WBEZ | school closings

CPS issues pink slips to over 800 employees

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:25:00 -0500

Employees at schools being shut down or shaken up at the end of this year are being let go today, according to Chicago Public School officials.

More than 800 employees are affected, but there could be many more. The numbers released by CPS today do not include administrators and do not count layoffs in other district schools that are also facing shrinking budgets.

“We do think this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Jackson Potter, staff coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union.

Reports from parents, teachers and principals across the city indicate that people at closing schools are not the only ones who stand to lose their jobs. Potter said, ironically, many of the positions added last year for the longer school day are being cut.

“We’re seeing all of the additional staff from music, world language, art, are being cut, librarians being removed and eliminated from a variety of schools across the district,” Potter said. “It’s really hard to say how damaging and disruptive these austerity budgets are going to be but it’s drastic.”

However, teachers at closing schools with superior or excellent performance ratings are eligible to apply for jobs at receiving schools if there are openings. But CPS officials said they won’t know how many vacancies there will be until mid-July.

CPS officials said, on average, about 60 percent of teachers who lose their positions at one school, but reapply at others get rehired somewhere else in the system.

Becky Vevea is a WBEZ education reporter. Follow her @WBEZeducation.

No simple answers for Chicago's severely overcrowded schools

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 05:00:00 -0500

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Chicago is boarding up 50 public schools over the summer because, officials say, the schools have too few kids to keep operating.

But for every one that Chicago Public Schools is closing, there’s a severely overcrowded school, many where parents and administrators are begging for expensive additions.

It’s all one district—so it seems like there should be a way to even things out. But it’s not an easy problem to solve.

Every corner of Peck Elementary School—from the entry ways to the closets—is used by someone throughout the day. The music teacher’s “office” is on a corner of the stage. The social worker meets with students in the projection room. The bilingual coordinator works in a closet-sized room at the top of a stairwell.

Principal Okab Hassan says the school has been packed full for more than a decade.

The old library is now a food preparation center. The old cafeteria has been converted into two classrooms, each now filled with about 35 fifth grade students.

“According to the board, we are 206 percent overcapacity and still they’re discussing how they can build us a school,” Hassan said.

Peck is one of 50 schools the district considers severely overcrowded, with a 206 percent utilization rate. In all, the district has 81 overcrowded buildings, according to its utilization formula.

Four years ago, the Board of Education approved a resolution to build a $54 million addition at Peck. It would have been finished this fall. Instead, Peck is getting a mobile unit, bringing the total number of temporary classrooms parked on the playground to 18. That doesn’t count the classrooms in the annex behind the main building.

Hassan jokes the school grounds look like a refugee camp.

The city’s predominantly Latino Southwest Side is hardest hit by overcrowding. The Northwest Side is also hard hit, and pockets of overcrowding are popping up around successful schools that attract middle class families on the north side.

At Wildwood Elementary, principal Mary Beth Cunat is constantly trying to find space in her small building--it’s now at 175 percent capacity. Thursdays are particularly difficult because clinicians who work with special needs students are at the school.

“Good morning, this is a reminder that on Thursdays the stage is used for clinician work so students are not allowed to do rehearsals or projects on the stage on Thursdays,” Cunat announced over the loud speaker a couple of weeks ago.

Cunat’s office is in the library closet and she shares it with two other administrators—the International Baccalaureate coordinator and the librarian. Last year, a cohort of 8th grade students did not have a permanent room. Instead, they used whatever room was empty during any given period.

“If the fifth graders were at gym, they would use that fifth grade room, it was just really a scramble,” Cunat said.

Wildwood parents have been begging the Board of Education for an annex for the last couple of months. They’ve had a temporary mobile for 13 years and still don’t have room for all of the students.

And all of this is going on at the same time a political battle is being waged over the fate of schools the district considers under-enrolled.

So, how can a district have both under-enrolled schools and over-enrolled schools? If the city is in control of both, why can’t it find a solution? A solution that wouldn’t involve the painful process of closing schools and building expensive new ones.

“It seems intuitive, but it’s a bit like saying on any given night there are fifty restaurants where people are lined up outside the door and there are fifty other restaurants where the tables are empty,” said Charlie Wheelan, author of Naked Economics and a professor of economics and public policy at Dartmouth University. “No one would ever suggest, well let’s just take the overcrowded restaurants and send them somewhere else. People don’t want to go there. It’s really about changing the food that’s being served. It’s not just about moving customers around.”

Wheelan said most cost-effective options, like busing kids or adjusting attendance boundaries, are a hard sell for parents who are invested in a certain school.

