WBEZ | Chicago Public Schools

More than classrooms lost in school closings

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:48:00 -0500

A volunteer unloads bags of yellow onions, whose skins flake off onto the linoleum floor. Customers squeeze green bell peppers and drop them into plastic bags. Over it all you hear a juicer. Someone’s making fresh orange juice.

Every other Tuesday, a food pantry pops up in an empty classroom at Henson Elementary in the North Lawndale neighborhood in Chicago.

“We have apples today and bananas, so it’s a very healthy meal,” says Eular Hatchet, who helps out at the pantry.

The Greater Chicago Food Depository delivers these fresh fruits, vegetables and canned goods as part of its Healthy Kids Markets. Last year, more than 80 Henson families took home shopping bags of food.

Chicago Public Schools is looking to close Henson, saying the school's enrollment is at a third of its capacity and the building costs $9.3 million a year to update and maintain. Students would be transferred to nearby Charles Evans Hughes Elementary.

But parents and teachers question what it means to be underutilized. Just look down the hall from the pantry. You’ll find one of three classrooms now used by Erie Family Health School-Based Health Center, a clinic run by Chicago non-profit Erie Family Health.

Erie hosts community workshops. At one meeting, moms sit together and talk about throbbing wisdom teeth, home remedies and never-ending colds. This session covers general health, but another could be about nutrition or resume writing.

More than 600 people visited the Erie clinic for medical services last year. Henson parent Tina Smith says her third grade son uses the clinic, along with her mother and adult daughter. “People don’t have the resources or they just don’t take the time to go to the doctor,” Smith says. “Now, here... when it’s time for immunizations the ladies in the clinic, they’ll let you know. They’ll call the kids down from class. They give them their immunizations and they go right back to class.”

Beyond booster shots and Band-Aids, the clinic has a counselor on-site for students. The community can also use Erie computers to apply for jobs, look for housing or fill out applications for social services.

Marian Byrd, an Erie employee, says the clinic keeps parents close to the school and to their kids. “You have a place that you can come to and receive these resources and also be able to be in the building with your child,” Byrd says. “Kids tend to have a better day in school when they know their parent is actively in the school.”

Parents seeing kids succeed is just as critical. On the second floor of Henson, America Scores operates in a repurposed classroom. America Scores is a national non-profit that leads programs at elementary and middle schools in Chicago and in cities across the U.S.

At an editorial meeting for their school yearbook, two Henson eighth graders scribble down notes in big, looping letters. Once in a while, when a really good idea comes to them, they slap hands and explode their fists. No parents are at this meeting, but when kids go home and report their progress, the parents respond. “They even feel a little more inspired because of the services provided by the school,” says Donell Ausley, coordinator for America Scores at Henson. “That’s giving them an expectation or a goal that doesn’t sound or seem as dreamy.”

Ausley is known as Coach D around Henson. The before- and after-school program he runs gives him the opportunity to engage parents. “It gave me the ability to say to the parent, ‘Hi, how you doing, my name is Coach D, and your child is great,” he says. “This is now a different feedback than your child’s not listening, they’re not doing their grades.”

Ausley says that after speaking with parents he can ask them to join a fitness class or health program, where they can come and spend more time at Henson.

The Illinois State Board of Education awarded America Scores this grant for its work at Henson. The board says it expects the program to follow the students if they transfer to another school.

The futures of the Erie Family Health Clinic and the food pantry are unclear. The pantry will likely move to another neighborhood school, but the clinic would have to find a school with enough space to host its services—which may be a struggle without empty classrooms. Erie counselor Sandra Rigsbee says Henson’s possible closure and the potential loss of the services fuels a sense of abandonment for North Lawndale. “I think the experience is resources come, resources leave. They can’t be depended on,” Rigsbee says. “Often there’s a feeling of people come kind of for their own benefit but not with a real commitment to the community.”

CPS board votes to close 50 schools

Wed, 22 May 2013 05:17:00 -0500

The Chicago Board of Education voted to close 50 public schools today, marking the largest round of closings in American history.

In all, they voted on proposals to shutter 54 schools, but in the eleventh hour, district CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett recommended that four schools stay open: Garvey, Ericson, Mahalia Jackson and Manierre. In addition, Barton will not be turned around, and Canter will be phased out instead of closed.

