WBEZ | school closings

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

Math teacher challenges logic of closing an 'average' school

Tue, 14 May 2013 21:43:00 -0500

Michael Colwell teaches math to 7th and 8th graders at Leif Ericson Elementary Scholastic Academy in Garfield Park, one of 53 grammar schools the district wants to shut down in its effort to right size.

Colwell has been looking at lots of school data—district spreadsheets are pulled up on his home computer, just underneath his Scrabble game—but he says he can’t see why Ericson would be among the 10 percent of grammar schools Chicago is closing.

“We have better test scores than about 200 schools in the city. If you look at any of the metrics they measure us by, whether it’s any of the standardized testing, the utilization rates, enrollment—we’re nowhere near the bottom 10 percent in any of them,” said Colwell.

I checked Mr. Colwell’s work. Ericson is the 242nd most underutilized school in Chicago (out of 681).

And with 71.8 percent of students meeting standards, Ericson ranks in the middle third of CPS schools, 337th place out of 544 elementary schools.

“We’re an average school," says Colwell. And in a district with a lot of problems, he can't figure out why you would close average.

Colwell points to other measures where Ericson is doing well. He says teachers recently found out Ericson has the second highest student attendance in the area, beating out 17 other schools. "Kids like coming there. Teachers like teaching there. Parents like sending their kids there. It’s a solid school. By no means does it deserve to be closed."

Colwell challenges the public to look up Ericson Academy's test scores later this summer if the school is shuttered. "I think...you'll see that we've improved, and we've done better than many of the schools that are still out there."

Colwell and other teachers will lose their jobs if the school board votes next Wednesday to close Ericson. In all, more than 2,000 jobs are threatened.

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll says schools were removed from the longer list of potential closings based on criteria created with community input. Ericson didn’t meet the criteria that eliminated other schools, Carroll said.

Colwell says he hates politics, but he is taking his math to Springfield Wednesday to lobby for a moratorium on closings.

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.

Independent hearing officers oppose 14 CPS proposals to close, shake-up schools

Tue, 07 May 2013 17:45:00 -0500

Independent hearing officers have come out against 11 school closings and one co-location proposed by Chicago Public Schools, and have said the district should hold off on two other school closings until the 2014-15 school year.

The hearing officers’ reports cited concerns over student safety, and some felt Chicago Public Schools had not made the case that students would go to better schools—one of the district’s own guidelines for closing a school.

Take the officer who oversaw the public hearing on closing Delano Elementary. Delano is not on probation. The proposed receiving school, Melody, is on probation—a fact CPS had not mentioned in its presentation before the hearing officer.

“Such an omission gives credence to those who believe the process is flawed,” the hearing officer wrote in his report.

In nine cases, the hearing officers determined Chicago Public Schools had not followed its own guidelines. The district forcefully disagreed with those assertions. The district’s law department immediately posted responses online to hearing officers whose recommendations differed from the district’s own.

School district spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the hearing officers who had found the district out of compliance were overstepping their role “by opining or creating or adding their own opinion to criteria that would determine, for example, what is a higher performing school.” Or, they had simply “misinterpreted” the state law, Carroll said.

During past rounds of school closings, hearing officers’ reports have only rarely sided against the school district. The district said it had received 60 reports.

In the case of Near North, which serves special education students, the hearing officer expressed concern about the closing, while recognizing that the district had met all its legal obligations for closing the school. “Although disheartening to parents, staff, and community, the school code does not take into account the emotional distress or trauma that such a move might have upon the fragile state of the special needs student. However, the CEO has complied with the requirements of the school code and guidelines.”

The hearing officer reports don’t have any immediate impact on the proposal to close schools. Carroll said the district is confident it has made the right school closing recommendations and has no plans to take any off the table.

At schools, meanwhile, staff, students, and parents saw the reports as a glimmer of hope.

“We have a foot in the door,” one principal said.

At Delano Elementary, a few kids on the playground had heard the news. “It’s not closing down! Mr. Roth told me!” one boy shouted.

Avanette Temple, the vice chair of Delano’s local school council, said her husband called her over to see the TV news in the morning. “It’s amazing. And we’re waiting to hear the news from Barbara Byrd-Bennett to make sure it’s ensured and to make sure it’s OK so we can go on with our 100 year anniversary.”

Temple says she knows the school isn’t saved yet. “The news that’s in the making, it’s good. So we could put a little smile on our face—a little.”

Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett issued a statement saying that hearing officer reports provide information that the board of education can use before its vote. She said the school district is moving forward on transition plans.

The board is slated to vote on the school closings May 22.

