WBEZ | CPS

Morning Shift: What food stamps buy

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:48:00 -0500

There may be changes on the way for how SNAP food assistance works. Plus conversations about spying on fish and closing Chicago schools.

CPS limits coverage from closing schools

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:03:00 -0500

On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education will decide whether to close 54 schools it says are failing or underutilized.

Since the recommended list of closures was announced in March, the city has been in a heated debate about whether some schools should be taken off the list. Media access to these buildings has been almost impossible, and some worry decisions will be made without a thorough inspection.

Arturs Weible is a music teacher at Lafayette Elementary School in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. He directs the only string orchestra at a CPS elementary school.

“We have 85 kids participating in the program. And these kids have higher expectations to keep their grades up. They have to keep their behavior in order,” he said. “And so these kids are basically doing above and beyond pretty much anything that’s being asked of an elementary school child.”

Lafayette is slated to close because CPS considers it an underutilized building. Weible disagrees, and says all parts of the building are in use, but maybe not at all times of the day.

He says he wants the public to see the school before a decision is made.

“To not allow media coverage within school hours is not fair to these parents. They don’t have a voice otherwise. The media is the voice of the community,” he said.

Before CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett announced the closings list, Weible said journalists got into Lafayette easily. Now, it’s like a black out with the exception of heavily restricted visits.

The district said since late March, every media outlet has had access to a proposed closing school and/or receiving school.

CPS says with less than a week until the board vote, it’s denying media access to the closing schools because it would be too disruptive. But a number of news organizations including WBEZ and Catalyst magazine say they’ve been denied access to closing schools since the list was made public.

Some reporters have successfully entered closing schools through other means.

“I was invited to come to Garvey by a parent,” said Kate Grossman, deputy editorial page editor for the Chicago Sun-Times.

She toured Garvey Elementary on the city’s South Side earlier this spring. It’s another school proposed to be closed because of underutilization.

She said there are numbers to back up CPS’s closing recommendations, but there’s also the reality of what’s happening inside.

“You can see that by going to these schools and seeing that they have quite a lot to offer kids even though on paper they’re underused,” she said. “So I think it’s a crucial part of the decision making when you’re deciding to close a school and consolidate it with another to know what you might be losing.”

Grossman said her visit to Garvey was very different from when she was invited by CPS to tour a receiving school with CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett.

“It was lots of people, and you can’t really do a lot of in-depth reporting when you’re following a school CEO around. And the principal might not be comfortable speaking her mind,” she said.

A student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism also tried to gain access to schools without permission. CPS threatened to sever ties with Medill if it happened again.

Professor Marcel Pacatte agreed the student was wrong, but said the district’s response was extreme.

“A student was told yesterday there would be no more audio recording at closing schools. So that’s a fairly draconian issue,” he said.

Pacatte said now he’s making sure students are going through the proper channels to ensure Medill can continue covering the schools.

“I get where they’re coming from but I still don’t understand how they think it’s beneficial for the citizens of Chicago or the students in the schools of the district in the city itself to prevent stories from being told,” he said.

Media restrictions aren’t uncommon for urban school districts.

But Emily Richmond with the National Education Writers Association says too many restrictions can force reporters to find another way into the schools.

“There’s really no substitute for being able to just step back and watch what’s happening around you and have that first hand observation. And who knows what stories they would find in there,” she said.

Richmond says with an historic number of schools that could be affected, news coverage needs to go beyond statistics and present a clearer view of what’s happening.

Susie An covers business for WBEZ. Follow her @soosieon.

Protesters march against plan to close CPS schools

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

Chicago firefighters asked to guard school routes

Wed, 15 May 2013 09:03:00 -0500

Chicago firefighters are being asked to establish a visible presence on the streets during the first three weeks of the new school year, when dozens of schools are slated to close.

The closures have parents worried that many children will have to traverse dangerous areas to get to their new schools. The school district and police have been working to create safe routes.

Now firefighters have been asked to help.

Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago says in memo that "during specific hours of the day, all companies will be on the routes."

The idea is to make parents and children feel safe.

But the firefighters union is concerned that if violence breaks out its members could be thrust into a role for which they are not trained or equipped.

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.

Englewood seeks celebrity help to keep school open near urban garden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not everyone sees it that way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lincoln Park High School students walk out in support of teachers

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:46:00 -0500

On Friday morning, hundreds of teenagers poured out of Lincoln Park High School and onto Armitage Avenue.

To be fair, they warned their teachers beforehand.

The participating students wrote a letter explaining that they were going to walk out for a number of reasons--but mostly, they walked out for their teachers.
Before doing so, they presented a letter explaining why they planned to walk out.

“We want to show that we do care about our education and we wish to have a say in it,” it read. “We have been informed that many teachers are being fired so that newer teachers can be hired and we don’t want to sit back and let CPS make a business of our education.”

Senior Abina Redmond was among those gathered.

“We’re protesting the firing of our teachers...eight so far,” she explained.

In December, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that Lincoln Park would be converted into a wall-to-wall International Baccalaureate school the following school year.

IB programs were originally crafted for children of diplomats--the rigorous curriculum was designed to get students college-ready.

Currently, 20 percent of Lincoln Park’s students participate in the school’s IB program.

When the school goes wall-to-wall next year, all of its 2100-plus students will have some level of IB coursework.

But it seems not all of their teachers will be joining them.

Any time a Chicago Public School’s academic focus is changed, teachers re-apply for positions. Traditionally, principals have had complete authority over who stays and who goes.

But the Chicago Teachers Union asked CPS to make a deal: CPS agreed to let teachers with exceptional rating stay--those with a satisfactory ranking or lower had to reapply.

Earlier this spring, 128 teachers received offers--eight were recently rescinded.
The letters went out prematurely, before anyone ran the deal by the Board of Education. According to a CPS spokesperson, the board ultimately did not support requiring principals to accept candidates that they found unsuitable.

The same spokesperson added that the district is working to place the eight teachers whose offers were rescinded.

Junior Oswaldl Gomez spoke into a megaphone as he led his fellow students in chants. He then explained that the protest was about much more than their school, their teachers. Because, he said, it’s not just their school that’s changing.

“Our brothers, our sisters, they’re losing their teachers--whether they are five or they are 18,” Gomez said.

Principal Michael Boraz sent an email in response to the walkout. He wrote, “It is imperative for me to make decisions that are in the best interests of all our students and their academic success.”

In another part of the city on Friday morning, students at Williams Middle School staged a sit-in at the school Friday morning to protest the closure of their school. Next year, Williams will close and students will go to Drake, which will relocate in the Williams building.

Katie O’Brien is a WBEZ reporter and producer. Follow her @katieobez

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