Listen: WBEZ visits two of the spared schools

The board voted on those recommendations and on proposals to replace the staff at six grammar schools and to have 23 schools share 11 buildings, in what’s commonly called a "co-location."

Chicago Public Schools officials unveiled a list of schools they wanted to close in March, after a months-long process of whittling down a list of more than 300 elementary schools they considered to be under-enrolled.

At first, CPS pitched the massive closures as a way to save money in light of a projected $1 billion deficit, arguing they needed to combine “half-empty” schools in order to operate more efficiently. But in recent weeks, school leaders quietly reduced the estimated cost savings and started talking more about getting kids into higher performing schools.

“The goal is to make sure every child has a high-quality education, because without that, rather than doors being open, doors will be closed to their future,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a press conference Tuesday. A WBEZ analysis of school performance shows only three closings sending kids to a top-performing school. One third will send kids to equally low-performing schools.

In an unprecedented move, CPS is investing heavily in the receiving schools. According to board reports for today's meeting, 19 receiving schools are slated to get extra money and positions next year to implement new middle school programs. Schools getting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs may receive $376,000 in startup funds and two extra positions. Schools implementing International Baccalaureate (IB) programs may get $255,000 and two positions and one school, Haley Elementary, may get $237,000 to start a fine and performing arts program.

Listen: Aldermen speak against school closings in their wards

The closures are just one piece of a larger school reform and restructuring plan. Buried in the school shake-ups being voted on today are plans to open 13 new schools and a handful of alternative programs. Many of those have already been approved by the board.

Follow @WBEZeducation on Twitter for live updates.

Affected schools: Closures, turnarounds and receiving schools

What will be lost

Wed, 22 May 2013 05:00:00 -0500

Chicago’s Board of Education votes today on closing an unprecedented number of elementary schools. WBEZ reporters asked Chicagoans to tell us in their own words what would be lost if their school closes. Education reporter Linda Lutton presents some of what we heard.

Update: Early Wednesday, WBEZ confirmed that CPS CEO Barbara Bryd-Bennett recommended that Mahalia Jackson school, the South Side school where hearing impaired children go to school with neighborhood children, be removed from the closings list. Ericson School, with its dedicated pompon squad, also is recommended for removal from closings list.

Few Chicago school closings will move kids to top-performing schools

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:39:00 -0500

The biggest reason Chicago’s school district says it’s closing 53 grammar schools is to give students a better education.

Here’s what Mayor Rahm Emanuel told reporters shortly after the closings were announced:

“The status quo is not working, and it’s falling woefully short for the children of the City of Chicago, regardless of where they live and regardless of their circumstances. Every one of the children—if they go to a better school—can achieve.”

During two months of public hearings and debate, Emanuel has reiterated that claim, and CPS has promised that every student from a closing school will be sent to a better performing “welcoming” school.

But just how “better” is defined has become a point of contention in a heated debate. It's a debate that parents like Valeria Hinton now find themselves in the midst of.

The case of Goodlow
Hinton’s son is in the sixth grade at Goodlow Magnet Elementary in Englewood.

Goodlow is slated to close. Earle is the designated receiving school.

Hinton carries a very large purse, and lately she’s taken to keeping test score data in there. She pulls it out whenever the discussion of closing Goodlow comes up.

“Right here,” she says one day outside the school. “Earle School had 50 percent that meet or exceed. Goodlow is at 57.3 percent meet or exceed, and that’s in science.” Hinton shows me the school’s latest ISAT test scores for reading (Earle: 52.5 percent meet/exceed; Goodlow: 54.9 percent) and for math (Earle: 65.5 percent meet/exceed; Goodlow 65.8 percent). Then she turns to numbers for attendance, numbers showing which school is getting a greater proportion of its students promoted to the next grade.

“From what the data is showing us, Goodlow is a higher performing school than Earle,” Hinton concludes.

Goodlow is definitely better on many measures. Goodlow has higher overall ISAT scores. But Earle has shown tremendous growth in the past few years—which is why CPS considers it the better school. In reality, both schools are on probation, both earned the district’s lowest performance score. Both have negative value add scores, meaning both do worse than other schools with similar types of students. On paper, they’re both quite similar.

