WBEZ | Education

More than classrooms lost in school closings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CPS board votes to close 50 schools

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

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

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

Listen: WBEZ visits two of the spared schools

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

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

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

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

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

Listen: Aldermen speak against school closings in their wards

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

Follow @WBEZeducation on Twitter for live updates.

Affected schools: Closures, turnarounds and receiving schools

What will be lost

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lafayette Elementary string orchestra tunes up despite uncertain future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Protesters march against plan to close CPS schools

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

Fact check: Chicago school closings

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:31:00 -0500

Chicago is bracing for a critical vote by the Board of Education Wednesday: whether to shut down 54 schools.

Conflicting figures are still flying, as they have through months of debate. There’s controversy around many questions: Will closing schools save money or cost money? Will kids go to better schools? Are the targeted schools under-used, or not?

WBEZ dug into these and other questions. Check your facts:

Chicago is closing 61 buildings.
30,000 children are affected by school closings.
Schools are under-enrolled because the City of Chicago lost 145,000 children in past the decade.
Children will be going to better performing schools.
CPS needs to close schools to address its $1 billion deficit.
CPS will save $560 million in capital expenses over the next 10 years.
Chicago Public Schools will save $43 million annually on operating expenses by closing schools.
Students will have busing if their new school is more than 0.8 miles away from their old school.
Schools slated to close are half-empty.

Chicago is closing 61 buildings.

Chicago Public Schools says it is shuttering 61 buildings and removing them from the district’s “footprint.” But that number overestimates how much that footprint will actually shrink.

The real number of CPS buildings that could be closed is 48.

Three of the buildings CPS counts in its 61 total were never part of the district’s “footprint” to begin with—they’re private buildings leased by charter schools.
Two other “buildings” the district says it will be able to close are actually additions. CPS is counting Goldblatt as one potential closure and the Goldblatt addition, constructed in 1972 and attached to the school, as a second building closure. The same is true for Songhai.
Two buildings CPS says it can get rid of due to closings are actually temporary buildings the district is considering demolishing. One is an annex next to Pilsen Academy (which is neither a closing school nor a receiving school) and a temporary modular unit built next to Ft. Dearborn.
Six schools—Armstrong, Peabody, Parkman, Key, Kohn and Ross—have two physical buildings on their campuses. CPS is counting each of these proposed school closures as two closed buildings. In some cases, the second building is a temporary annex or modular unit.

One school slated for closure, Burnham, does in fact operate out of two buildings separated by more than a mile.

The number of buildings to be shuttered (48) is smaller than the total number of closures (54) because not all closures will result in a vacant school building. For example, Wadsworth school is closing and students are moving to Dumas. But the Wadsworth building will continue to house the University of Chicago Charter School-Woodlawn.

30,000 children are affected by school closings.

CPS says 30,000 children will be impacted by school closings. But the district’s plan actually will touch more than 46,000 children.

A WBEZ analysis shows that if the 54 proposed school closings, 6 turnarounds and 11 co-locations are approved by the Board of Education, 46,147 current students at 132 schools will be affected.

WBEZ’s 46,147 figure includes current 8th grade students at the closing and receiving schools. (CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said graduating 8th graders were subtracted from the district’s count because they will move on to high school next year.) Neither the district nor WBEZ includes incoming kindergartners.

Schools are under-enrolled because the City of Chicago lost 145,000 children in past the decade.

School officials and city officials have repeatedly cited the 145,000 figure. It’s based on U.S. Census figures. The City of Chicago has around 18 percent fewer children now than it did in 2000.

But a drop in child population does not automatically mean a loss of students in CPS.

In fact:

Between 2000 and 2013, actual enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has not decreased dramatically. Enrollment since 2000 is down 6 percent (28,289 students).
Also, since 2000, the proportion of Chicago kids attending public schools has actually increased. For decades, the percent of city kids ages 5-19 in CPS hovered around 65 percent. In 2010, the percent of all 5-19-year-olds in CPS was up significantly, to 79.7 percent.