Hearing officers for the following schools recommended the schools not close:

Calhoun- Cather (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2735)
Buckingham (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2734)
Manierre-Jenner (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2770)
Mahalia Jackson-Ft. Dearborn https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2759
Delano-Melody (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2737)
King-Jensen - https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2762
Mayo-Wells (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2776)
Morgan-Ryder -https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2776
Near North-in compliance, but closing “not wise” (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2779)
Overton-Mollison - https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2781
Williams ES and Williams MS-Drake (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2795)

In two cases, hearing officers say school closings should be put off until 2014-15:

Stewart-Brenneman (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2790)
Stockton-Courtenay (https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2792)

The hearing officer for the Bowen-Noble Street co-location opposes the proposal:

Bowen-Noble co-location https://secure.cps.k12.il.us/sa_wizard/Download.aspx?fid=2718)

—Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Follow WBEZ education reporters Linda Lutton and Becky Vevea @WBEZeducation

CPS quietly lowers its estimated cost savings from closing 54 schools

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:38:00 -0500

Chicago’s school district will not be saving as much by closing 54 schools as it originally told the public.

When it announced the closings, Chicago Public Schools said it would save $560 million in capital expenses over the next 10 years by closing schools and avoiding repairs and upgrades on those buildings.

Now, the district is revising that cost savings number downward. It says it was off by $122 million, or 20 percent. The real 10-year cost savings figure is $437.8 million, CPS now says.

It made the correction on page 36 of a 457-page document that lays out the district’s facilities plan for the next decade.

Chicago Public Schools says it made an “honest mistake” when adding numbers, and had plugged in some schools that didn’t belong there. But the overall cost savings is also being revised downward because schools that had not been assessed for years are getting thorough capital-needs reviews.

CPS had made estimates of how much it would take to repair and upgrade individual school buildings—and thus, how much it could save by closing those buildings. A CPS official said originally the district budgeted in central air conditioning to cost estimates. That's been switched to window units.

Parents, activists, and even aldermen have complained that the district’s estimated cost for fixing their schools is inflated. Parents at Trumbull Elementary in Edgewater, for instance, got notes home in March saying it would cost $16.3 million to repair and upgrade their school. It was one of the reasons listed for closing the school.

“The amount that is indicated is significantly higher than we would actually spend if in fact you were going to keep that school open and invest,” Alderman Patrick O'Connor said at an April 9 public meeting on the proposed closing of Trumbull. “Clearly, if you wanted to make it top of the line, $16 million would be a nice investment. But if you just wish to maintain the school and keep it open, you’re more in the area of $4 or $5 (million),” O’Connor said.

CPS provided WBEZ data showing it now believes the cost to update Trumbull is $10.99 million. Others schools' estimates also dropped.

CPS officials say they discovered their mistakes after repeated questions from WBEZ and Catalyst Chicago Magazine about how capital cost-savings were calculated.

A top CPS official said it’s “intuitive” that closing buildings will save money. “It’s clearly something that will save us money. That’s indisputable,” he said. The district’s press office allowed reporters to speak with him only on background, without printing his name.

The official said it’s not overly important whether the savings from “avoided” capital costs are $560 million or $438 million, because the amounts that matter are the school-by-school savings. He said board members, who are slated to vote May 22 on the proposed school closings, will be briefed on updated numbers.

Linda Lutton is a WBEZ education reporter. Follow her @WBEZeducation

One Chicago school closing sets off domino effect

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:48:00 -0500

(Updated 5/02/13 5 pm)

You’ve likely heard about Chicago’s plan to close 54 public schools this year. But you might not realize it’s part of a much bigger restructuring effort— one that will affect more than 47,000 students and 132 schools.

To get a glimpse of the scope and complexity of what’s going on, WBEZ narrowed in on a single closure, and the domino effect it creates in one South Side community.

On paper, the closure of Fermi Elementary looks pretty straightforward.

“They're supposed to be closing it down and then they're supposed to go to South Shore,” Desiree Borders said outside the school at 70th Street and Dorchester Avenue.

Fermi and South Shore Fine Arts Academy share a building, so it’s pretty simple. Except it’s not.

Borders and her children are actually caught up in one of Chicago Public Schools more complicated closures.

That’s because South Shore Fine Arts Academy doens't have an attendance boundary that would guarantee neighborhood students a spot. That could exclude Borders' younger children, who aren't yet in school.

“If they don’t get accepted to South Shore, I have to walk them all the way to Dumas,” Borders said.

But Dumas Elementary School isn’t going to be Dumas anymore. A group of Dumas 8th graders tried to explain the changes at Dumas.

“Uh, well, all I heard was that the school was getting shut down because of the scores,” said one student, before being interrupted by a friend.

“No, no, no, no, the staff is getting changed, to Wadsworth,” the friend said. “They're keeping the building, moving our staff out and changing our name.”

Confused yet? Let’s recap.

“The children that are in Fermi, they get a chance to go to South Shore Fine Arts Academy,” Borders said. “Then, the ones that move into the neighborhood or the ones that are just coming in to the school... they have to go to Dumas slash Wadsworth. Now the reason why they say that is because they’re closing Dumas and changing the name of that school to Wadsworth. You know, this is confusing! You know? Crazy!”