Consortium study: to see academic improvement, receiving schools must be in the top quartile
So what happens when a school like Goodlow closes and kids are sent to a school like Earle? Marisa de la Torre studied that question.

In 2009, de La Torre, a director at the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, followed the test score trajectory of 5,445 Chicago kids whose schools closed. She found the academic effects of sending them to other schools was, mostly—nothing.

“Statistically it’s not different from zero,” says de la Torre, which in researcher lingo means that after students moved to their new school, they continued on an academic trajectory that looked just like the trajectory they were on in their closed school.

De la Torre found there was just one way for kids from low performing closing schools to show better academic results. And that was to go to a “top performing school.”

“And when we say top performing schools, we look at the achievement level of those schools, and the 25 percent of the schools with the highest scores, those are the ones we called ‘top performing’ schools.’”

De la Torre basically put schools into four broad categories—quartiles—like grades handed out in school: A, B, C, D.

When Chicago Public Schools says it’s sending kids to “better” schools—it is not using those same broad categories. Instead, it’s getting into some really fine-grained distinctions in test score data to be able to say one school is better, even though in broad terms the schools might be very similar.

I asked de la Torre about the effect of moving students to different sorts of “better” schools. Here’s en excerpt from my conversation with her:

LUTTON: So if a child moved from the bottom quartile to the third from the bottom quartile—the next quartile up—what effect did you see there?
DE LA TORRE: On average, not much. Nothing positive nor negative either.
LUTTON: So if we move children from the bottom quartile to the second quartile did you notice any effect?
DE LA TORRE: We don’t see any effects. It would have been the same as you had predicted had the schools not closed.
LUTTON: So basically the only way you can get a positive effect is to move kids to the very highest performing schools?
DE LA TORRE: Based on the sample we had in the past, yes. That’s what we saw.

Few students slated to move from low-performing closing schools to top performers
In the closings the school board will consider Wednesday, just six receiving schools out of 55 are in the top quartile of all CPS schools. And in only three cases—3 out of 53 closings—are kids being sent from a school in the lowest quartile to a school in the highest. (They are King to Jensen, May to Leland, and Trumbull to Chappell.)

In 18 cases, students are being sent from Level 3 schools (the lowest performing designation CPS uses) to other Level 3 schools. In one of those cases, Overton Elementary students are slated to go to receiving school Mollison. Both schools are on probation. As recently as 2010, CPS tried to close Mollison for low performance. In his report, the indpendent hearing officer who considered Overton's closing wrote, “If the concept of a higher-performing school is to have substantive meaning, the mere fact of a mathematical variance between two schools with low academic performance and on probation is insufficient to be deemed a higher-performing school for the purpose of school action [closing].”

Another notable finding from de la Torre's study: While kids’ test scores in the long term didn’t get better or worse by having their schools closed, in the short term, there was an effect. Kids lost ground academically as soon as their school was put on the closings list.

“The biggest effects that we saw was the year of the announcement of the school closings,” says de la Torre. “You know, we think the stress and the anxiety takes place after the school closes, but it’s already happening right now to all these kids as well.”

A 2012 study of Washington, DC, school closings found similar results.

This year, Chicago is proposing something it’s never tried before. The district is making an unprecedented investment in receiving schools: in staffing and amenities like iPads, air conditioning, and libraries. That approach is unstudied.

District spokeswoman Becky Carroll criticized WBEZ for "going back" to de la Torre's study. She says the Consortium report and community input helped CPS come up with its school closing policy. And she repeated the district’s stance: Every child at a closing school will have an opportunity to attend a higher-performing welcoming school this fall.

Click here to see performance data for all proposed closing and receiving schools.

Lafayette Elementary string orchestra tunes up despite uncertain future

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:52:00 -0500

It’s obvious when you walk through Lafayette Elementary that music is a big part of the school. Every weekday afternoon, students toting violins, violas and cellos shuffle down the third floor of the building. The halls are lined with murals of musical instruments and quotes like, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” A crowded rehearsal room fills with children prepping their instruments for orchestra practice.

But students will not return to the rehearsal room this fall if Chicago Public School officials decide to shut down the school. CPS has proposed closing 54 schools in an effort to consolidate resources in the financially stricken district. The Chicago Board of Education is expected to make the final decisions Wednesday.

