WBEZ | schools

'Zero trust' after CPS admits it overstated savings from closing schools

Mon, 06 May 2013 21:12:00 -0500

One of the reasons Chicago says it needs to close 54 schools is to save money. If the school district doesn’t have to fix a leaky roof on one school, it can spend the savings on a library at another school. But the amount Chicago Public Schools says it’s going to save by closing down schools is being challenged by parents, school staff and aldermen across the city. And CPS itself recently admitted to overstating how much it would save from closing schools.

WBEZ’s Linda Lutton has been looking into claims that estimated savings from closing school buildings are inflated. She brings us this story, which was reported with Sarah Karp of Catalyst Chicago Magazine. Read the Catalyst story here.

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In late March, 14,000 kids across Chicago brought home letters saying their schools were being closed, the reasons for shutting each school spelled out…

BURKE: Stuck in the backpack. ‘We’re closing Trumbull and this is why….’

That’s parent Ali Burke. She’s standing outside four-story Trumbull Elementary in Edgewater, a 100-year-old school building that dominates the corner of Foster and Ashland. Parent James Morgan is there too.

MORGAN: So this is what was sent home: Trumbull Elementary. Why CPS recommends to close this school: Enrollment has declined by 33 percent over the last 10 years, and building requires $16.3 million to maintain and update.

LUTTON: And that’s what you looked at and said…?

BURKE: There’s no way. There’s just no way. I mean, I was in shock. I mean, come on. Because $16 million—it’s not accurate! I’m telling you, I’ve been in this school—every day! It doesn’t need $16 million dollars worth of improvements.

Parents are incredulous for a reason: A 2010 assessment found Trumbull needed $4.9 million in repairs and upgrades. The assessment was itemized, three pages. The new $16 million figure is more than three times higher. There's no new assessment, nothing in writing.

And at many of the 54 schools slated for closure, there’s a similar pattern. Parents, teachers, principals—even aldermen—say CPS is inflating what it would cost to repair or update their closing schools. The higher those costs, the more CPS can say it saves by shutting them down and avoiding those repairs.

RILEY: We are looking at pretty much brand new banisters that were put in last year. The roof was put in last year. Freshly painted… all this is new… you can come in my room for a second, look at the smart boards.

At Paderewski Elementary on the West Side, teacher April Riley gives me a tour of the latest building improvements. Five years ago, this school needed $3 million worth of work. The school district did some of that. In March, the school closing letter CPS sent home said nearly $7 million more was needed.

RILEY: So how is the number twice what it was in 2008? I don’t know where they got the number from.

WBEZ and Catalyst have been asking a lot of questions about just that, about why schools were being assigned such high repair costs, about how the district arrived at the $560 million total it said it would save by closing schools. Then, last week, CPS lowered that estimate. Lowered it by $122 million, about 20 percent.

School officials explained: their numbers changed because they had new building assessments, long itemized lists of needed improvements. But it turns out that just six closing schools have received the new assessments. For the rest of the closing schools, CPS rejiggered old assessments, adding in costs for inflation, construction management, and a contingency.

Board president David Vitale said he is not really bothered by shifting estimates of how much the district will save by closing schools.

VITALE: Not so much. Because you know we’re not going to be making a decision until May (22). And I’m sure we will ask what these numbers look like in their final form. But from my standpoint, whether it’s $400 million or $600 million isn’t going to be the key decision variable for whether the school needs to close.

Vitale says he’ll be looking at each school individually. He says he'll consider potential savings from layoffs too. And he’s keeping his eye on the big picture—the district’s belief that consolidating schools will give kids a better education.

One top CPS official said it doesn’t make sense to quibble over what the total cost savings might be. He said it’s “intuitive” that the district will save money by closing schools.

Not everyone sees it that way.

LEAVY: The presumption has been, 'Of course we’ll save money!' They already have a couple dozen buildings that are vacant that they haven’t been able to sell.

Jackie Leavy works with a General Assembly task force that reviews CPS facility decisions. She thinks it’s possible not a penny could be saved from some school closures. There’s still a cost to owning a closed school, Leavy says. There’s a cost to mothball it, to put it on the market, keep it heated and graffiti-free. And if that neighborhood needs another school in the futre?

LEAVY: I mean, keep in mind to build a new elementary school today costs anywhere from $60 to $75 million.