	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010	2013
Total CPS enrollment (includes Pre-K)	577,679	477,339	408,442	431,750	409,279	403,461
# of schools in CPS	“more than 550”	n/a	560	597	674	681
U.S. Census Bureau population totals for City of Chicago, Ages 5-19	904,731	731,103	592,616	625,776	513,476	n/a
U.S. Census Bureau population totals for City of Chicago, Ages 0-19	1,187,832	963,125	809,484	844,298	699,363	n/a
Percent of Chicago's school-aged (5-19) kids in Chicago Public Schools	63.90%	65.30%	68.90%	69.00%	79.70%	n/a
Percent of Chicago's 0-19 kids in Chicago Public Schools	48.60%	49.60%	50.50%	51.10%	58.50%	n/a

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago Public Schools, Illinois State Board of Education, Chicago Tribune (for the number of schools in CPS in 1970)

And the loss of population in the city does not fully explain why some schools have lost enrollment.

At the same time enrollment was falling, CPS launched an ambitious effort to open new schools (more than 130 since 2004). While district officials also closed schools during that time for poor performance or low enrollment, they did not keep pace with new schools opening. In 2000, CPS had 597 schools. In 2005, it had 625. It now has 681 schools and is slated to open 13 more by fall. Many new schools were located in areas experiencing population decline. Those areas are now home to proposed school closures.

There are 28,289 fewer students in all CPS schools (district and charter) since 2000. But there are 75,680 fewer students in CPS-run, non-charter schools. (All 54 schools slated for closing are district-run). That enrollment loss has come at the same time enrollment in charter schools has increased by 47,391 students.

If you take a long view, you do see dramatic declines in CPS enrollment. Fueled by white flight, CPS lost 100,000 students in the decade between 1970 and 1980. The district lost more students in the two years between 1978 and 1980 than it has in the past 14 years.

At the time, city officials proposed closing dozens of schools at once, but didn’t follow through. Newspaper articles from that time read like déjà vu.

In a Chicago Tribune article published on Feb. 6, 1980, then-Mayor Jane Byrne suggested closing 65 public schools in order to cut costs, arguing at the time that the school system operated inefficiently because it had too many schools for its steadily declining enrollment.

Enrollment declines have not been even across schools and depend on everything from neighborhood change and gentrification to the addition of charter schools in an area.

The chart below outlines CPS schools with the largest enrollment dips in recent years.

The following are schools with the largest enrollment declines since 2000. An * indicates the school is slated to be closed or to receive students from another closing school.

CPS SCHOOLS W/ BIGGEST ENROLLMENT DECLINES 2000-2013
SCHOOL	Community Area	1999-2000 Enrollment	2012-2013 Enrollment	Percent Change
Duprey*	WEST TOWN	495	92	-81%
Montefiore*	NEAR WEST SIDE	127	27	-79%
Field	ROGERS PARK	1443	384	-73%
Von Humboldt*	WEST TOWN	1330	362	-73%
Williams*	DOUGLAS	868	256	-71%
Faraday*	EAST GARFIELD PARK	615	184	-70%
Mason*	NORTH LAWNDALE	1490	485	-67%
Goldblatt*	WEST GARFIELD PARK	700	236	-66%
Dubois	RIVERDALE	488	174	-64%
Songhai*	WEST PULLMAN	878	317	-64%
Nash	AUSTIN	1042	392	-62%
Yale*	GREATER GRAND CROSSING	490	186	-62%
Holmes	ENGLEWOOD	751	288	-62%
Dett*	NEAR WEST SIDE	524	202	-61%
Hearst	GARFIELD RIDGE	935	363	-61%
Fiske*	WOODLAWN	558	220	-61%
Morgan*	AUBURN GRESHAM	587	236	-60%
Hinton	ENGLEWOOD	687	281	-59%
Armstrong, L.*	AUSTIN	239	98	-59%
Reavis	KENWOOD	679	279	-59%

Chicago Public Schools recently released a draft 10-year master facilities plan that included demographic projections through 2017 for various neighborhoods throughout the city.