The Chicago Teachers Union plans to start a three-day march protesting the closings. It will kick off at Lafayette and feature the school’s string orchestra. Students, parents and teachers say they hope to shine a light on a program that’s had a positive impact on the school, where 94 percent of students come from low-income families.

CPS said there are discussions about moving the program to the school where Lafayette students will be sent, but no details have been finalized.

“I believe this program does something that cannot be duplicated, that cannot be easily replaced,” Arturs Weible, Lafayette music teacher and orchestra director, says. “It has to be continued.”

Weible started the orchestra program at Lafayette 13 years ago in partnership with Beth Bistro of the Merit School of Music, a Chicago nonprofit that supports music programs for students in at-risk communities. Bistro and Weible still direct the orchestra today.

Prior to Merit coming along, Weible said Lafayette’s music program was in scraps and tatters. He recalls scrounging garage sales to find any sort of instruments. So when his principal asked if he’d be interested in the partnership, he thought, “Uh, yeah! It’s a dream job kind of situation.”

Weible said the orchestra has grown to be the largest elementary string orchestra in CPS. Students, grades third through eighth, meet after school to play cello, violin, viola and double bass. They’ve played at the Chicago Children’s Museum, the state capitol in Springfield and even for Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Students in the program are more likely to go on to selective enrollment high schools and college, Weible says.

This isn’t the first time the program has been in jeopardy. Just two years ago it faced financial troubles and received an outpouring of community support.

“There are times when I feel like I’m hitting my head against a wall,” Weible says of the program’s ups and downs. But “I really believe in this. When you believe in something, you will do what it takes to make it work.”

Rousemary Vega, 32, attests to the positive influence the program has on students. She lives about a mile from the school, in a modest home with a red “Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them” sign tacked on the front door. She has one daughter in the orchestra and another who recently graduated from the program. She’s eager to show off photos of her daughters smiling and posing with their instruments.

“They’re good memories and good images of someone who loves their instrument and loves what they do,” she says.

Vega had her first child at 17. Instead of college, she went to work to support her family. She said the orchestra has given her children opportunities she never had: “That was hope. That was a future through music."

Her oldest daughter, 15-year-old Nidalis Burgos, got accepted as a music major in the selective Lincoln Park High School. Her younger daughter Meleny Ramos hopes to follow in her sister’s footsteps.

Meleny, a cello player in fifth grade, expresses concern for the program’s future.

“I love the music program, and I didn’t know this was going to happen,” Meleny said. “I wanted to play for the rest of my life.”

But CPS officials say the campus is under-utilized and should close. The school’s enrollment has dropped by more than 600 students since 2000. Officials say the closings would allow the district to run more efficiently, and they’d be able to better focus on providing more resources to schools. Most Lafayette students are slated to transfer to Fredrick Chopin Elementary, considered a higher performing school, about seven blocks away.

The possibility of Lafayette shutting down is emotional for Vega, who attended the school herself as a child.

“It was almost like family news of saying someone just died,” Vega says. “Everyone gathered in disbelief.”

Lafayette parents aren’t letting the school close without a fight. One of the leaders in that is Valerie Nelson, whose daughter Tesa plays violin in the orchestra. Nelson is also chair of Lafayette’s Local School Council. She tears up as she describes how the orchestra has allowed her shy daughter to open up on stage.

“We’ve been to Springfield; we’ve chased down senators; we’ve done walks,” she says. “I don’t know who else to beg and plead with to save our school.”

If the school is closed, the next challenge is figuring out whether Chopin has the budget and room to rebuild the orchestra program there. Weible says officials at Chopin and the Merit School of Music have expressed their hope for the program to continue.

Protesters march against plan to close CPS schools

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:45:00 -0500

50,421 Chicago kids in homerooms over the class size limit

Thu, 16 May 2013 01:34:00 -0500

More than 1,560 homerooms in Chicago public elementary schools are over the school district’s class size limits, according to numbers obtained by WBEZ and Catalyst Chicago Magazine from Chicago Public Schools. The revelation comes as Chicago is proposing to shut down a historic 53 grammar schools. Activists have raised repeated concerns that the massive restructuring will result in more overcrowded classrooms.

According to records, 50,421 children are in homerooms that are over the suggested class size limits. The numbers show 26,545 of Chicago’s littlest learners—in kindergarten, first or second grades— are in classrooms with 29 or more students. The district’s own guidelines say classes should be capped at 28 kids for younger students, 31 for third graders and up.

