WBEZ reported on Monday about a small company’s remarkable rise in Chicago.
Camelot Education broke into Chicago by making deals with a handful of South and West side pastors to open alternative schools in their facilities.
Camelot calls this a win-win for the company and the pastors, who benefited financially from their ties to Camelot.
But there were casualties along the way. In Garfield Park, a woman named Angela Taylor dreamed of a new home for kids’ programming in a shuttered Chicago Public school, formerly known as Marconi elementary.
That was scuttled when Camelot and a local pastor worked out a deal behind closed doors. In the end, Taylor had to settle for dashed dreams and just a few classrooms.
WBEZ’s Sarah Karp tells us about Taylor and a community that lost out.
This story is part of a WBEZ Education series looking at the costs of Chicago’s newest alternative schools. Read the others in the series:
* Pastors, Savvy Connections and Chicago Schools: How One Private Company Raked in $10 million
* CPS Paying for Re-Enrolled Dropouts, Even If They Cut Class
