WBEZ | charter schools

School board approves $363 million spending package for system restructuring

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:58:00 -0500

The Chicago Board of Education approved a $363 million spending package Wednesday that will help pay for Chicago Public Schools massive restructuring plan.

CPS wants to close 54 schools—the most any school district has ever taken on in a single year. In all, the plan will affect 132 schools and each action will be voted on by the school board on May 22.

Initially, district officials said the move was necessary to address CPS’s ballooning deficit. But any savings won’t come for several years because the district plans to go further into debt in order to fix up the receiving schools and others that need upgrades.

CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said she wants classrooms at the remaining schools to “pop,” so that students want to come to school.

But when Garvey third grader Asean Johnson stepped up to the microphone, barely able to peer over the podium, he rattled off a list of the things his elementary school already has—a “well-stocked library, an award-winning garden,” an art room, a computer lab and several science labs.

“These are things you say that you want all schools to have but intentionally left these facts out of the fact sheet given to the parents in the community,” Johnson said. “Why would you take Marcus Garvey away from us?”

Garvey elementary is slated to close and students will be sent to nearby Mount Vernon—a move parents, teachers, and even the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board say is questionable.

Board members became slightly more outspoken on the closings issue during Wednesday’s meeting. Mahalia Hines, a former principal and current board member, pressed CPS officials on what specifically they would be doing to help students with special needs.

Hines raised concerns about the utilization formula not accounting for special education programs and told district officials they would need to review the safety plans at some of the schools. She said she took a few of the routes from closing to receiving schools and was shocked.

“That’s not a route I’d send my child,” she said, referring to the walk from Melody to Delano Elementary. “They are going to have to come back with some better options that that… There is no way, no way, I would send my child (on that walk). And I’m not voting for anything I wouldn’t vote for for my child. OK?”

It was clear that board members have been visiting the schools on the list of closures. At one point, board president David Vitale thanked a woman from Henson Elementary for showing him around the school last week. Henson is slated to close and students will move to Langston Hughes Elementary.

‘Community engagement’ shorter for some

For months, parents, teachers and other community activists have been fighting to pull their schools off the chopping block. CPS is on its fourth round of community engagement and many of the same faces came out again Wednesday for a final push. Formal public hearings end next week.

But for some groups, this latest round of public forums is the first chance they’ve had to speak out. That’s because a number of schools affected by the restructuring were not on any of the previous lists of schools eligible for closure.

Courtenay Elementary is one of them. A small school with lottery admissions on the North Side, it is slated to merge with nearby Stockton Elementary and move into the Stockton building. Courtenay parents are upset not only that the basic structure of the school will change into a large, comprehensive neighborhood school, but also because they didn’t see the proposal coming.

“I strongly oppose the merger of Courtenay and Stockton,” said Mila Cohen, whose daughter is in Courtenay’s special education program. “The mayor says the time for negotiation is over. This is insulting because there was no negotiation. There was no notice. No dialog and certainly, no transparency. Courtenay was never on any action lists and why should it be?”

Cohen said the only reason the school is not Level 1, the highest performance rating CPS gives, is because there wasn’t significant growth above the school’s already high scores. “By this logic, CPS would downgrade Harvard for not improving every year too.”

Dueling Protests

There is a sharp divide in the debate over school closings and improving the school system and the scene outside CPS headquarters before the meeting started Wednesday illustrated the tensions.

Outside, students, many of them juniors who were boycotting the second day of state testing, chanted “Education is our right, we won’t go without a fight!” while indoors, a large group of parents from UNO, Noble and Chicago International charter schools chanted, “Padres unidos, jamas de a vencidos!” (Translation: The parents united, will never be defeated!)

The groups had starkly different messages. The students said they want CPS to stop using their standardized tests to justify shutting down schools. While, the parents argued that the performance, mostly measured by standardized tests, is reason that CPS should open more charter schools.

The charter parents, decked out in T-shirts and bright yellow stickers, are part of a new group called Charter Parents United, or CPU. A press release about the group ASGK Public Strategies, a firm founded by David Axelrod, says the group formed to “voice the concerns of one group whose views have been missing from the recent debate about fixing Chicago Public Schools.”

CPU also argued that charter schools should be funded equally. But in the district’s most recent budget cycle, CPS touted the fact that charter schools got equitable funding as a result of the Gates Foundation’s District-Charter Compact. In all, charters got a $76 million increase in funding from CPS this year.

But parents protesting with CPU didn’t agree and continued to argue that the schools were not funded fairly. Yeni Jiminez has four children, two at UNO-Carlos Fuentes, one at Noble-Golder College Prep and another in college.

When asked by a reporter what programs she felt were missing from her children’s schools, Jiminez said, “I have to go right now, but I do believe that children definitely deserve equal funding.”

‘NO’ votes

School board members rarely vote against any of the district’s proposals, but yesterday, Mahalia Hines and Carlos Azcoitia voted ‘no’ to expanding some of the city’s charter schools.

Both voted down a proposal to add seats to Chicago Virtual Charter School. The resolution ultimately passed 4 to 2. After the meeting, Hines said she’s not against the school, or any school, but doesn’t think it’s wise to expand at a time when the district is trying to “right-size” itself.