Eight thousand elementary school children are in classes with 35 or more students. Some are in homerooms of 40, even 45.

Wendy Katten, CPS parent and director of the nonprofit Raise Your Hand, says the numbers heighten her group’s concerns about the impact of closing schools. “Parents want class size addressed by the district,” says Katten. “And instead we’re moving to consolidate schools. 129 schools are going to be impacted with these closings. And what we’ll have is overcrowding and higher class sizes.”

The schools targeted to close or receive students tend to have lower class sizes than the rest of the district’s schools, the numbers show. On the low end, many classes have just a dozen or so students.

School officials have admitted privately that class sizes will increase for students in closing and receiving schools. They do not believe classes will hit 36, as activists have charged.

But the numbers obtained from the school district show that 18 percent of all elementary school homerooms have quietly crept over the recommended class size limits written into the teachers contract and school board policy.

“I hear members constantly letting me know that their class sizes are over what’s recommended in the contract,” says Chicago Teachers Union financial secretary Kristine Mayle. “This has been going on for years, it’s getting worse each year, and with this round of closures I think it’s going to make it even worse.”

Little recourse for large classes
Technically, neither teachers nor parents have any real recourse if they are assigned to teach or their children assigned to learn in a class above the limit. A joint union-district committee tries to look into the most egregious violations, Mayle says. But the committee has no real teeth and is overwhelmed by the scale of the problem.

The numbers indicate that even the district’s top grammar schools regularly overenroll students.

Asked why the district allows so many classes to go above limits, Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Becky Carroll wrote in an email, “The ‘District’ doesn't allow for this. These are decisions made by principals.”

Carroll says the board policy provides principals with “guidelines.” She says the district won’t know what class sizes will be like in receiving schools until enrollment is completed and principals have decided “how to structure their classrooms.” But, she added, “combining resources at underutilized schools will enable school leaders to access the supports needed to give these children a quality education, which many are not getting at this time.”

Research has shown that class size reductions help in younger grades, especially when it comes to low-income children. The research is less conclusive for older kids. But lowering class sizes is popular among parents and teachers. And it’s expensive. Chicago school officials have said it would cost $26 million to lower class size by a single student. And while the district has not provided details about how exactly it plans to save $43 million annually by closing 54 schools, some of that cost savings could come from taking two classrooms of 15—in two underutilized schools—and creating a single 30-student class.

The school district has pointed out that most classes that are over are over by 1, 2, or 3 students. But The Chicago Teachers Union contends that Chicago’s class size guidelines are already high, even when schools don’t go over them.

“A teacher can’t get to that first grader who’s trying to sound out words. You need individualized instruction at that age,” says union officer Kristine Mayle. “If you look at most of the suburbs around us , if you look at the Lab School for instance, they’re closer to 20, 22, 24 kids, at the very top of it is 24.”

Mayle said principals are given a “false choice” when it comes to class size—since buying extra teachers to keep class sizes low often means giving up something else, like an art teacher or a security guard.

44 third-graders
WBEZ and Catalyst have been seeking the class size numbers since December.

The data is a snapshot of enrollment taken the 20th day of this school year, the district’s traditional date for official enrollment counts. It’s a date schools often wait impatiently for; if more students than expected enroll, they can request additional teachers after the 20th day. The eight-month-old numbers are no longer completely accurate, since students come and go from schools. In some cases the district has authorized additional hiring, reducing class size. Phone calls to schools reveal that in other cases, classes have gotten bigger.

Principals at schools with large class sizes say they do what they can. Some hire substitutes until they are given the okay to hire another teacher. Some combine grades and run split classrooms. One South Side classroom had 44 third-graders until late April. According to staff there, that's when the authorization to hire an additional teacher came through. Next year, the district is switching to per-pupil budgeting, meaning principals will no longer have to wait for downtown authorization to hire a teacher; but they will have to weigh the importance of class size each time an additional student enrolls.

This story was co-reported with Sarah Karp of Catalyst Chicago Magazine.