“Parents who have bought into a certain school are very resistant to then being told they’re going to a school, it may be close, but it’s not what they intended to do,” he said.

One way to get parents to buy into busing or moving kids, Wheelan said, would be to replicate the academic program at the overcrowded school in another underutilized or empty school building in a less crowded area.

But even that can be hard in a city plagued with violence and deep racial divides.

CPS officials are not too specific about long-term strategies to address overcrowding, but a draft ten-year facilities plan put out last month hints at solutions:

Preliminary analysis of the current overcrowding situations suggests that many, perhaps nearly two-thirds of the overcrowding situations, could theoretically be solved through means much more cost effective than by building expensive additional capacity, by making policy decisions -- albeit very difficult decisions for those affected by them. We believe that if these alternative methods of overcrowding relief were fully deployed, overcrowding could be solved with approximately $500-600 Million, but it is unrealistic to expect those other means could be successfully deployed to resolve each of these situations. In addition, at the time of this publication, we are evaluating adding additional temporary capacity - and may be able to relocate temporary capacity from some of our less utilized schools in order to accomplish this.

Board of Education Vice President Jesse Ruiz says, frankly, the district doesn’t have the money to construct new schools, so district officials are looking for creative solutions.

“You can’t pick up facilities and move them, but students perhaps are a little bit more mobile, and (we’re) seeing where we can kind of level-load the system and making sure we can help those students and making sure they also have great educational opportunities as well,” Ruiz said.

Busing is not cheap, but it’s far less expensive than building a new school. District officials said a bus route costs about $50,000 each year and temporary mobile buildings cost about $1.6 million to install. An annex or addition can run between $17 and $20 million, while a brand new elementary school facility is roughly $45 million.

CPS officials are working to relieve overcrowding at 22 schools for next year. Annexes are being built at Bell, Durkin Park, Hale, Onahan, Edison Park, Stevenson, Coonley and Oriole Park; they plan to install mobile classrooms at Dirksen, Gray, Little Village, Locke, Lyon, Tonti and Peck; and officials are leasing private space for Chavez, Columbia Explorers, Peck, Smyser, Tarkington, Sandoval, Coonley and Edwards.

The additional mandate of full-day kindergarten for every school left many already-overcrowded schools scrambling for space. In the case of Edwards, CPS initially proposed another modular unit, but parents refused and instead the school will lease space in a nearby church as a temporary solution.

Adam Waytz is a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and teaches a class on how to navigate ethical decision-making when there aren’t clear right or wrong answers. He says organizations have to engage their communities first and then develop a long-term strategy.

“There needs to be a focus on what’s best for the long-term, potentially even at the expense of the short term,” Waytz said. “It’s not clear to me what the long term goal is here.”

Without a long-term strategy, Waytz said, organizations like CPS end up always reacting, or putting out fires.

That’s what’s happening right now at places like Peck and Wildwood. And parents caught in the middle are frustrated.

Deanna Conklin Danao has two children at Wildwood.

“Each time CPS turns over and gets a new CEO and a new staff is hired and people who understood what was going on are let go or repositioned, our children age and in that process, your kids are never going to see an addition,” Conklin Danao said. “My kids in first and second grade are unlikely to see an addition and if they do it would be middle school, at best. Our kids age in this system and it just keeps happening on the backs of them.”

The day after I visited, CPS sent an architect to Wildwood.

But they’re not thinking about building an addition or looking at a long term solution. The architect is drawing up plans that will convert the library into a classroom by knocking down the wall to principal Cunat’s closet office.

CPS registers 75% of students at closing schools, but parents concerned with transitions

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:50:00 -0500

Chicago Public Schools is scrambling to get students at closing schools enrolled in new schools as soon as possible.

Last week Thursday, only about 50 percent of students at schools slated for closure had registered elsewhere. But a huge last-minute surge brought that number up to 75 percent, with some schools making significant leaps.

In 36 hours, West Pullman went from having 45 percent of its students registered to 100 percent registered. A clerk at West Pullman said she made lots of phone calls and grabbed parents during drop-off and pick-up to get them to registered by Friday evening’s deadline.

But about a dozen parents protesting outside Lafayette Elementary Monday deemed the enrollment push a “devastating registration mess” and lambasted CPS for giving parents just over one week after the vote to pick a new school.

“So far we have received nothing but a rushed registration that has caused chaos,” said Rousemary Vega, whose four children attend Lafayette. CPS spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said Friday that parents can still register students throughout the summer.