Azcoitia also voted against adding a KIPP charter school in Englewood and the expansion of KIPP’s ACT campus.

The measures ultimately passed, and next year several new schools are set to open.The board also approved a high school expansion for UNO-Rogers Park, despite a state investigation into the network’s finances.

CPS plans to open about a dozen new schools next year.

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

How much demand is there for Chicago charter schools? No one knows.

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0500

Updated 2:30 p.m. with additional data.

Charter schools are expanding in Chicago, even as the district is closing schools due to declining enrollment.

Chicago Public Schools officials explain the seeming contradiction by citing a large demand for charter schools. Charter advocates and even the Chicago Tribune editorial board say 19,000 kids are on charter school waiting lists in the city.

There’s just one problem with that number: it’s not accurate. It significantly overstates demand.

A WBEZ analysis found the 19,000 figure counts applications, not students, meaning if a student applies to four schools, he or she is counted four times. It includes kids who have turned down charter seats and are now enrolled in other schools.

Perhaps the most startling finding is that a significant chunk--about 3,000--are high school dropouts applying for alternative schools. What’s more, saying that 19,000 students are on waiting lists to get into charter schools ignores another figure: there are between 3,000 and 5,000 available seats in charter schools right now, according to charter advocates.

The waiting list number comes from a biennial report compiled by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2012. The figure is roughly calculated from a chart in that ISBE report that compares numbers for how many applications a charter school received with to the number of available seats. The numbers are from 2010-11, the most recent available.

But 19,000 applications is not the same as 19,000 students.

Andrew Broy, the executive director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS), is cited as the source for the 19,000 figure in the Tribune’s editorial and also wrote his own opinion piece that ran in Crain’s Chicago Business on March 27.

But that same morning, Broy admitted during a briefing arranged by INCS to give reporters more context on charter school concerns that the waiting list number is off.

“These numbers are not precise and no one has exact numbers and they’re moving all the time,” Broy said.

Waiting lists are not an accurate measure of demand, according to Neil Dorosin, executive director of the Institute for Innovation for Public School Choice, which designs centralized application systems for large urban school districts.

“If a kid’s on a waitlist at your school but they picked it as their eighth choice, to me that’s a meaningless number,” Dorosin said. “Those kids could also be on six other school’s waitlists and they might prefer those other schools.”

Charter waiting lists: even schools don’t know how many kids apply

By state law, charter schools are required to hold a lottery if demand for their school outstrips supply--if there are too many applications, and not enough seats.

Namaste Charter School, an exercise- and nutrition-focused charter in McKinley Park, held its lottery last Thursday. It received 430 applications for 67 available seats, mostly at the kindergarten level.

That sounds like a lot of demand, but Allison Lipsman, Namaste’s development director, said it's not as straightforward as it might seem.

“Parents want to hedge their bets as much as possible,” said Lipsman, adding that many families apply to lots of schools. She said a “decent number” of families turn down their offer from Namaste in favor of one of CPS’s popular gifted or magnet schools.

The operations director at Legacy Charter School, a high-performing, single-campus charter on the city’s West Side, said sometimes families with multiple children turn down an offer because not all their children win seats in the lottery, and it’s logistically difficult for them to have children enrolled in multiple schools.

Because Chicago charters run their lotteries independently and admit students without any oversight from the school district, there is no way for CPS to centrally figure out how many individual students submitted those 19,000 applications.But some charter networks do keep track of unique applicants within the schools they operate.

Urban Prep is one such school, according to Tim King, the network’s executive director. He said 1,294 students submitted 1,797 applications for the 450 seats available this fall in Urban Prep’s three schools.

However, other charter school networks, including the city’s largest, Chicago International Charter School, say they don’t have admissions systems advanced enough to figure out how many actual kids have applied to their schools.

CICS spokeswoman Kate Proto said they received 5,701 applications for 1,922 open seats across 16 schools, leaving 3,779 on waiting lists. Proto said not every student chosen in the lottery accepts a seat at CICS. She estimated that CICS will have to pull 1,700 more kids off the waiting list to fill its empty seats.

There are other indicators demand may not be what advocates claim. For the last two years, Perspectives has leafleted neighborhoods to advertise available space in its five schools right up until the first day of school.

And last September, when CPS students spent seven days out of school due to a teachers strike, INCS, UNO and other charter groups boasted that about one-third of the city’s charters had open seats. Charters remained open because their teachers are not members of the Chicago Teachers Union.

“Just because there’s a sector-wide waitlist, doesn’t mean that every individual school has a waitlist,” Broy said last week. He estimated there are 3,000 to 5,000 openings at charter schools this year.

Parent Diana Juarez has two daughters at Rowe Elementary and said two years ago, she walked right in and signed her kids up.

“Since they were a fairly new school there was still space for kindergarteners. And then there were a few spaces available in first grade, so I was able to immediately apply and put them in.”

Juarez says the charter school has grown more popular, and now holds a lottery.

“I was very, very lucky. Because I have also heard people who have applied to millions of schools and they haven't been able to get into any of them,” she said.