ABOUT THE DATA: The class size file obtained by WBEZ from Chicago Public Schools is attached below. The excel file is a report showing the number of students assigned to homerooms in district-run Chicago elementary schools on the 20th Day of the 2012-13 school year, by school. Self-contained special education homerooms are not included. Pre-K classrooms are not included (except in limited cases where a school has a split pre-K/kindergarten class). Class sizes may have shifted (up or down) since the 20th Day due to student mobility, additional staffing from central office, or actions taken by the principal (such as combining two small classes into one or splitting a large class between other classes). Data source: Chicago Public Schools

CLASS SIZE	Number of homerooms this size in CLOSING schools	Number of homerooms this size in designated RECEIVING schools	Number of homerooms this size in UNAFFECTED schools	Grand Total
7	1	0	0	1
9	1	1	0	2
10	2	1	3	6
11	1	1	3	5
12	4	1	10	15
13	7	9	15	31
14	2	7	14	23
15	9	15	21	45
16	17	11	41	69
17	26	23	84	133
18	24	25	104	153
19	27	29	174	230
20	32	31	213	276
21	20	29	281	330
22	27	54	384	465
23	31	62	456	549
24	36	54	516	606
25	29	50	632	711
26	39	50	634	723
27	38	41	723	802
28	35	41	699	775
29	20	38	619	677
30	28	31	579	638
31	20	23	461	504
32	10	18	345	373
33	10	19	232	261
34	10	10	139	159
35	6	6	88	100
36	1	3	39	43
37	0	2	29	31
38	3	2	15	20
39	0	1	11	12
40	2	1	4	7
41	0	1	2	3
42	0	0	2	2
43	2	0	1	3
44	0	0	2	2
47	0	0	2	2
Grand Total	520	690	7577	8787

Teachers union helps parents file lawsuits to stop school closings

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:42:00 -0500

The Chicago Teachers Union helped a handful of parents file a pair of civil rights lawsuits Wednesday, seeking to slow down or stop Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to close 53 elementary schools this year.

The lawsuits allege that Chicago Public Schools’ plan to close and consolidate schools, if approved, will violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Illinois Civil Rights Act.

One case brought by three parents of students with special needs seeks an injunction that would hold off on closings for another year, so that students with special needs can have adequate time to adjust to a new school. There are roughly 6,000 students with special needs in schools that are proposed for closure.

The other suit claims the way CPS has gone about selecting schools for closure, both this year and in the past, is racist. CTU has been making the same claim for months.

“It may be failing schools one year, it may be under-utilization the next year, but the criteria all have one thing in common, the end result is that African American children are sent into equally segregated, equally failing schools,” said Thomas Goeghegan, the attorney representing the parents, who also have support from the teachers union.

According to district enrollment numbers, 80 percent of the students in proposed closing schools are black. But black students make up only 40 percent of the district’s total enrollment. CPS has been closing schools for a decade and most closings have occurred on the South and West sides of the city in predominately African American and Latino schools.

In a statement, CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the lawsuits and CTU are “protecting a status quo that doesn’t put children first.”

The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the proposals to close and consolidate schools next Wednesday, May 22.

Becky Vevea is an education reporter at WBEZ. Follow her @WBEZeducation.

School Closing ICRA Complaint by Chicago Public Media

2013-5-15 Special Ed Complaint Final by Chicago Public Media

Englewood seeks celebrity help to keep school open near urban garden

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:05:00 -0500

Students at Yale Elementary enjoy spring weather during recess. Laughter wafts from the playground. Girls in school uniforms chat in the grass, away from younger students.

Next to the school, on 70th Street and Princeton Avenue, is a vast garden, larger than most backyard gardens. Adult volunteers massage the soil to plant daffodils the color of bright sunshine.

In the summer, this mini-farm—with the help of children—will grow tomatoes, greens and dill. The garden is called Eat to Live, and the kids even learn a little bit about urban agriculture and healthy eating in the classroom. Across the street from the garden there’s land that will become an urban farm this summer. Eat to Live Englewood will provide residents with a permanent space for food production, community learning and disease prevention education. The goal is to reduce health disparities.

But Yale is slated to close at the end of the academic year as part of the Chicago Public Schools controversial plan to shutdown 54 schools.

Pushback against school closings is familiar. Many communities champion their neighborhood school as unique. They argue that a one-size-fits-all policy shouldn’t be used to shut their school down. That’s true for parents at Yale Elementary School. They say the school’s urban garden fits right in with a burgeoning focus on urban agriculture in the larger Englewood community.