Children will be going to better performing schools.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said the key reason to close schools is about getting children “trapped” in low performing schools to a better place.

But moving schools doesn’t guarantee moving up.

In a 2009 study of school closings, the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that between 2001 and 2006, most students whose schools were closed by the district re-enrolled in schools that were academically weak. Consortium researchers found that most students lost academic ground in the year their school was slated for closure. And once they were in their new school, they continued on an academic trajectory that was just like the trajectory of the closed school.

There was one group of children who did much better after their low-performing schools closed: the 6 percent of kids who ended up in significantly better schools. Several years ago, CPS decided to change its school closings guidelines and promised that schools would only be closed if kids could be sent to better performing schools.

However, CPS has defined “better” very differently than the Consortium. Marisa de la Torre, the author of the Consortium’s school closings study, said in order for students to get better academic results, the closings would have to result in students going to schools in the top quartile of all CPS schools.

Out of the 55 designated receiving schools, there are six that are in the top quartile of all schools: Burnham, Chappell, Chopin, Courtenay, Jensen and Leland.

Just three out of 53 grammar school closures move kids from the lowest performing Level 3 schools to schools in the top quartile. They are King to Jensen, May to Leland, and Trumbull to Chappell.

In 18 cases, students will be moving from Level 3 schools to Level 3 schools.

Closing Level 3	Receiving Level 3
ALTGELD	WENTWORTH
ATTUCKS	BEETHOVEN
BANNEKER	MAYS
DUMAS TECH ACAD	WADSWORTH
FERMI	SOUTH SHORE
GOODLOW	EARLE
JACKSON, M	FORT DEARBORN
KOHN	HUGHES, L
MANIERRE	JENNER
MAYO	WELLS, I
MORGAN	RYDER
OVERTON	MOLLISON
OWENS	GOMPERS
WILLIAMS ES	DRAKE
WILLIAMS MIDDLE	DRAKE
YALE	HARVARD
NEAR NORTH	MONTEFIORE
BUCKINGHAM	MONTEFIORE

CPS needs to close schools to address a $1 billion deficit.

CPS has said it faces a $1 billion short on funds this school year; that represents about 20 percent of the district’s operating budget.

But closing 54 schools won’t reduce that shortfall.

Nearly every press release CPS has put out about school closings mentions a billion dollar deficit (though no official budget has been released yet this year). Every “transition plan” given to parents at closing schools begins like this:

“CPS is doing everything possible to provide Chicago’s children with a 21st century education that helps them thrive and succeed.….However, our District faces a $1 billion deficit, which threatens everything in our system by making it difficult to provide the robust supports and services that all children deserve. Our District’s financial crisis is significantly challenged by underutilization, resulting in financial resources being invested in half empty buildings that are costly to maintain and repair. Currently, CPS is financing schools and buildings with a capacity for 511,000 students while only serving 403,000 students. This utilization crisis is spreading our already scarce financial resources much too thin.”

But despite all the references to the deficit, Chicago Public Schools has admitted that closing 54 schools will not reduce this year’s budget deficit at all.

That’s because all cost savings, plus tens of millions of additional dollars (for a total of $233 million), will be put into receiving schools this year.

“We’ve assumed that we’ll have to spend in this first year an investment that we’ll make back over time with the savings that we’ll realize both in operating savings and cost avoidance of capital investment at these closing schools. So that’s the way we’re looking at it,” Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley told reporters on a telephone briefing March 21.

“Budgets reflect priorities. This is a major priority for us,” added CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll.

Chicago Public Schools will save $43 million annually in operating expenses by closing schools.

Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the district will realize $43 million in net savings by closing 54 schools. But Carroll has not responded to multiple requests from WBEZ to itemize the costs and savings the district would realize by closing schools. And no news organization has published an itemized accounting of costs and savings that add up to $43 million.

In an e-mail, Carroll said "the bulk" of the district’s operational savings from closing schools would come from “reduction in non-teaching positions such as principals, clerks, engineers, etc.” The district would also spend less on utilities and maintenance.

WBEZ did find one cost of closing schools that CPS had not considered in its equation. The district is borrowing $329 million to pay for improvements to receiving schools. Borrowing that money will cost $25 million in debt service every year for 30 years, beginning in 2015—it will be paid for out of revenue normally directed to the operating budget.

CPS will save $560 million in capital expenses over the next 10 years.

When it first announced closings, Chicago Public Schools said it would save $560 million in capital expenses over the next 10 years by shuttering schools. The savings would come by avoiding repairs and other upgrades to those buildings. On May 2, the district quietly lowered that number to $437.8 million. But most of the numbers fueling the revised figure are not based on any new building assessments.

Students will have busing if their new school is more than 0.8 miles away from their old school.

CPS has committed to busing students at nine of the 54 closing schools because the distance from school to school is more than 0.8 mile. They are: Bethune, Bontemps, King, Overton, Lawrence, Canter, Kohn, Ericson, and Trumbull . But transportation will only be offered to current students through their graduation, not to kindergarteners and new students who move into a school’s attendance area next year.

The district’s transportation plan also doesn’t look at the distance between a child’s home and his or her new school. It measures from closing school to receiving school. Buses will not pick students at home. Instead, eligible students will go to a designated location—possibly their closed school—and get on the bus there.

Schools slated to close are half-empty.

CPS officials have said the district cannot continue to throw money at “half-empty” schools. Parents and activists have challenged the notion that all targeted schools are truly “half-empty.”

Here’s what’s behind the debate:

District officials calculate how under-used, overcrowded, or “efficient” a school is by assuming that every school should have 30 students in each homeroom.

The formula says 76 percent of rooms in a school should be considered homerooms; 24 percent of a school’s rooms should be considered “ancillary” rooms for specialty classes like art and music.

If you apply CPS’ own formula to the 54 schools proposed for closing, you find not all are “half-empty.” Fifteen have a utilization rate higher than 50 percent: Buckingham, Canter, Emmet, Ericson, Fermi, Goodlow, Key, Mayo, Near North, Overton, Owens, Ryerson, Trumbull, Williams Elementary and Williams Middle.

But activists have challenged CPS’s formula. Rod Estvan, education policy analyst for disability advocacy group Access Living, says the utilization rates are “totally wrong” for schools like Trumbull and Lafayette, because they have inordinately high proportions of special education students (30 percent and 28 percent, respectively).

CPS officials have admitted the formula does not take reduced special education class size requirements into account in the formula. By state law, self-contained special education rooms can have no more than eight students per teacher or 13 if there are two teachers. However, district officials say an adjustment accounting for self-contained programs would not dramatically alter a school’s utilization rate.

Because an “efficient” school can have a utilization rate of up to 120 percent, CPS’s formula has also been criticized for allowing classrooms of 36.

Others have a more fundamental problem with the “half-empty” designation.

“It’s like this bad metaphor that gives people this image of like a restaurant that’s half empty or something as if CPS has teachers teaching half empty classrooms or schools are literally full of desks that don’t have kids in them,” said Seth Lavin, a teacher at Noble Street Charter School-Rauner College Prep who opposed the closing of his neighborhood school, Brentano. “How many seats you want in any school, how many kids you want in any school, is totally in the eye of the beholder.”

The final report of the School Utilization Commission issued in March concluded that “many schools are well used, but technically under-utilized.”

Becky Vevea and Linda Lutton cover education for WBEZ. Follow them @WBEZeducation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teachers union helps parents file lawsuits to stop school closings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School Closing ICRA Complaint by Chicago Public Media

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