One parent at the protest, Latrice Jamison has a daughter at Robert Emmet Elementary School, and said she has not enrolled her child at a new school. Yet, according to CPS figures, Emmet has registered 100 percent of its students. A clerk who answered the phone at Emmet Monday said all of their students have registered. When asked specifically about Jamison’s child, the clerk, who identified herself as Ms. Thomas, said Jamison did register her child.

The Monday protest, organized by the group Parents 4 Teachers, drew attention to two issues that have been prevalent throughout the closure process—what will happen to special needs students and whether or not students will be going to higher performing schools.

Transitioning students with special needs

According to numbers released by the district Monday, 100 percent of students in special education cluster programs have been assigned to a new school.

But that contradicts Kathleen Consalter’s experience. She has a fifth grade daughter in the autism program at Lafayette and said Monday she still doesn’t know where her daughter will go to school next fall.

Consalter said she was referred to Lowell, but when she went to register, the people in the main office had no idea what she was talking about. They said Lowell doesn’t currently have an autism program.

“I’m very worried, but at the same time, I won’t enroll her in a chaotic school and I won’t enroll her in a school that doesn’t have a program established,” Consalter said.

A CPS spokeswoman said students in Lafayette’s cluster program have been reassigned by central office to receiving school Chopin Elementary or nearby Lowell Elementary. There is not currently an autism program at either school, but next year, officials say, there will be two classrooms at Chopin and three at Lowell. The district’s Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services is training the staff at both schools on how to work with autistic children.

The district’s special education cluster programs—which are programs that offer self-contained rooms with strict size limits—may not only change because of the school closures. State education officials are talking about eliminating the class size limit on self-contained special education rooms. Currently, self-contained rooms cannot have more than eight students (or 14, if a teacher’s aide is present).

If the class size limits for special education are removed, CPS would not be legally required to have designated self-contained rooms at receiving schools for special education cluster programs.

Higher performing schools?

Less than a day after the Board of Education voted to close 50 public schools, parents were sent a letter saying they could enroll in any district school that has space.

But parents protesting Monday said that isn’t the case.

“I would love to send my child to a higher quality school where they have all the proper resources they’re promising us,” said Magdalene Thurmond, who has a child at nearby Duprey Elementary. “They’re not doing it. They’re turning us away from the Level 1 schools.”

The designated receiving school for Duprey students is De Diego Elementary, which is currently on probation. Both are Level 2 schools, the middle CPS performance rating, but Duprey is not on probation. Thurmond wants a higher-performing school, but said the ones she’s called have said they don’t have space.

A number of neighborhood schools do keep waiting lists and may not be accepting students from outside their assigned attendance boundaries. But Thurmond and other parents said some of the most coveted schools do have “empty seats” if you apply CPS’s utilization formula.

According to district data, there are 2,000 “empty seats” at about a dozen of the district’s coveted magnet and selective enrollment schools. But CPS says the deadline to apply to those schools passed in December and the schools have finished enrolling students by now.

Erica Clark, a CPS parent whose children attended magnet schools, said the district is unfairly holding different schools to different standards.

“If you call one of these schools, they may say, well we can’t take these kids because we have extra rooms for library and art and we have a special science lab,” Clark said. “That’s all fine. We want every school to have that. The problem is these schools have those things too. And those things weren’t taken into consideration for schools that were put on the chopping block. It’s fundamentally unfair to hold schools to different standards.”

A CPS spokeswoman said at least two of the schools the group named—Kershaw and Davis—are still taking applications because they didn’t have enough applicants during the regular magnet admissions process.

Becky Vevea is a WBEZ education reporter. Follow her @WBEZeducation.

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CPS chief: 'It’s time to turn the page'

Tue, 28 May 2013 16:30:00 -0500

It’s been a year for the history books in Chicago Public Schools, and that’s exactly where schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said she wants it to stay.

“Whatever has happened this past year, it’s done,” Byrd-Bennett said Tuesday at a City Club luncheon. “The collective bargaining agreements are settled. There’s a moratorium on school closures for the next five years. And it is the beginning of a new school year in a few short months.”

It’s been less than a week since the vote to close a record 50 public schools, but Byrd-Bennett said it’s time to move forward.

“We are putting the past behind us,” Byrd-Bennett said. “It is time to turn the page.”

But not everyone is ready to turn the page. The decision to close the most public schools in a single year in American history has been met with fierce opposition from community groups, parents and labor unions.