Parts of the Englewood neighborhood are in a food desert. Alisa Ivory’s two children attend Yale and she toils in the garden. She and garden neighbor Demetria Scott chat about healthy food and the impact the garden has had on their lives and their childrens’.

"We are some junk food junkies," Ivory says. "And now my idea is turning away from a lot of junk food. Because that’s what it is - junk for your body."

"We went to Aldi’s one day up the street, Michael was like can we get some plain yogurt and some granola. And some bananas. And I said oh, yeah, Michael, we can get that," Scott says.

Behind the garden, on the next street over, is a ghostly boarded-up home. It’s the house singer and actress Jennifer Hudson grew up in—and where members of her family were killed several years ago.

Hudson attended Yale Elementary. As part of its large restructuring plan, Chicago Public Schools is proposing to close Yale and move its students to Harvard Elementary, about a mile away. Both schools are on the bottom of CPS academic ratings in a poverty-stricken neighborhood.

Yvette Moyo is the director of Real Men Charities, which started the Yale Eat to Live garden. At one of the school closing hearings, Moyo revealed an idea.

“At the microphone I said, you could have called Jennifer Hudson and asked her is there something you want to do in the area that you grew up in and an area where tragedy took place. Would you like to see it come back to life again and would you play a role in it,” Moyo recalls.

Moyo just learned that Hudson’s representatives declined her request. But she figures there are other Chicagoans who might like to help make an urban agriculture elementary school. Quincy Jones, maybe, or Lupe Fiasco, Common, or R. Kelly.

The city of Chicago is invested in reducing food instability around the neighborhood.

That’s a big reason Moyo doesn’t want Yale to close.

"The vision we’ve given to the children for two years is that they’re at the cutting edge of everything Chicago will be in the future and that is a part of an urban agriculture movement that not will only provide jobs but businesses for them and their parents, which is what’s really missing - the opportunity to be fruitful and to provide for families and communities," Moyo says. "When we talk about underemployment and the level of literacy the dropout rate of the parents even. This is something that we can provide for the community. And we kind of promised that we’ll be there for them, that they have added value by working in the Eat to Live Garden."

The school garden at Yale is heading into its second season.

Moyo says even if Yale closes at the end of the school year, plans for all the farms will continue.

And she says that’s why she’ll be going after other groups to help keep the school open.

So Moyo says she’ll keep writing letters to celebrities, and holding onto the garden’s mantra: "Everything Good Grows in Englewood."

Natalie Moore is a WBEZ reporter. Follow her @natalieymoore.

CPS wants to close first Renaissance schools

Wed, 08 May 2013 08:22:00 -0500

Chicago has been opening and closing public schools every year for the past decade.

It’s a controversial strategy that former Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan believed was an answer to improving public education.

But in the most recent round of proposed school closings, CPS is shutting down the very schools Duncan created.

Eleven years ago, on April 10, 2002, Duncan announced he would shut down three elementary schools—Williams, Dodge and Terrell—for chronic low performance. The idea was to start over from scratch in order to create something better.

Five years later—it seemed to have worked.

In 2008, Dodge was where then president-elect Barack Obama announced Duncan as his pick for U.S. Secretary of Education.

“He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs, even when it was unpopular,” Obama said at the time. “This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has more than tripled.”

But fast forward another five years, Dodge is closing its doors.

In fact, all three of the schools that would eventually help to launch Duncan’s signature Renaissance 2010 initiative are getting shaken up by the current CPS administration.

Williams Elementary and Middle School will close. (Drake Elementary will take over the building.) The Dodge building will close. (Dodge will technically continue to operate but will move 1.3 miles west to share a building with Morton Elementary.) The school that now operates in the old Terrell building, ACE Tech Charter School, was placed on an academic warning list in February, and district officials have warned if it doesn't improve they will close it down.

And for the first time, CPS is pulling the plug on a “turnaround” school, Bethune Elementary. Just four years ago, all Bethune staff was fired and the privately run, nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership took over--another example of the school reform strategy that says a clean slate can lead to better schools. AUSL also operates Dodge and Morton.

CPS spokeswoman Molly Poppe said no one was available to speak with WBEZ on the record about the proposals to close Williams and the Dodge building. She said CPS is “focusing on the challenges of today” and that the decisions this year are primarily about under-enrollment.

