From a teacher:
“I worked at one of the CPS schools that is going to be closed and, contrary to the administrative determination, it is not an “underutilized” school.
“The school is truly an anchor in the community. Many teachers have worked there so long that their students today are the children of their former students, The teachers have devoted their entire careers to that school, to that community, and now they are losing their livelihoods. Their hearts are broken. This is all so utterly senseless.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I will be downtown on 3/27.
Mayor Rahm will still be skiing in Vail, probably not wondering what the poor folk are doing over Spring Break.
Teachers will be on Daley Plaza with the parents that support them.
We will all be seen if not heard.
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Reminds me of the Gil Scott Heron poem Whitey on the moon.
50 schools got closed last week
(while Rham’s skiing in Vail)
Was all that money I made las’ year
(for Rham skiing in Vail?)
How come there ain’t no money here?
(Hmm! Rham’s skiing in Vail)
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Just as in Chicago, in NYC, through mechanizations under-utilized spaces in schools are “created”. For example, a pre-K through 8th grade school will find out their school will “lose” 6th,7th, & 8th grades. Only to be told about 3 years later, or so that there’s under-utilized space that’s available! To add insult to injury, a H. S.will be co-located in forementioned quarters. Through devious means & methods, a community school has been seized and the public school loses out. [IMO]
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I, too, will be downtown on 3/27. And, Heartbroken Teacher, while this is, indeed, “senseless,” it make a LOT of cents–oops, I mean, dollars (KaCHING!) for the charter school crowd and their cronies (construction companies, CEOs, etc., ad nauseum).
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It’s a horrible situation for 30,000 children and their families in Chicago. Nearly all of them are low income and they will have to walk a much greater distance to school and back, since so many of these parents can’t afford transportation. Many schools being closed, including this one, have after-school programs that families rely on, too, and I don’t know what will become of that.
But few people think about all the affected teachers who’ve devoted decades of their lives to these schools. It is the ongoing commitment, year after year, to generation after generation, of these devoted teachers that makes a school well-anchored in the community. These are the truly “irreplaceable” teachers who non-educators, that are setting such pernicious policies, cannot appreciate, comprehend or measure. These teachers are just devastated by this situation and they did absolutely nothing to deserve being treated like this.
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Is there a way to show the extraction of students to force the under enrollment and the creation of underutilization to pave the way for more closures and more charters?
I wish someone could design a visual for that….students leaving, going to what schools, opening schools, closing schools….kind of Iike an interactive mapping of this charade. Just thinking out loud.
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A primary concern is that the receiving schools are being placed at-risk of “school failure,” due to larger class sizes and because of the increased numbers of at-risk populations they may be getting. Another concern is how some of those at-risk students will be seen as fodder for future charters.
For example, both the school being closed and the receiving school have large Hispanic populations. However, the area around the school that’s being closed is a changing neighborhood and it has had a very sizable increase in the number of low income Black students over the past five years and test scores have been low for that population. The receiving school had higher test scores and only about 260 students last year, so it probably is under-utilized, but now they will be getting nearly 450 MORE students from a school that has considerably more LEP and IEP students, too, including 27% who are on IEPs. That last population includes 10 special ed classrooms, half of which are children with low functioning autism. That’s likely to send a message to the receiving school, is likely to see their test scores drop dramatically, as well as to privatizers, that kids with severe disabilities are ripe pickins for warehousing in separate new charter schools.
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If schools have somewhat lower enrollment, shouldn’t that be seen as a good thing since huge schools make kids feel like an anonymous speck in a crowd?
Smaller overall size almost as much as smaller class size is what gives kids in private schools more of a sense of community than public schools.
Jamming more kids into fewer schools seems designed to produce more failure and therefore more examples to “prove” why public schools should be privatized.
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Yes, exactly right on all points. “Reform” is not about children or improving education. It’s a business plan, so they are setting up schools to fail..
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Closure of most of these schools has nothing to do with underutilization. It ‘a a designed move by privateers to destroy public education and make us a nation of charters. The benefit of charters to them is now they can segregate, discriminate and eliminate people of color and low income. Thanks Obama for nothing.
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How sad and ironic all of this destruction is happening under the leadership of our first biracial president and while his kids attend a top notch school. So much for hope…looks more like despair to me.
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And don’t forget the profit motive. Whether non-profit or for-profit, non-educator “executives” of charter management organizations typically garner six figure incomes. Then there are the no-bid contracts they award to cronies and relatives for seven and eight figures. Ideologies are a part of it, but I think the driving force is the fact that raiding the public coffers is both low risk and extremely lucrative.
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They hire so many relatives that are unqualified. It is a joke. Money, Money, Money!!!!!!
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Follow the money. My elementary school just got a $10,000,000 makeover & facelift with tax dollars. Our neighborhood has no charter high school. We are nervous… very nervous. Surviving the closings & takeovers this time means nothing.
It’s only the beginning. They need to be stopped. Public schools belong to the people – not the politicians & privatizers.
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Respectfully, the fact that there are teachers who love a school and worked there for years is not necessarily a reason not to close it down. What’s happening in Chicago is hasty and will probably backfire, but I do believe that sometimes schools do need to be shut down. For example, if a school is failing, the building is falling apart and doesn’t even have the infrastructure to house modern technology, and has very low enrollment (not enough to constitute spending the money for music and art teachers, etc.), doesn’t it make sense to close the school down and send students slightly further away to a school with higher test scores, a more modern building, with higher enrollment and more money to spend on things like physical education, the arts, a library, and a school nurse? It makes sense to me. I don’t think closing a school down is necessarily a bad thing. I will say that the number Chicago will be closing down is crazy, but perhaps for SOME of these schools, this is long overdue.
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Kayte, I disagree with you. If a school is falling apart and neglected and under-resourced, whose fault is that? The accountability lies with those at the top who control the resources, not the community or the children or the staff. Fire the Superintendent of Schools. Hold the school board accountable. Don’t blame the victims.
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I know that the issue of closing down schools always comes down to politics, but I believe it must be looked at practically as well. You are right when you say that the accountability for a neglected and under-resourced school lies with those at the top, NOT the community, students, or teachers. But regardless of whose fault it was, children need a decent school right now. There comes a time when a car has too many problems to rationalize putting any more money into it, or when a small business just isn’t thriving and it’s time to quit and try something new. The same is true for schools. For a school with all the problems I mentioned (failing scores, old-fashioned and run-down infrastructure, very low enrollment), it may not be worth trying to save, especially if there have already been multiple attempts.
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Hello there! This is my first visit to your blog!
We are a group of volunteers and starting a new initiative in a community in
the same niche. Your blog provided us useful information to work on.
You have done a wonderful job!
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