Illinois State Board of Education spokeswoman Mary Fergus said the 19,000 figure taken from its 2012 report should not be misconstrued to mean that 19,000 kids are waiting to get into charters. She said there is no way for the state board to determine waiting list numbers.

99,031 applications for CPS magnet and selective elementary schools in 2013

CPS may not have charter school numbers, but it is able to determine the number of students vying to get into one popular set of schools.

That’s because the central office collects and tracks data on how many unique students apply to its magnet and selective enrollment programs.

Data provided by CPS shows that 13,105 children applied for 1,865 spots in selective enrollment programs this year. Because parents apply to multiple schools, they filed a total of 51,150 applications.

The same data is collected for magnet programs. This year, 13,725 students applied for 3,697 spots in magnet schools; 47,881 total applications were filed. CPS officials said there may be overlap between the two pools of applicants.

The numbers are even higher at the high school level. More than 18,000 students submitted 80,285 applications for spots in the district’s 10 selective enrollment high schools this coming fall.

Dropouts counted in 19,000 figure

Included in the INCS calculation is a group of alternative schools that do not compete for kids in the same way most charters do.

According to the ISBE report, Youth Connections Charter School had 6,889 applications and 3,885 open seats, generating a “waiting list” of 3004 students.

But Sheila Venson, executive director of YCCS, said the alternative schools, which can enroll about 4,000 high-school dropouts at a time, should not be lumped in with other charters when calculating waiting lists.

“I doubt if they’re enrolling kids the way we’re enrolling kids,” said Venson.

In 1997, YCCS was created by consolidating the city’s alternative high schools for dropouts. Demand for these types of schools has been historically high.

Venson said she has no idea where the numbers in the ISBE report came from—or why her schools would be included in the numbers used to prove demand for charter schools. That’s because YCCS has two official enrollment periods—one in September and one in January--and the schools essentially build up their waiting list and “purge” them it at the start of every semester, Venson explained.

A single application?

Though Andrew Broy from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools has insisted that 19,000 children are on waiting lists for Chicago charter schools, he now says he believes the real number is around 65 percent of that. He could not provide any basis for that calculation, other than to say he had done “spot checks with schools.”

He could not explain how any individual campus would be able to determine the number of unique applicants to charter schools system wide.

Broy admits that “no one has exact numbers on this, which are unknowable unless we move toward a single enrollment system.”

CPS had planned to move all high schools to a single enrollment system last fall--regulated by the district--with elementary schools following this year.

But when former schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard stepped down, the plan was put on hold.

Neil Dorosin of the Institute for Innovation for Public School Choice said single-application systems are better able to gauge school popularity and demand, because every student’s preferences are collected in one place.

Education Reporter Linda Lutton contributed to this report.

Charter school lottery/admissions data (ISBE)
Charter school	Grades served	# of schools	lottery used?	# of apps received for 2010-11	# of students selected for 2010-11	"waitlist" (difference between applications and students selected)
Academy of Global Citizenship	K-3	1	yes	310	22	288
Alain Locke	PK-8	1	yes	474	20	454
Amandla	5,6,7	1	no			0
ACE Tech	9,10,11,12	1	yes	196	150	46
Aspira	6,7,8,9,10,11,12	3	yes	685	435	250
Betty Shabazz	K-12	3	yes	242	150	92
Bronzeville Lighthouse	K-8	1	not reported			0
Catalyst-Circle Rock	K-8	1	yes	471	196	275
Catalyst-Howland	K-8	1	no			0
CICS	K-12	14	yes	2167	967	1200
CMSA	6,7,8,9,10,11,12	1	not reported			0
Chicago Talent	9,10	1	no			0
Chicago Virtual	K-12	1	yes	314	102	212
EPIC	9,10	1	yes	561	150	411
Erie Elementary	K-6	1	yes	102	54	48
Galapagos	K-8	1	yes	380	95	285
Henry Ford Academy	9,10,11	1	yes	573	150	423
KIPP Ascend	K, 5,6,7,8	1	yes	644	24	620
Kwame Nkrumah		1	not reported			0
LEARN	K-8	4	yes	425	288	137
Legacy	PK-7	1	yes	254	168	86
Namaste	K-7	1	yes	368	64	304
Noble	9,10,11,12	10	yes	6304	1428	4876
North Lawndale	9,10,11,12	2	yes	1164	250	914
Passages	PK-7	1	not reported			0
Perspectives	6,7,8,9,10,11,12	5	yes	4956	754	4202
Polaris	K-5	1	yes	166	63	103
Prologue-Johnston	9,10,11,12	1	yes	178	89	89
Providence-Englewood	K-8	1	yes	200	130	70
Rowe Elementary	k-3	1	no			0
UCCS	PK-12	4	yes	1074	411	663
UNO	K-11	9	no*	4565	4565	0
Urban Prep	9,10,11,12	1	yes	324	135	189
Urban Prep - West	9,10	1	not reported			0
Urban Prep - Bronzeville	9	1	yes	281	135	146
YWLCS	7,8,9,10,11,12	1	not reported			0
YCCS	10,11,12	22	yes	6889	3885	3004
TOTAL				34267	14880	19387

*UNO disputed this and said they held a lottery.

