see what everyone has to say,” Sposato said. “I want what the people want.”
Rangel said he would testify at the meeting Tuesday that the new school would create 300 union construction jobs. The site had been zoned for residential development plans that stalled when the housing market went bust, he said.
“It’s an opportunity to re-develop an area where nothing will come for many years,” Rangel said. “We are ready to buy the land and the state has made the money available. We can begin ground-breaking within the next two weeks.”