This writer explains why closing schools blights communities and causes economic Decline.
Officials in Chicago assert that hey are saving money by closing 50+ schools,but the ripple effect of school closings will leave devastated communities behind, costing taxpayers far more than any allied savings.
Unfortunately, Chicago officials are looking on the schools as if they were chain stores that did not turn a profit. In fact, they are in most places the hub of the community.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is the corporate privatizer way. Have no concern for the human condition whatsoever.
In Chicago the mayor has come out and stated, finally, that it wasn’t about the budget after all but about closing “bad” schools. Now they are talking about how much money it will cost to “do it [the closing] right.” Too bad all the money they are going to pour into this couldn’t have been poured into schools in the first place.
You have posted a few references to school libraries today, and I wanted to share one of the worst things I’ve heard in the past bad week. The CPS CEO is now saying that children from closed schools will get to go to wonderful schools which actually have wonderful amenities like libraries. Funny, I never before thought of a library as an “amenity” of a school.
I think it is VERY possible the biproduct of blight and decay from shuttering neighborhood schools is part of the reformers plan, not to save money of course, but to enact some sort of twisted gentrification of sorts. I mean can we really discount this possibility?
You are completely correct. Gentrification is exactly what the program is. They think long term.
Chris, George — Do you both really believe that these school are being closed because education reformers want to gentrify the surrounding neighborhoods by increasing blight?
And how many others here also believe this?
This is George. I do not just believe, I can prove it with the facts on the ground. All you do is have to pay attention. The problem with most school people is that they know nothing about anything else and what else is happening and the politics behind the whole thing and what their goals are. I have over 20 years of being their worst night mare as I have the documentation and proofs. I analyzed the RTI law for the special ed community and by using the law I can inter fund transfer up to about 60% of the catagorical funding into the general fund and never help those for whom it was intended and not keep good record by law. I also do a lot of work in transportation, where I have a proven $10 billion overrun on Villaraigosa’s “Subway to the Sea” according to their own EIR which no one seems to read or understand. I helped to organize stopping a $90 billion 1/2 cent sales tax until 2069. We stopped that with under $25,000 and in under 3 weeks. I do not think that has been done in U.S. history. At least no one yet can think of a time using adjusted dollars. We do our homework and not in just one area and are politically connected daily. You must know much more than schools to play and win.
i think gentrification is a part of it, not the entire program.
You have to understand these people, if you can call them that. They work every angle in the book. If you do not have experience and are not well studied and I mean in politics of all ages you will not understand unless explained. If you only work education it is hard to comprehend where they come from and how many angles they work at the same time. Why do you think they are multi billionaires and that they have floors of attorneys and such scheming for them?
I think you all are correct–in one Chicago neighborhood, where two schools are being closed (whereby the alderman famously asked the Salvation Army to stop feeding the poor, and also hinted at closing a low-income housing facility), there is some valuable land under these schools for some lucky real estate developer. However, other neighborhoods will have abandoned school buildings that will blend in with some of the rest of the neighborhood, and will look like Detroit (quiz: who is now the CEO of CPS who was the financial officer for Detroit when they closed all those schools?), which looks like Dresden after WW II. Boarded up, graffiti-ridden buildings surrounded by weeds, cracked sidewalks, broken bottles and, oftentimes, broken into by addicts and other squatters.
America, the richest country in the world.