SOURCE: Illinois State Board of Education, biennial charter school report, 2010-11 data as reported by individual charter school operators.

Selective Enrollment Elementary School Programs
School Name	Total Applications	Seats Available	"Waitlisted"
Beasley	2171	54	2117
Beaubien	1205	37	1168
Bell	2534	37	2497
Carnegie	840	49	791
Coonley	3032	35	2997
Decatur	3002	79	2923
Edison	4207	37	4170
Greeley	289	44	245
Harlan	356	31	325
Keller	1881	37	1844
Kenwood	962	167	795
Lane	2167	135	2032
Lenart	3082	28	3054
Lincoln	979	32	947
Lindblom	914	198	716
McDade	1842	30	1812
Morgan Park	731	90	641
Nat’l Teachers Academy	832	60	772
Ogden	882	45	837
Orozco	282	30	252
Poe	1647	48	1599
Pritzker	2824	57	2767
Pulaski	183	31	152
Skinner North	3939	69	3870
Skinner West	4746	95	4651
South Loop	1873	36	1837
Taft	1020	140	880
Young	2728	134	2594
TOTAL	51150	1865	49285

SOURCE: Chicago Public Schools, 2012-13 application cycle for Fall 2013 admission.

Elementary School Magnet Programs
School Name	Total Applications	Seats Available	"Waitlisted"
BEASLEY	1204	187	1017
BLACK	1114	70	1044
BURNSIDE	371	132	239
DISNEY	3185	530	2655
DISNEY II	3241	64	3177
DRUMMOND	2763	51	2712
FRANKLIN	2122	43	2079
FRAZIER PROSPECTIVE	506	225	281
GALILEO	1118	69	1049
GALLISTEL	66	20	46
GUNSAULUS	289	80	209
HAWTHORNE	2889	62	2827
INTER-AMERICAN	1461	90	1371
JACKSON, A	3436	58	3378
JENSEN	187	197	0
KERSHAW	138	324	0
LASALLE	3333	64	3269
LASALLE II	1784	85	1699
MAYER	2491	80	2411
MURRAY	2123	61	2062
NEWBERRY	1730	87	1643
OWEN	888	46	842
PERSHING	381	60	321
RANDOLPH	62	155	0
SABIN	243	114	129
SAUCEDO	275	208	67
SHERIDAN	1600	65	1535
STEM	1540	63	1477
STONE	1366	86	1280
SUDER	1827	49	1778
THORP, O	1087	113	974
TURNER-DREW	547	83	464
VANDERPOEL	1417	71	1346
WILDWOOD	1097	5	1092
TOTAL	47,881	3,697	44,473

SOURCE: Chicago Public Schools, 2012-13 application cycle for Fall 2013 admission.

UPDATE: CPS said a number of its neighborhood schools run waitlists throughout the year. The following is a list of schools CPS officials said have accepted more than 100 applications from families outside their attendance boundaries for seats next fall. The district collects these applications centrally and conducts lotteries for open seats after neighborhood students have enrolled.

Neighborhood Schools with 100+ applications
AGASSIZ	CHOPIN	IRVING	PORTAGE PARK
ALCOTT ES	CLISSOLD	JAHN	PRESCOTT
ARIEL	COLUMBUS	JENSEN	PRITZKER
ASHBURN	COONLEY	KELLMAN	PRUSSING
BARNARD	COURTENAY	KELLOGG	PULASKI
BATEMAN	DEVER	KIPLING	RAVENSWOOD
BEAUBIEN	DIEGO	MCDOWELL	RAY
BELDING	DIXON	MCPHERSON	REINBERG
BELMONT-CRAGIN	EARHART	MITCHELL	SABIN
BLAINE	EBINGER	MOUNT GREENWOOD	SAYRE
BOONE	EDGEBROOK	MURPHY	SHOESMITH
BUDLONG	EVERS	NATIONAL TEACHERS	SOLOMON
BURLEY	FARNSWORTH	NETTELHORST	SOUTH LOOP
BURNHAM	GOETHE	NORWOOD PARK	SOUTHSHORE
BURNSIDE	GOUDY	OGDEN	SUTHERLAND
BURR	GREELEY	OGDEN HS	TALCOTT
CAMRAS	HAINES	OWEN	WARD, J
CARNEGIE	HAMILTON	PEIRCE	WATERS
CHAPPELL	HARTE	PETERSON	WOODLAWN
CHASE	HITCH	PIRIE

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

UNO allows teachers to choose to unionize

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:00:00 -0600

One of Chicago’s largest charter school networks is allowing its teachers and staff to choose whether to unionize.

United Neighborhood Organization, or UNO, says its teachers can decide without retaliation.

Brian Harris is the president of the charter union, Chicago Alliance of Charter School Teachers and Staff, or ACTS. He says the agreement with UNO is important because teachers from other charters have been pressured not to unionize in the past. Charter schools aren’t held to the same district regulations that a normal public school is, and they’re rarely unionized.