There’s a more fundamental question about cost savings from closing schools. Namely: would CPS ever make all the repairs schools need anyway? And is it fair to say the public “saved” money on improvements the district was never going to get around to? Here’s an example: at one point CPS budgeted in the cost of central air conditioning for all the closing schools. No one thinks that improvement was ever going to happen. Still, it was counted in the savings we’d get from closing schools.

Alderman Ricardo Muñoz says the whole thing reminds him of his college statistics class.

MUNOZ: It’s obvious that the Board of Education here is playing with the numbers to their advantage, saying that they’ll be saving millions and millions and millions of dollars. There’s no real rhyme or reason as to how they’re gonna be saving this much money.

Back at Trumbull, the $16 million that CPS originally told parents it would cost to fix up their school got revised—down to $11 million. That’s according to an internal document CPS provided WBEZ and Catalyst last week. But parents at Trumbull still haven’t been told anything is different.

Ali Burke, the parent there, says she can’t believe CPS put out a school closing list and didn’t double check its numbers. She says Trumbull parents have been asking from the beginning for anything in writing that substantiates what CPS would save by closing their school.

BURKE: For us, it’s just incredibly frustrating. We should see the quote. We’re not talking about redecorating a bathroom, we’re talking about a school. They’re citing a quote, a bid that’s part of the reason they want to close our school—displace 406 students. We should know why we’re being closed.

Burke says she’s sure of one number at this point: her trust in the school district is at zero.

Linda Lutton reports on education for WBEZ. Follow her @WBEZeducation

District estimates of capital need at schools (or of potential capital savings if the school is closed) have shifted. Parents, teachers, principals and elected officials have complained that CPS is inflating repair costs in an effort to enlarge the apparent savings the district would achieve by closing schools.

Closed school	Year last assessed	Capital needs from last assessment	Updated capital needs (based on CPS estimates) Provided to parents at many closing schools on March 21	New capital "cost avoidance" (savings) estimates, May 2
Armstrong	2008	$1,754,000	$6,003,000	$4,265,963
Attucks	2008	$7,621,000	$20,995,000	$17,373,599
Bethune	2006	$3,044,000	$10,526,000	$6,943,674
Bontemps	2012/2013	$3,898,651	$6,639,000	$6,093,701
Buckingham	2008	$1,087,000	$4,308,000	$2,807,745
Burnham	2010	$2,705,000	$8,634,000	$5,626,138
Calhoun	2012/2013	$8,113,601	$13,438,000	$10,308,651
Canter	2010	$3,081,000	$10,812,000	$7,731,838
Courtenay	2008	$1,028,000	$6,380,000	$4,328,883
Dett	2010	$3,305,000	$9,869,000	$8,134,383
Dodge	2009	$931,000	$2,846,000	-$643,069
Drake	2010	$7,960,000	$21,015,000	$16,499,767
Earle	2009	$4,944,000	$16,318,000	$11,524,026
Emmet	2010	$3,977,000	$11,452,000	$7,336,482
Ericson	2009	$1,873,000	$9,579,000	$5,744,363
Fiske	2008	$4,271,000	$11,749,000	$8,227,960
Garvey	2012/2013	$3,327,796	$6,288,000	$3,718,877
Goldblatt	2008	$4,644,000	$15,536,000	$12,308,197
Henson	2012/2013	$4,475,496	$9,279,000	$6,670,546
Jackson, M.	2010	$2,655,000	$8,456,000	$5,319,582
Key	2010	$3,824,000	$13,593,000	$9,067,065
King	2010	$3,128,000	$11,231,000	$7,816,301
Kohn	2010	$8,053,000	$22,722,000	$16,666,895
Lafayette	2010	$7,713,000	$22,076,000	$14,075,796
Leland	2007	$1,494,000	$4,799,000	$3,016,785
Mannierre	2008	$3,936,000	$13,105,000	$10,038,918
Marconi	2010	$1,610,000	$4,143,000	$1,208,841
Mays	2008	$2,916,000	$11,097,000	$8,327,097
Melody	2007	$3,607,000	$10,580,000	$8,892,749
Morgan	2010	$4,711,000	$12,404,000	$10,547,756
Near North	2010	$3,038,000	$12,267,000	$8,154,564
Overton	2009	$5,846,000	$17,396,000	$13,656,255
Owens	2008	$2,814,000	$8,830,000	$7,829,797
Paderewski	2008	$3,078,000	$6,862,000	$3,855,599
Parkman	2008	$4,653,000	$14,686,000	$10,721,712
Peabody	2010	$3,319,000	$11,512,000	$8,159,542
Pershing East	2010	$1,382,000	$12,819,000	$2,549,545
Pope	2012/2013	$3,660,445	$9,220,000	$5,855,495
Ross	2008	$5,588,000	$17,156,000	$13,323,873
Songhai	2008	$5,512,000	$18,041,000	$13,125,745
Stewart	2010	$5,046,000	$16,425,000	$11,263,090
Trumbull	2010	$4,893,000	$16,258,000	$10,988,138
Ward, L.	2008	$3,318,000	$9,801,000	$8,800,621
Wentworth	2010	$5,053,000	$17,583,000	$11,275,670
West Pullman	2012/2013	$8,816,347	$14,919,000	$11,011,397
Woods	2010	$3,894,000	$13,234,000	$9,192,860
Yale	2008	$3,471,000	$8,943,000	$5,847,222
Von Humboldt	2010	$10,748,000	$24,687,000	$18,320,455