I took the walk from Fermi-South Shore to Dumas-Wadsworth with Desiree Borders last week. It was a mile long walk and she kept telling me how unfair she thought it was to make children walk that far just to get to their neighborhood school.

Especially because they have to pass another elementary—Woodlawn Community School. That school also accepts kids via a lottery and has what CPS considers the right amount of kids.

It’s considered a “small school,” a designation CPS only gives in name now. (Schools used to be given extra funding with “small school” status.)

I asked Borders, if Woodlawn was the reroute school would she be more willing to walk her kids here?

“No, because it’s still too far from my house,” Borders said. “It’s still too far. What part of community, what part of neighborhood is this?”

There’s another school Borders leaves out of the equation—the University of Chicago-Woodlawn Charter School.

It’s a high school that currently shares a building with Wadsworth. Next year, it will be the only school at that campus.

But that might not be a long term thing, says Shayne Evans, director of the University of Chicago Charter Schools.

They’re looking to build new, since the Wadsworth building is designed to be an elementary school.

Desiree Borders says the whole thing is just too complicated.

“If my children do not get selected, I’m taking all my children out the Chicago Public School system,” Borders said. “I’m going to homeschool them.”

And she says she wouldn’t be surprised if other parents also throw their hands up and leave CPS.

South Shore Fine Arts Academy accepts students city wide and does not guarantee seats for students in the neighborhood. An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified South Shore as a CPS magnet school.

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.

Parents at school slated for turnaround chase away CPS inventory team

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:55:00 -0500

The proposal to close 54 Chicago public schools and completely re-staff 6 others has parents and school officials on edge.

That was evident at Dewey Elementary school yesterday. When parent Matthew Johnson got there in the afternoon, he says he saw a slew of unfamiliar people outside.

“Thirty-two Caucasians, at the basketball court, in a group, huddled,” Johnson said. “You’d think [it was] the police—I thought somebody got shot on the basketball court. But they were coming in to do inventory.”

CPS is paying a logistics firm $14.2 million to inventory everything from student records to textbooks in all schools set to be closed, turned around, or “co-located” with other schools. Johnson, who opposes the turnaround, said Dewey students have been told for two days they aren’t allowed to take home textbooks for homework because they’re being inventoried.

The school district’s proposal calls for management of Dewey to be turned over to the private nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership, which currently manages 25 schools in Chicago. Dewey is among six schools the district has proposed re-staffing and turning over to AUSL at the end of this school year.

But seeing people inventory the school’s assets before Chicago’s board of education officially votes to turn Dewey around didn’t sit right with Johnson, who chairs the local school council.

“When I saw them out there, I called parents and I asked, ‘How many are willing to stay in the school with me?’ And we said, ‘We ain’t leaving this building until they leave.’”

Rumors began to fly that Dewey School was being occupied. By evening, the inventory team was long gone, and most parents had gone home. But the head of CPS security was at the school. So were teachers union organizers, state Rep. Esther Golar, and 3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell.

“It’s especially troubling to me because the vote hasn’t even been taken yet,” Dowell said. “The decision hasn’t been finally made.”

Dowell says she put a call out as soon as she heard about Dewey.

“I spoke to Barbara Byrd-Bennett this afternoon, after I found out that the transition team was in Dewey,” Dowell said. “[Byrd-Bennett] acknowledges that this is, in her words, unconscionable, and that these individuals from CPS should not be in the school now, disrupting the education of young people.”

Dowell opposes handing Dewey over to AUSL. She wants CPS to figure out how to improve the school with existing staff. Johnson says the principal and many teachers are new, and the school is on an upswing.

Last year another school slated for turnaround, Piccolo, was briefly taken over by protesters. CPS gave principals a guide this year with instructions on what to do if their schools are “occupied.”

CPS says it has been conducting inventories in schools slated for closure, turnaround or co-location for the past two weeks. A spokeswoman said in an email that nothing is being removed from schools, and that schools are only inventoried after regular hours. She said if the turnaround is not approved, Dewey school will still have a good accounting of all its assets.

Linda Lutton is a WBEZ education reporter. Follow her at @WBEZeducation

Education group seizes opportunity in CPS closings

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:10:00 -0500

In the parking lot of the Burger King on 69th and Halsted, a small group of parents and activists is getting a primer on school closings on a recent Saturday morning.

This isn’t a random crowd. They’re all with a local chapter of the national education reform group Stand For Children. It’s the well-funded, pro-charter organization that helped push through Illinois legislation for a longer school day and teacher evaluations.

For the past few weeks, they’ve been canvassing Chicago neighborhoods most affected by schools closings.