"If the UNO teachers unionize, people will notice that all of the scary stories that people come up with what a union will do to a charter school, which I think are incredibly false. People will notice that unions and charters can work together just fine," he said.

Harris says UNO teachers are only considering the move, and no decision is close yet.

In a statement, UNO says the agreement to allow teachers to choose to unionize is about collaboration and cooperation.

UNO has 13 schools in Chicago and about 6,500 students.

ACTS has about 300 charter school teachers in its union.

Chicago charter school subject to private-sector labor laws

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:55:00 -0600

Teachers at a Chicago charter school are now subject to private-sector labor laws, rather than state laws governing public workers. The move could impact how public schools are run down the road.

The ruling, made by the National Labor Relations Board last month, said the Chicago Math and Science Academy is a “private entity” and therefore covered under the federal law governing the private sector.

The decision overrules a vote taken by teachers last year to form a union in accordance with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. At the time, two-thirds of teachers at the school approved the union and it became official under state law.

But school managers wanted to follow federal labor law, which among other things would require a vote by secret ballot.

“This case was really about whether you organize via one method or another,” said Andrew Broy, director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. “It wasn’t about you can organize at all, whether you can bust unions, or anything like that.”

Still, the case was watched closely by unions and charter supporters across the country. Several groups, including the American Federation of Labor and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools filed briefs.

That’s because charter schools are publicly-funded, but privately-run. The public-private, hybrid nature of charter schools creates a number of gray areas when it comes to accountability and governance.

In many ways, they are like government contractors, said James Powers, the attorney representing CMSA. A school district signs a contract with a private group, usually a non-profit organization, to run a school and allocates public money based on the number of students served.

But as the charter sector grows in cities across the country, teachers unions and other pro-labor groups have said expanding charters is a “union-busting” tactic.

Labor laws and charter school laws vary widely from state to state. Some require charter teachers to belong to the same union as teachers in district-run schools, others prohibit charter teachers from forming unions altogether.

Zev Eigen is an expert in labor law at Northwestern University and says the ruling could be seen as good or bad depending on who you ask.

The NLRB is consistent across state lines, which helps charter teachers in right-to-work states and other places where public sector employees have limited bargaining power, he said.

“I would much prefer to work at a charter school now, and be covered by the federal, National Labor Relations Act, than to be at the whim and mercy that public school teachers are of being under state law,” Eigen said. “The state has much less power to change the rules underneath them. To say, ‘oh, sorry we just changed the law so now you’re not allowed to strike or you’re not allowed to collectively bargain over length of school day’ or whatever it is.”

But the national law also gives management more latitude, and allows them to campaign against a union, he added.

Apart from the legal ramifications, deeming a charter schools as "private" adds fuels to the debate over the future of traditional public schools.

A spokesman for the Chicago Alliance of Charter School Teachers and Staff, which helped CMSA teachers organize, said they are still analyzing the ruling to determine what impact it could have on existing charter school unions and future organizing efforts.

Both sides said it's still a gray issue.

“This technical area of labor relations is one that’s developing,” Broy said. “This is a chapter of it, but it will continue in the coming weeks, and months, and years to be an issue, both here in Chicago and nationally.”

The proportion of privately run Chicago public schools to increase

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0600

At the same time Chicago Public Schools says it needs to close down schools, maybe as many as 100, it’s planning to open brand new ones.

In a promotional video for a new high school called Intrinsic, illustrations of the city’s skyline and the EL tracks swirl around cartoon students. The students tout their teachers’ credentials and brag about the projects they’re working on.

“The teachers at Intrinsic are great,” says the cartoon boy. “They’ve worked at schools like Walter Payton and Whitney Young.”

Intrinsic is not open yet. It’s one of at least 17 new schools the district wants to open next fall. Fourteen charter and contract schools, run by outside groups and three district-run high schools. (See complete list at the end of this article.)

CPS leaders say 136 schools are half empty. Most of those schools are on the south and west sides of the city. School officials argue it doesn’t make sense to keep running those schools, because it costs money to keep the lights on and school resources get spread too thin.

They say if they consolidate, or “right-size,” they can spend more money on the buildings they do keep open—adding air-conditioning, art and music, all the things people say are missing right now.

But why would the district open schools when it says it has too many already?

“We also need to be strategic and ensure that we are doing everything we can to immediately expand access to high quality school options for parents in every community,” said CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll.

Carroll also points to areas of the city where classrooms are overcrowded—the heavily Latino north and west sides of the city. She says CPS may need to build or open new schools in those areas.

Phyllis Lockett echoed Carroll’s point about quality. She runs New Schools for Chicago, which has raised more than $30 million to help CPS gradually open charter schools every year for the past decade.

“Saving dollars cannot be the only solution, you’ve got to focus on quality,” Lockett said.

While Lockett equates new schools with quality, the fact is, the new schools the city has created over the last decade have had mixed success.

Some people have said that closing traditional schools and opening charter schools is actually about privatizing education—not about quality or enrollment or anything else.

It’s true that if CPS closes dozens of traditional schools and then opens charters, the proportion of public schools run by private entities jumps significantly.

Think about the math. Right now, 14 percent of CPS’s 681 schools are privately run charter and contract schools.