“No school is guaranteed to succeed and no school should have a perpetual license to operate if it’s failing… and you can’t pretend that a school is full if it’s mostly empty,” says Greg Richmond, who led the Office of New Schools at CPS under Duncan until 2005. Richmond now heads up the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the Illinois State Charter School Commission.

All these changes raise a much bigger question. Does the idea that closing down bad schools and opening new ones actually work? Does it lead to better schools?

“I think we have to keep trying until we find some things that work and these are very difficult circumstances and even the most talented people or some of the most talented schools may not work for some reason,” says Richmond. “Does that mean we were wrong to try it? I don’t think it means we were wrong. It was a very promising program and we tried it. But it didn’t work. Then you recognize it and then you move on. I would rather see that attitude than an attitude that keeps trying something that’s failing year after year.”

Richmond says there are all kinds of things--like buying new technology, changing curriculum and replacing leadership-- that districts keep trying over and over again in low performing schools even when they don’t work. Comparatively, closures are still pretty rare and seen as a last resort, he says.

And Dodge is still seen as a success story by Richmond and others. CPS rates it with a “Level 2” performance rating (on a scale of three). But it didn't get enough students to "vote with their feet" and enroll, which is why the Dodge building is now being closed.

“The spirit of Dodge will remain,” says Jarvis Sanford, the principal who re-opened Dodge Renaissance Academy in 2003. Sanford says he's come to terms with the school's teachers and program moving to another location. “We have to be careful not to think of the school as the sheer brick and mortar. But to think of it as the students, the teachers and the vibrancy of what it holds.”

But parents from Dodge who spoke at the latest round of public hearings are still upset with what they see as their school closing. They say the district didn't even give kids a chance to get from kindergarten to eighth grade without closing it again.

“We want Dodge to stay at Dodge, on Washington (Blvd),” one parent shouted.

“This is a model for CPS!” said another. “It should be a school that you look at and say, ‘Man, you know what? The idea that we had about taking this school, shutting it down, rebranding it, breathing new life into it, giving it a new model--we hit a sweet spot! We hit a gold mine! Two thumbs up!’ And then now to say, ‘Oh well, we’re not going to finish it through.’ We’re one year away from watching a full generation come through. To say, ‘Aw, oh yeah, well forget it.’”

It’s unclear what will happen to the Dodge building. The school district has not put Dodge on the list of buildings it is decommissioning. And Dodge may find it hard to attract students in its new home too. In addition to being located in the same building with another school, Dodge will be right around the corner from a new LEARN charter school the district is opening.

Many families at Dodge, Williams and Bethune say the schools are much better places today than when they were initially closed or turned around. All three schools increased the number of students meeting state standards in the last decade, according to CPS data.

Lillian Allen lives about twenty blocks south of Williams, but heard about the school from a friend whose children went there.

“When I walked in that school it was like it screamed HOME for my kids,” Allen said. “It was like the Bahamas commercial, come on in, welcome home, no problem man.”

She enrolled her two kids and then met Kim Ambrose and Alex Hall, who both attended Williams when they were little. As members of the Transition Advisory Council for the school, they helped reinvent and reopen Williams in 2003.

“When we first opened, I just want to list all of the programs we had,” Ambrose said, before rattling off a lengthy list of mentoring programs, classes for parents and extracurricular activities for students.

Like it has done for lots of new schools, CPS initially poured money and resources into Williams. But over time, parents say the programs and money started to fade away.

Richmond and others say on average, it costs a half million dollars upfront to start a new school. If you do the math, that means CPS has spent at least $50 million dollars, just in start-up costs.

Richmond says if a new school is an improvement, then that is money well spent. “Any new program costs money. So starting a new school costs money, but so does buying an iPad for everybody and so does expanding early childhood. Every new idea that comes out of CPS costs money.”

For Lillian Allen, all those new ideas coming out of CPS make her feel like she’s part of one big experiment.

“Sometimes I think that we are all pieces in the game that they’re playing,” Allen said. “And the game doesn’t affect their lives. It affects our lives. It affects our children’s lives and the outcomes of their lives.”

Becky Vevea is an education reporter at WBEZ. Follow her @WBEZeducation.