The Chicago Teachers Union has already filed two lawsuits to stop the closings, and they plan to file another Wednesday. That third suit seeks to stop 10 of the 50 schools from closing. CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin would not provide a copy of the lawsuit or a list of schools being named.

The current school year isn’t only making history with a seven-day teachers’ strike and 50 school closures. CPS officials also announced Tuesday they’re projecting a record-high graduation rate. According to district data, the graduation rate is expected to hit 63 percent, up from 48 percent a decade ago.

The graduation rate counts students who have graduated within five years of starting high school. This year’s rate counts students who started high school in 2008 and will have earned enough credits to earn their diploma by the end of the summer in 2013.

“Every child who graduates, we should see as a victory for Chicago,” Byrd-Bennett said. “When a child succeeds, it represents our collective success.”

The graduates included in this year’s figures would have started high school under former schools CEO and now U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

COMPLETE AUDIO of BBB at City Club

Becky Vevea is a WBEZ education reporter. Follow her @WBEZeducation.

Springfield unlikely to stop Chicago school closings as teachers had hoped

Thu, 23 May 2013 18:04:00 -0500

Some members of the Chicago Teachers Union were hoping state lawmakers would slow down the process of closing dozens of Chicago schools.
Illinois State Sen. William Delgado introduced a bill that would put a one-year moratorium on closing any Chicago schools.

He’s a Democrat who represents parts of the city’s Northwest Side and chairs the Education Committee in the State Senate. A few weeks ago, he got a hearing for his bill addressing the school closings. But the only way he could get the needed support for his bill was to use a parliamentary move essentially removing all the language, what’s called a shell bill. Then, down the road, new language could be added.

Since that hearing, Delgado hasn’t heard anything from other lawmakers.

“This is the hottest button issue in the City of Chicago. I was very disappointed that other legislators that have communities being directly impacted were not running me over to get on that bill,” Delgado said Thursday.

Meantime, another bill addressing the school closings introduced in the Illinois House of Representatives has yet to be called for a hearing.

Delgado said with a week left before legislators adjourn for the summer, he doesn’t see Springfield being a factor in slowing down the school closings.

Tony Arnold covers Illinois politics for WBEZ. Follow him @tonyjarnold.

Afternoon Shift: Immigration as women's issue, Urlacher's retirement and insurance for vets

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:45:00 -0500

Is immigration a women's issue? Maria Pesqueira of advocacy group Mujeres Latinas en Acción says it is. Niala looks at why 1.3 veterans are uninsured. Finally, a national look at the Chicago public school closings.

View the story "Afternoon Shift: Immigration as women's issue, Urlacher's retirement and insurance for vets" on Storify

Morning Shift: The votes are in, schools are closing. So what's next?

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:24:00 -0500

The Chicago Teachers Union and others will weigh in on the CPS School Board's decision to close the vast majority of schools on their list. Plus musicians that have moved on, and more, on The Morning Shift.

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 Wednesday, the largest round of school closings in recent American history.

Before the vote, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis told board members, “I personally feel you’re on the wrong side of history, and history will judge you.”

But after two hours of final pleas by parents, teachers, aldermen and activists to save the schools, and after several raucous disruptions to the proceedings, board members voted unanimously to close 49 of the schools. One school, Von Humboldt, was closed on divided vote.

In addition to closing 50 schools, the board voted to replace the entire staff at five grammar schools and have 23 schools share 11 buildings.

Listen: WBEZ visits two of the spared schools

Chicago Public Schools officials have said the closures are necessary to operate the district more efficiently. They unveiled a list of 54 schools they wanted to close in March, after months of public hearings the district says attracted 20,000 people. School officials originally identified more than 300 schools as “underutilized.”

Despite opposition in the streets and at public hearings and some critical reports by hearing officers, that list of 54 closings held--until the eleventh hour. On Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett withdrew her recommendation to close four schools: Garvey, Ericson, Mahalia Jackson and Manierre. Byrd-Bennett also recommended delaying the closure of Canter Middle School for one year and sparing Barton Elementary from having its staff fired.

Ultimately, board members voted on more than 100 different proposals to massively restructure the school system next year and add to the programming in schools slated to take in students from closing schools. The one school with a divided vote, Von Humboldt Elementary, was closed on a 4-2 vote. Dissenting votes came from Board Vice President Jesse Ruiz and Carlos Azcoitia.

In testimony before the vote, Ald. Joe Moreno (1st) pressed board members to preserve Von Humboldt as the surviving CPS school in the East Humboldt Park community.

“I know you don’t want your legacy to be that you closed public schools in a neighborhood and have left zero schools remaining. I know you don’t want that, board members,” Moreno said.