If the district closes 100 schools, and then opens 60 new charters in the next five years, the percentage of privately run schools could jump up to 27 percent. In a grant application to the Gates Foundation, CPS leaders said they planned to open 100 new schools in the next five years, 60 of them charters. Carroll has said that number was just an estimate based on past growth.

Still, a number of charter leaders have big expansion plans.

“I think that number ought to grow,” said Juan Rangel. He runs the United Neighborhood Organization, which operates one of the city’s largest charter school networks.

“We’ve been at this for 15 years now, and if anybody told me we would be in the place we are today back in 1997, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Rangel said. “But here we are, and so I’m really hopeful that in five years the school district will look very different than it does today.”

UNO has more aggressive expansion plans. Rangel said he hopes to open five new schools a year for the next five years, bringing UNO’s total to more than 30 schools.

But he’s not alone. The district’s biggest high school charter network, the Noble Network of Charter Schools, wants to open two new high schools a year for the next four years, bringing its total to right around 20.

And at least four national operators—Rocketship Education, Basis Schools, Concept Schools, and Charter Schools USA-- applied to open schools here next fall, according to Illinois Network of Charter Schools executive director Andrew Broy.

The new schools that have opened in the last decade draw students away from their home schools, even though overall public school enrollment has dropped just 6 percent. The Chicago Teachers Union has said that’s contributed to the problem of “underutilization” in so many CPS schools.

It’s unclear how the district will prevent home schools from becoming under-enrolled as they plan to open more new schools.

“Part of what Chicago is really suffering from is they don’t have a long range plan,” said Mary Filardo, the executive director of the 21st Century Schools Fund, a non-profit that studies how school districts manage their real estate.

CPS’s Carroll says school leaders plan to sell off the empty buildings, which Filardo warns could be a shortsighted move.

“Chicago could find itself in really a pickle, if it does not retain some of its public infrastructure,” Filardo said. “You don’t have age-level enrollment projections, population projections, you don’t have a master plan. Do you want 75 percent to be neighborhood Chicago public school based and 25 percent private? Do you want it 50-50? I mean where are you going?”

If CPS does not put together a plan to address those questions, Filardo says, it could find itself in a similar situation five years from now, even if enrollment holds steady: With too many schools—and a big fight on its hands.

Schools slated to open Fall 2013:

New School	Grades served	Approved or Pending
Chicago Collegiate Charter School	4-12	pending
The Orange School	K-8	pending
Foundations College Prep	6-12	pending
Intrinsic Schools	6-12	pending
Camelot	alternative students	pending
Crane (Medical) HS	9-12	approved
Back of the Yards HS	9-12	approved
Disney II HS	9-12	pending
Marine Military Academy (expansion)	7-8	pending
Rickover Naval Academy (expansion)	7-8	pending
UNO Soccer Academy HS	9-12	approved
UNO elementary campus	K-8	approved
UNO elementary campus	K-8	approved
UNO elementary campus	K-8	approved
Noble - Orange campus	9-12	approved
Noble - Crimson campus	9-12	approved
Christopher House	PK-8	approved
LEARN-7th campus	K-8	approved
LEARN-8th campus	K-8	approved

Charter-school agency’s funding raises questions

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:49:00 -0600

A new government agency could boost the number of charter schools in Illinois. But the way the agency is financing itself raises questions.

The Illinois State Charter School Commission, created by a law enacted this summer, can authorize charter schools that fail to win approval of local school districts. The per-pupil state funding for the charter schools comes at the expense of the districts. The commission will also monitor the performance of schools it authorizes.

Despite the commission’s responsibilities, the state has not provided it any startup money. The only public-funding mechanism won’t be in place until next July, when the commission can begin collecting a fee from schools it authorizes.

Greg Richmond, the commission chairman, said his agency will need between $100,000 and $200,000 to operate until then.

The law that set up the commission allows it to raise private money. The commission’s sole funding so far is a $50,000 grant from the Walton Family Foundation, which supports several Illinois charter school operators and their state trade group.

Told by WBEZ about this financing, Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery said it created a conflict of interest.

“This is really the rubber hitting the road — why we thought this was a bad law,” said Montgomery, whose union includes most K-12 teachers in Chicago. “The state should reconsider this. I don’t think the people of Illinois would stand for the gaming industry, say, to have the right to reverse a community’s decision not to allow a race track in its town. I don’t know why we wouldn’t give at least the same protections to the children of Illinois.”

A spokesman for the Illinois Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union, echoed Montgomery.

But the law’s chief sponsor, state Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, said providing taxpayer funds for the commission’s launch would have been unpopular. “It was not going to make folks happy [to take] dollars away that could be going to the traditional public schools,” she said.

Other states have allowed charter school commissions to launch with private funding, Steans said.

The Illinois State Board of Education doesn’t see a conflict with the commission accepting foundation money, according to board spokeswoman Mary Fergus. “If we had any information that specific strings were attached to the donation/funding, that would be a problem,” Fergus said in a statement.

Before the commission’s creation, charter school operators that failed to win authorization from local school districts could appeal to ISBE. That state board received dozens of appeals but, according to Fergus, it reversed a district and authorized a charter school just three times.