Trainers explain packets the volunteers will be handing out in Englewood. They include a list of open enrollment school options and a CPS magnet school application. There’s also Stand for Children literature.

Chicago Public Schools’ intention to close 53 elementary schools has rattled communities. Powerful groups like the local teachers union and vocal parents lambaste the closure plan. But there are others who see restructuring as an opportunity.

Juan Jose Gonzalez is Stand for Children’s Chicago director. He says in the past few weeks, canvassers have knocked on more than 11,000 doors.

“I’ve actually been very surprised at the feedback,” Gonzalez said. “We know sometimes those that scream the loudest get the most attention. But what we’ve been finding on the door is a lot of people either a. know about the school action or have come to grips with it. Some people when they find out about the new opportunities coming to them at the new school whether it be a new pre-K program, or air-conditioning or some of the capital improvements, they seem to get excited about that transition.”

It sounds a lot like Stand for Children’s own stance: Gonzalez says school closures are destabilizing, but that Stand for Children isn’t fighting them.

“There’s really nothing else we can do about it. We’re trying to be proactive and getting people to the right better quality schools,” Gonzalez said.

Mays and Banneker are two Englewood elementary schools impacted. Both have student populations that are mostly black and low income. CPS ranks both in the lowest level of academic performance. Banneker is slated to close; Mays will take over and move to Banneker’s building.

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Stand for Children volunteer Ophelia Svitak knocks on doors and reads from a script. Her job is to explain the Mays and Banneker school closures and changes. It’s a windy day. On some blocks there are more abandoned and boarded-up homes than occupied households.

The few times people do answer their doors, Svitak finds they don’t have children at either Mays or Banneker. But Stand for Children volunteers use the opportunity to ask people to sign a postcard petition, which asks if they want quality schools for all children in Chicago. Those people are now added to the group’s mailing list and swell their ranks on paper.

Finally, one Banneker parent answers. Kenitha Currie also has preschool-aged children. When Mays becomes Banneker, there will be a new pre-K program. Currie isn’t sure if she’ll keep her older kids there but she likes the change for her younger children.

“It’s some schools out here for preschool that go all day. That’s something that I do want because half a day for preschoolers ain’t gonna get it,” Currie said.

Then Svitak has her sign a Stand for Children petition.

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A couple of days later, I stopped by Banneker Elementary to hear from other parents.

Danielle Williams is skeptical. She said her first grader Terrence gets straight As at Banneker and he doesn’t want to change.

“I want to keep my teacher,” Terrence said.

His mother says the school knows some of the behavior problems Terrence has.

“And they know what’s going on with him and they’re okay with him. Mays come in, they should still keep Banneker teachers because they’re good teachers and the principal because they’re good people,” Williams said.

Right now that seems unlikely. Williams says she’ll see how the summer transition goes. Then she’ll decide if her son will stay at Banneker-turned-Mays Elementary come fall.

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

Parents, aldermen walk the distance from King to Jensen

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:32:00 -0500

The walk from King Elementary to Jensen Elementary on Chicago’s West Side is 20 minutes each way—past boarded-up buildings and vacant lots.

Parent activists walked from one school to the other Tuesday morning, in an effort to bring attention to what students might experience next year when King closes and students are assigned to Jensen.

The distance between the two schools is far enough that Chicago Public Schools has said it will bus current King students to Jensen until they graduate.

But parent LaKecha Green said that plan doesn’t solve her own dilemma.

“What about my 3-year-old that has to go to school only for two hours, is there going to be a bus that’s going to pick him up and bring him back home for those two hours?” Green said as we walked along Polk Street toward Jensen.

CPS is not promising to provide busing to younger siblings and new students, and Green said she doesn’t have a car. She said she’d rather take a bus and a train with all three of her boys back to their old school, Crown Elementary. That way, she said, she’d know they’d get to school safely.

“I want to visually see them go into the school, because once they’re in there I know that they’re safe,” she said. Green lives across the street from King and volunteers at the school, something she fears she won’t be able to do somewhere else, especially without transportation.

District spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the route parents walked Tuesday may not be the route that CPS and the police department designate as the Safe Passage route for students who have to walk.

CPS has committed to providing busing to nine schools because the distance between the closing and receiving schools is more than 0.8 miles. Those schools are Bethune, Bontemps, King, Overton, Lawrence, Canter, Kohn, Ericson, and Trumbull. Trumbull students going to Chappell will not have busing.

Organizers with the Raise Your Hand Coalition, Blocks Together, COFI and Save Our Neighborhood Schools, said they want Mayor Rahm Emanuel, school board members and other decision makers to “walk-the-walk” with them at other closing schools over the next couple of months.

On Tuesday, Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) and Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) joined the walk from King to Jensen. King school is in Fioretti’s ward, while Jensen is in Ervin’s. Aldermen don’t have much say in the decision to close schools. The Board of Education will vote at the end of May.

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