Illinois House approves bill on comprehensive sex education

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0500

Illinois students: Get ready for more banana condom demonstrations.

On Wednesday, the Illinois House passed legislation on comprehensive sexual education, a bill supported by the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Illinois Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.

Sponsored by Rep. Camille Lilly, the bill seeks to reform the state of public education in Illinois, where 2008 statistics show that less than two-thirds of students receive comprehensive sex ed instruction. For advocates, “comprehensive” education covers four base topics: abstinence education, contraception, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.

However, only 42 percent of schools provided instruction on how to obtain and use contraceptives, and less than a third of faculty members have received any kind of formal training on the subject. This leads to a culture where we not only don’t talk about sex; we don’t even know how to talk about it.

The proposed legislation, HB 2675, tackles this issue by creating curriculum standards for middle and high school students, providing them with information and resources to prevent STIs and unintended pregancies. The bill’s language allows local districts to choose the sexual education curricula that’s right for their schools and community and gives parents the option to unenroll their child from any courses they deem objectionable.

With this legislation, the AIDS Foundation of Chicago hopes to improve our state of sexual education. In a press release Wednesday, government relations director Ramon Gardenhire said, “The General Assembly moved closer to providing students in Illinois access to information to make responsible decisions about their sexual health.”

The vote passed in the General Assembly of the Illinois House with 66 votes.

Carole Brite of Planned Parenthood believes this broad support is a great sign of the bill’s health. Brite stated,

“Today we are pleased that...the Illinois House voted to ensure that teens in Illinois have access to medically accurate, age appropriate, comprehensive sex education. This bill is a huge step forward in advancing the health and safety of young people in Illinois—while they are teenagers and throughout their adult lives—and we look forward to thoughtful consideration by the Illinois Senate.”

In her statement, Brite noted the importance of educating young students on sexual health, rather than providing abstinence-only education, arguing that sexual health leads to healthy choices. Brite said, “Studies show that sex education that covers contraception and disease prevention results in teens who are more likely to delay sexual activity and use protection when sexual activity does occur.”

Studies from the American Pediatric Association support Brite’s claim. The APA has historically slammed abstinence-only education, alleging that it leads to a higher risk of teen pregnancy and contraction of STIs. This is especially important at a time when the Center for Disease Control estimates that 50% of American teenagers are sexually active. According to CDC, the United States accounts for the highest teen pregnancy rate among developed nations, leading to lower academic and economic achievement. Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of school and to have children who become teen mothers themselves.

According to Rep. Lilly, Illinois needs to take action to break these patterns, and the bill’s passage is a great step forward for Illinois’ schools. Rep. Lilly said, “As the discussion on the House floor made clear, it was time for us to modernize the basic curricula in Illinois for teaching sexual health education. If this measure becomes law, public school curricula will provide young people with tools and information necessary to grow and mature in a safe and healthy fashion.”

Now that the bill has passed the House, comprehensive sexual education heads to the Illinois Senate, where Sen. Heather Steans plans to back it. The Senate passed a similar measure in 2011 that was never voted on by the House, and advocates are hopeful the measure will be ratified.

Khadine Bennett, the legislative council for the Illinois ACLU, believes the time is now for sexual education reform. Bennett said, “We urge the Senate to act as soon as possible to move this important measure forward.”