Charter schools are independently run but depend on public funds. Most of their taxpayer support would otherwise go to local school districts.

Chicago officials have encouraged charter schools. On Wednesday, the city’s Board of Education approved a plan for 12 new charter school campuses. Chicago already has 109, a district spokeswoman said.

Elsewhere in Illinois, only 14 charter schools are operating. Officials in many districts say charters would weaken other schools by taking away students and resources. Those officials have been reluctant to authorize charter schools.

The nine commission members — recommended by Gov. Pat Quinn and appointed by ISBE — are already holding official meetings and overseeing a staff member, attorney Jeanne Nowaczewski.

The commission this month handled its first case, an appeal from a charter school operator spurned by school officials in west suburban Maywood. That operator withdrew the appeal last week after meeting with Nowaczewski, according to Richmond, the commission chairman.

The money for the commission’s staffing and other expenses so far comes from the Walton foundation. That family started Walmart and Sam’s Club. Other recipients of Walton grants include the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, a statewide umbrella. The foundation reports that it gave the network more than $1 million in 2010. Andrew Broy, the network’s president, said the amount for 2011 is about $950,000.

The network also serves as an intermediary — a “fiscal agent” in nonprofit parlance — for Walton’s funding of the state commission. Richmond said Nowaczewski receives her paychecks from the network, not the commission.

Richmond acknowledged that the Walton money could create the perception that the commission has a conflict of interest. But he urged the public to withhold judgment on the financing until seeing how the commission performs.

“We’re going to do everything possible to do the right thing, to act ethically, to make decisions based on the merits of what’s in the interest of kids, what’s in compliance with the law,” Richmond said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office hasn’t issued an opinion about whether the commission’s funding meets legal and ethical standards, a spokeswoman said.

The Illinois Association of School Administrators, which represents most school district superintendents in the state, declined to comment about the commission’s financing.

Report finds Chicago's charter schools 'in good fiscal health'

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:03:00 -0500

A new report out Tuesday shows Chicago's Charter schools are in good financial shape. But the Civic Federation, a non-partisan budget watchdog group, finds there are some concerns.

The group awarded Chicago's charter schools a B+ 2007 and B in 2008 for meeting key standards of fiscal accountability. But its 170-page report also found threats to long-term fiscal sustainability due to declining budgets.

Charter schools aren't subject to the same legal and school board requirements as Chicago's public schools. So the Civic Federation says it couldn't conclusively measure every indicator because every Charter reports data in its own way.

The group's key recommendation is for charters to standardize their reporting data.

Hopes for new school shine brightly in its architecture

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0500

A crowd of parents and students inaugurated a shiny new school Thursday night on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

Juan Moreno, architect of the UNO charter elementary school, the city’s 11th UNO school, said the architecture is meant to show students what’s possible. The ultra-modern steel and glass structure stands out in a neighborhood of tidy brick bungalows. There are three levels of floor-to-ceiling windows.

“The corridors are on the outside, and we purposely always wanted to connect the students to the community—visually—and vice-versa. It’s terrific to drive by it and see the kids,” said Moreno.

Hear Moreno talk about his vision for the building here:

Moreno said from the top floor, UNO CEO Juan Rangel sometimes points to the Loop. “He’ll point to it and he’ll tell the kids, ‘Look, you’re not gonna be the custodians of those buildings. You’ll be the leaders of those buildings," he said.

Rangel gave me a tour: playground-music 110915.mp3

Students have only been on campus for a week, but second-grade teacher Marissa Akason thinks the building is impacting kids. “It’s bright and sunny every day in here. There’s a lot of light,” says Akason. “Our attendance has been really high this first week, and I think part of it is they’re excited to be here. It makes our job easier when they’re ready to come to school and are excited to come.”

On the eve of Mexico’s Independence, a crowd of mostly Mexican parents cheered as an American flag climbed up the flagpole at the school. It adds 580 seats to a neighborhood hit hard by overcrowding.

Ten months ago, UNO didn’t even own title to the land where the school now stands. “I think we have to learn how to build schools cheaper and faster,” says Rangel. At $27 million, UNO's Soccer Academy is the lowest priced elementary school built in the district in recent years, comparisons provided by the Public Building Commission of Chicago show. Adam Clayton Powell Elementary on the South Side, which also opened this fall, cost $29 million. The new Ogden International Elementary on the North Side cost taxpayers $54 million (though underground parking there made it atypically expensive). But UNO's new Soccer Academy serves just 580 students, while Powell and Ogden can serve more than 900 students. That means taxpayers paid thousands more per seat for the UNO school than they did for schools built by the district.

Rangel focuses on the low overall cost. He says UNO rethought elements that have become standard in school construction. He says if terrazzo floors don’t improve test scores, he doesn’t need them.

UNO is seeking permission to name the school after this guy:

A gaggle of politicians was at the inauguration, including Ill. Gov. Pat Quinn. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel had stopped by earlier for a tour. “This new school is literally transforming our neighborhood, and strengthening it," 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke told parents. After the polticians finished speaking, the crowd was treated to a sound and light show.