Listen: Aldermen speak against school closings in their wards

The closings, turnarounds and co-locations will affect roughly 40,000 students and 120 schools, mostly on the South and West sides of the city. Eighty percent of the affected students are African American.

CPS officials made several last minute tweaks to the overall plan. More closing schools will get busing to their new school, bringing the total number of schools being provided transportation to 15. The additional schools are: Dodge (to Morton), Melody (to Delano), Parkman (to Sherwood), Wentworth (to Altgeld) and West Pullman (to Haley).

After the vote, board member Henry Bienen said many of the changes were made in response to the concerns of board members. Jesse Ruiz, who sat on the Illinois State Board of Education for several years before being appointed to the Chicago Board of Education, described it as the most difficult vote of his life.

Politics and education

Aldermen have no official say in what goes on at CPS, but many have been lobbying for months to keep schools in their wards open. In addition to Moreno, eight others showed up Wednesday to fight for schools in their communities.

Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), who has been at many of the public hearings over the past five months, said he almost didn’t show up to testify. “I’m worried that all those hearings were a charade. The decisions were already made,” he said.

Shortly after the meeting, the Chicago Teachers Union lambasted mayoral control of the public schools, and announced a new effort to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other elected officials because of the school closings vote.

“We will start registering people to become deputy registrars. We’re doing training… because clearly we have to change the political landscape in this city,” CTU president Karen Lewis said after the vote.

Lewis said allowing the mayor to control the public schools is an “absolute failed experiment and nightmare.”

CPS officials, for their part, have repeatedly said an elected Board of Education would only inject more politics into public education.

Making schools better

Chicago has been closing schools and opening new ones for more than a decade. But, overall, academic performance has not dramatically improved.

Still, board members, CPS officials and Mayor Emanuel maintain that closing schools will get students out of under-resourced, failing schools.

“I know this is incredibly difficult, but I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future,” Emanuel said in a statement Wednesday evening.

A WBEZ analysis of school performance shows only three closings sending kids to a top-performing school. About one-third will send kids to equally low-performing schools. This was the case for three of the schools removed from the closings list at the last minute—Manierre, Mahalia Jackson and Garvey.

To help keep the promise that children would be going to better schools, the Board of Education approved significant investments for schools that will receive children from closing schools. Many of the receiving schools will get extra money and positions next year to implement new programs. Schools getting Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs will receive $376,000 in startup funds and two extra positions, and schools implementing International Baccalaureate (IB) programs will get $255,000 and two positions. One receiving school, Haley Elementary, will get $237,000 to start a fine and performing arts program.

The Board last month approved spending $329 million to fix up the remaining school buildings; $217 million of that will go directly to schools impacted by closings, turnarounds and co-locations. The total cost will be financed by selling bonds.

Closing schools, opening schools

Buried in the school shake-ups voted on today were plans to open 13 new schools and a handful of alternative programs. Many of those have already been approved by the board.

“The questions that I keep hearing over and over again from my constituents, is, ‘How do we close schools, while simultaneously opening charter schools?’ and ‘Why are we closing schools to crowd schools to then eventually open charter schools?’” said Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th), who only has one charter school in his ward. Two of his ward’s schools, Courtenay and McPherson, are affected by the closings.

But a number of charter school parents, with a newly formed group that calls itself the Charter Parents United (CPU), spoke on Wednesday to ask for more funding. They claim charters are not funded equally with other public schools. CPS increased funding to charters this past year and officials have said the schools are funded fairly.

While they spoke mainly about funding, some of the charter school parents in attendance said they felt attacks on their children’s schools are unfair.

“We’re tired of being blamed for the choice that we made,” said Antoinette Sea-Gerald, a parent from Noble Street Charter School – Gary Comer College Prep. “Please, please, please continue to let us have our choice.”

"The school’s staying open?"

Before school started Wednesday, parents outside of Manierre Elementary were all smiles, after hearing the news that their school would remain open. Parent Charae Williams was walking her daughter to preschool when she heard the news from a WBEZ reporter.

"It’s going to stay open?" Williams asked. “Ooh, that is good! That’s amazing. I’m just so happy now.”

“I got a text from another parent…and I just immediately started crying,” said parent Shereena Allison. “It was a happy experience, but I hate the fact that all of the schools (were) not included in it.”

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.

Audio for this story was gathered by Alison Cuddy, Rebecca LaFlure, Linda Lutton, Chip Mitchell, Natalie Moore, Patrick Smith, and Becky Vevea.

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.