Nico Lang writes about LGBTQ issues in Chicago. You can follow Nico on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Hey, Toronto – take this

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:00:00 -0600

'I’D RATHER BE THE 500TH MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN CHICAGO THAN THE KING OF CANADA.' Neil Steinberg reacts in the Sun-Times to news the population of Toronto is now larger than Chicago's.
* Also in Chicago's favor: We have the Blackhawks.
* And a citywide bike swap.
* And Peter Sagal of "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" (but not when he was 25 years old).
* And dead body photos.
* The Onion: "Bostonians buzz about their daily routines in a delightful hubbub of excitement as if they lived in a major American metropolis."

'A LAWSUIT WAITING TO HAPPEN.' That's one community activist's response to a Sun-Times analysis that concludes 9 in 10 of the Chicago Public School students potentially affected by school closings this year are black.
* Commission report: Chicago can sustain closure of 80 schools – more than seven times the maximum yearly total so far.
* Protesters gather outside Uptown alderman's office to oppose "War on the Poor."

Fresh news quiz tomorrow. Missed last week's? Here you go.

THE FILIBUSTER THAT ATE WASHINGTON. The Atlantic boils down almost 13 hours of Sen. Rand Paul's anti-drone monologue into a few key highlights.

* Filibuster fueled in part by tweets from fans.

* Obama's food-based political strategy bringing Paul Ryan to lunch.

* Fact-checkers singe presidential pants.

'CHÁVEZ WAS TRYING TO EMBARRASS PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH. ... OR HE GENUINELY CARED ABOUT THE POOR PEOPLE OF CHICAGO.' The Reader's Ben Joravsky recalls a time when Venezuela's president offered the CTA millions of dollars worth of free gasoline.

* WBEZ's Achy Obejas translates 2011 speech in which Hugo Chávez discussed likelihood he'd been poisoned by the U.S.

* Is Chávez's chosen successor, his vice president, the real deal – or just a "Mini-Me"?

ANGRY, BUT FREE. The original "Angry Birds" game is now available at no charge for the iPhone and other mobile devices.
* After 6 months, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer gets bonus for ... One. Million. Dollars.

ANNOUNCEMENTS.
* Suggestions for this blog? Email anytime.
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* Follow us on Twitter: @WBEZ and @Meyerson.

Today’s Mighty Acorns, tomorrow’s environmentalists

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:09:00 -0600

Part of the conservationist Aldo Leopold’s classic “land ethic” was the idea that you cannot act ethically toward something that you do not “understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.”

“Your true modern is separate from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets,” he wrote in 1948’s A Sand County Almanac. “He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow.”

For many children growing up in a metropolis like Chicago, that may be the case. Indeed some communities are consistently deprived easy access to nature. But Chicago’s famous stockyards and steel-framed skyscrapers are not as isolated from Leopold’s land as the city's middlemen and gadgets might suggest.

Twenty years ago, The Nature Conservancy started Mighty Acorns, an environmental education program that introduces Chicagoans to nature when they are young, hoping to recruit (or awaken) life-long stewards of the land.

Before they joined the program, for example, some students from the Academy for Global Citizenship, a charter school near Midway airport, might not have know about the rolling hills and forests less than 10 miles down the road at Arie Crown woods in southwest suburban Countryside, Ill.

Monday morning was the fifth graders’ second visit to Arie Crown woods. In just a few hours, the group spotted a coyote and a Cooper’s hawk, as well as plenty of deer tracks in the fresh snow. They also got a crash course in ecological restoration, learning to identify and clear buckthorn, an invasive species that crowds out native oaks.

“That’s the best kind of education: getting out and experiencing things,” said Ruth Jetton, a teacher whose fifth grade class seemed especially adept at reading animal tracks — and initiating the occasional snowball fight.

Teachers who once turned to textbooks for far-flung environmental case studies now teach sustainability from Chicago’s backyard.

“I think it gives the kids some ownership,” said another teacher, Joe Phillips. “They know about wildlife already but they don’t have the same sense of it until they visit.”

Other exercises focused on adaptation and interdependence. Students mocked up a “web of life,” donning nametags like “mushroom,” “mouse,” and “hawk,” and then literally stringing out the relationships of their adopted identities using orange rope.

The Forest Preserve District of Cook County serves the most children per year of the two dozen partner organizations that make up the Mighty Acorns consortium.

The environmental challenges that these kids will face are incredibly complex, inherently political and potentially very costly. So an awareness of nature and basic ecology is only the beginning of a real environmental education. But an early connection to the land can set the stage for lifelong growth, teachers say.

Congress even gave this idea a vote of confidence in 1990 by passing the National Environmental Education Act. And Aldo Leopold knew the value of education, too.