A $98 million state grant--believed to be the largest capital grant ever to any charter organization nationwide--paid for the school. UNO urged the governor to release more funds from that grant so the group can continue building charter schools.

Updated at: 1:15pm on 9/16/11
Updated at: 5:02pm on 9/16/11

Emanuel defends proposed property-tax hike for schools

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:01:00 -0500

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has promised to take on City Hall’s budget gap without raising taxes. But he’s taking a different tack with red ink at the school district he controls.

Emanuel on Tuesday defended a $150 million property-tax hike proposed by Chicago Public Schools last week.

“We’ve got to make the tough choices,” Emanuel told reporters.

The mayor praised the school district for trying to balance the books without packing more kids into classrooms. “We’ve not only protected the classroom, we’ve expanded educational choices and opportunities for the parents that rely on the school system,” Emanuel said.

Emanuel pointed to new charter schools and additional funds for magnet schools, full-day kindergarten, a teacher-training academy and security cameras.

The schools budget also includes hundreds of millions of dollars of program cuts affecting students. The reductions range from staffing at “turnaround” high schools to a dual-language pilot program.

The district is also trimming its central office. “I have no tolerance for an overblown bureaucracy,” Emanuel said.

But some Chicago aldermen say school officials should cut more spending before turning to homeowners and renters.

CPS says the owner of a $250,000 home would pay about $84 more each year and that property-tax payers would face a separate levy for school construction.

Asked whether the city could do anything to shift school funding away from the property tax, Emanuel stuck to the theme of his news conference: economic development. He said he was trying to generate revenue by encouraging job creation.

Parents to CPS: Make our school a charter

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 21:31:00 -0500

When Chicago closes low-performing schools, the district often faces fierce resistance from parents, who fight to save their children’s teachers and their neighborhood's institution. Now, for the first time in Chicago, a group of parents is publicly asking CPS to shut down their school—and reopen it as a charter school.

Lynn Evans spends a lot of time at her children’s school, Wendell Smith Elementary in Pullman.

EVANS: I’m here—let me see. Out of a five-day week, like four days—sometimes every single day. I’m helping out, I chaperone, if they need more chaperones, if they need more parents, I’ll pull some parents in to help out.

Today, Evans is sitting in a little 10-pew, cinderblock church across the street from the school, with a handful of other parents and community residents. It’s a strategy meeting on how to turn Smith into a charter.

Evans is the chair of Smith’s local school council. But she says she still hasn’t been able to fix what’s wrong: only half the 8th graders are graduating this week. Computers don’t work. Wendell Smith’s school report card is full of red marks.

EVANS: And this has been going on for years now. And, nothing’s being done about it. We’re constantly fighting and saying something. It’s like beating your head up against the brick wall.

Evans and the other parents are at the center of a national phenomenon known as the parent trigger. California has a law allowing parents in failing schools to “trigger” major overhauls, including converting a school to a privately run, publicly funded charter. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he supports a parent trigger here.

Smith parents, though, aren’t waiting. They’ve already picked out a group to run Wendell Smith.

ambi from L.E.A.R.N.: Lions, lions, what do you eat? So he’s writing about the lions we saw last week at the zoo.

After touring charter schools across the city, Smith parents liked L.E.A.R.N. Charter School, which runs four campuses and has a federal grant to expand.

Parent Marcus Gary said a visit to L.E.A.R.N. reminded him of his Catholic education.

GARY: My environment was conducive to learning. There wasn’t any wandering—you know, students just aimlessly wandering. There weren’t teachers or faculty dodging their responsibility.

Gary says the hallways at L.E.A.R.N. were quiet. Kids were learning Spanish.

The tours Gary went on were organized by the Renaissance Schools Fund—now called New Schools for Chicago. The pro-charter group is tied closely to Chicago’s business and civic elite. Adrienne Garner, a New Schools staffer, says the case of Wendell Smith could fundamentally change how school closings in Chicago work.

GARNER: It’s never been the case where the actual community has demanded—let alone a sitting LSC chair. Maybe this could be a pilot for this to come from the community, from the bottom up rather than the top down.

NATHAN: Because Chicago has dramatic and often emphatic politics, it doesn’t surprise me that a group of parents would say we have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to get some changes in the kind of school we want, and ultimately we don’t feel we’ve been able to do that, so we want to try this approach.

Joe Nathan directs the Center for School Change in Minnesota. He notes that Chicago parents went on a hunger strike to get a high school built here, and he says this kind of parent involvement can mean better schools for kids, though it’s not a guarantee.

Nathan says the board of education needs a policy for dealing with parent requests to overhaul their schools.

Parents trying to convert Smith to a charter say they expect resistance—from their principal, teachers, even from CPS. And it’s still unclear how many parents will jump on board.

LUTTON: What would you think if they closed down Wendell Smith and made it a charter school?
BOOZER: Okay, what’s basically a charter school?

Parent Calvin Boozer told me he’s satisfied with Smith, because his first grade son is doing well there.

Those hoping to convert Smith to a charter say they know they’ve got homework. They’ll try to teach parents like Boozer what a charter school is, then convince him he wants one.