“The objective is to teach the student to see the land,” he said. “To understand what he sees, and enjoy what he understands.”

Strike cancels classes in northern Illinois district

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:19:00 -0600

GRAYSLAKE, Ill. — Thousands of students in northern Illinois won't be in school after teachers went out on strike.

The strike beginning Wednesday involves about 4,000 elementary and middle school students in Community Consolidated School District 46, which serves Grayslake, Round Lake, Lake Villa and several other communities in suburban Chicago.

Superintendent Ellen Correll says negotiators failed to reach an agreement Tuesday. Jim Pergander of the Lake County Federation of Teachers says the talks stalled over pay.

District 46 teachers currently earn an average of $57,000 per year.

Illinois high court upholds school funding system

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 14:32:00 -0600

The Illinois Supreme Court has upheld a decision to toss a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state's system of funding public school districts largely through property taxes.

The high court issued its unanimous opinion Thursday, agreeing with a lower court ruling.

Hundreds of public school districts are funded mostly through property taxes. The state sets minimum per student funding levels with specified tax rates for each district.

The 2010 lawsuit argued some residents in poorer districts whose property is worth less must pay a higher tax rate to reach funding levels of those in wealthier school districts. It called that unconstitutional and unfair.

Thursday's opinion says local communities themselves determine the tax rate. And it says any disparities that result aren't a direct result of the state's funding statute.

'A' for architecture: Design of UNO's newest charter school deserves praise

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 05:00:00 -0500

Some of the best-looking Chicago schools these days have been the charter campuses built--with surprising frequency, as of late — by the United Neighborhood Organization.

The group's newest facility, the UNO Galewood Charter School, which opened late last month is no exception. Tucked away at 2050 N. Natchez on a residential street in the city's Galewood community, the three-story school leaps from its surroundings. Most notable is the remarkable sloped roof on the southern end of the school. The roof surface has small slit-like windows to let in natural light while glass walls enclose the space beneath, creating a two-story, multiuse space topped by a third floor library.

Like a good neighbor, the school greets the street well, with an open glassy entrance and warmly-colored siding.

The main entrance allows views straight through the school's first floor:

A concert of concrete, metal and glass:

The $21 million school has 18 classrooms and was designed by UrbanWorks Ltd, a Chicago architecture firm with impressive credits that include the recent revamp of the Benito Juarez high school campus at 21st and Laflin and the UNO Veteran's Memorial School campus at 4248 W. 47th St., in the Archer Heights neighborhood.

UNO operates 13 charter schools. A year ago, the group opened the UNO Soccer Academy, a serpentine, stainless steel clad school that made more than a few architectural "best of" lists in 2011.

Asbestos removal set at closed Illinois school

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:59:00 -0500

The first phase of asbestos removal is set to start May 1 at a central Illinois junior high school that was forced to close for the rest of the school year.

Renovations are projected to cost $3.2 million at Chiddix Junior High School. The school closed in late February for the school year after Illinois Department of Public Health recommended sealing ten classrooms and extensive air tests. The renovations will include new ceilings, carpeting, lighting and furniture. It also includes asbestos removal work.

All work is scheduled to be finished by the time school starts in the fall. Asbestos removal should be finished by June 4.

East St. Louis district to close 5 schools

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:38:56 -0500

The East St. Louis school system says it will shutter five schools because of declining enrollment and in an effort to pare the district's roughly $12 million budget deficit.

The Belleville News-Democrat reports that the schools will close by June 30. Officials say that, along with related layoffs, could save the district $2.5 million to $3.7 million next school year.

School board President Lonzo Greenwood says the panel is saddened. But he says the closures are necessary because of a lack of federal funds that can't be replaced by local taxes.

A public town hall meeting is scheduled for April 26 at Mason-Clark Middle School to discuss attendance boundaries for the elementary schools that students will attend next year.

Report: Crime at U.S. public schools on the decline

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:38:00 -0600

MIAMI — Crimes and homicides in public schools nationwide have declined, part of a downward trend seen over the past several years.

Data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice show declines across a number of indicators, including thefts, violent crimes, bullying and gang activity.

There were 33 homicides on school grounds during the 2009-10 academic year. That's the lowest number since the agencies began recording data in 1992. In the previous school year, there were 38 violent deaths.

The proportion of students ages 12 to 18 who reported being bullied at school has declined from 32 to 28 percent. Cyber bullying, however, has risen from 4 to 6 percent, one of the few areas with an increase.