In Chicago’s rush to close public schools, one neighborhood will have no high school at all.
Wendy Katten of Raise Your Hand, a public education activist, interviews a parent who describes how the voices of parents were ignored in the latest round of school closings.
More school closings are underway in Chicago. In the Englewood neighborhood, which was hit hard by the shuttering of some 50 schools in 2013, there will be no public high schools left should the city follow through on the latest plan.
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) claims the community requested the school closings this year but many people in the affected neighborhoods question that claim. Raise Your Hand, a public education advocacy group, spoke to one parent, a member of the Local School Council of Harper High School, one of the schools that’s slated for closure. Clifford Fields, who has been an active community member in West Englewood for decades, said that no one from the LSC, the elected parent body that oversees Harper High, was invited to be part of the group that that signed off on closing every public high school in Englewood.
In an interview with Raise Your Hand, Fields had blunt words for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials who, as he put it, “are treating our kids like they are cars, just trying to shuffle them around.” Fields also cited Chicago’s gang problem, which prevents children in areas like Englewood from moving safely even from block to block. “But you want to shift our kids to other schools in other neighborhoods.” Fields called on officials to redirect resources to schools like Harper. Field’s children graduated from Harper and TEAM Englewood. He was also a Local School Council member at Goodlow elementary, which was part of the 2013 closings.
In Chicago, parents don’t matter. Nor do students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is what happens when people elect a tyrant and most of these tyrants can be found among Koch branded tea party/libertarians, neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, Bannon Alt-Right conservatives, and Trumpists.
In fact, Bannon is giving conservatism of any kind a malignant name.
All of these groups rely on PSYOP lies and misinformation to fool enough voters to get their minions into office. Once in, voters/parents do not count. Anyone that votes for these tyrants is voting against democracy and the Constitutional Republic of the United States.
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Except that this particular tyrant happens to be a Democrat.
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neo-liberals are in the Democratic Party
neo-conservatives are in the Republican party
Both of these neo-factions came out of the University of Chicago.
But at one time, there were no neo-conservatives in the GOP until Reagan recruited most if not all of the racists and/or neo-liberals in the Democratic Party to switch to the GOP and vote him into the White House.
Once the neo-liberals that left the Democratic Party crossed over, they changed their label to neo-conservative.
How much of a difference is there between then two neo-factions?
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I fear that many people will die because of Trump’s ignorant decision to recognize Jerusalem as the Capitol of Israel. This should be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump broke six decades of US precedent with a needless and simpleminded provocation.
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It’s easy to imagine Trump causing a war in Korea that kills millions, a war with Iraq in addition to an increase in violence throughout the middle east.
How far will all those wars spread if Trump lights all those fuses and then blows on the flames to make them hotter?
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Not to mention nuking North Korea and Little Rocket Man
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And then the trade winds blowing all the nuclear dust across the Pacific to coat Japan and then North America and every island in that ocean. Millions more would die early, painful deaths from the diseases caused by that nuclear fallout.
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Diane, this is in reply to your comment about Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. I like to see what foreign newspapers are saying. it gives an opinion from outside the US. Both the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and the Straights Times (Singapore) warn about increased violence and criticize Trump’s decision.
……………………………..
World leaders criticise Donald Trump’s Jerusalem move, warn of violence
LONDON (REUTERS) – Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East on Wednesday (Dec 6) condemned the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as an incendiary move in a volatile region and Palestinians said Washington was ditching its leading role as a peace mediator.
The European Union and United Nations also voiced alarm at US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and its repercussions for any chances of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
Major US allies came out against Trump’s reversal of decades of US and international policy on Jerusalem…
http://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/world-leaders-condemn-donald-trumps-jerusalem-move-warn-of-violence?xtor=EREC-16-1%5BST_Newsletter_AM%5D-20171207-%5BWorld+leaders+criticise+Donald+Trump%27s+Jerusalem+move%2C+warn+of+violence%5D&xts=538291&utm_source=google_gmail&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=addtoany
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What if this move by Trump is something Putin told him to do?
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happens to apply the DFER brand of “progressive” social engineering by pushing separatist regentrification under the NAME of being a Democrat…
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Destroying neighborhoods … TERRIBLE. This is how the DEFORMERS do it … DIVIDE and CONQUER. SICK.
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The first high school in Englewood dates back to the 1870s. This community is 97% African American with people from Korea and Pakistan operating a dwindling number of businesses. In this case, you do have to wonder if keeping the high school will help to save the community without massive and complementary investments in the community. The very long history of divestment, redlining, and more is reported here and worth reading.
.http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/426.html
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I do think ed reformers really don’t get it, though. They really do see schools as simply service providers.
They don’t value them.
If you read them they had some misgivings about their heavy-handed approach after Chicago- it was ALMOST a recognition that they MIGHT not know everything- they are (now) aware that closing schools angers and upsets people.
It’s a political calculation. They’re the rescuers! They can’t let it be known that people in Chicago don’t feel they need rescuing.
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Englewood is near the lake and close to the central business district. It is just the type of neighborhood that can make developers a lot of money. Making the neighborhood inconvenient for the poor is one the strategies that cities and developers use to move poor families out of their target area so they can gentrify a neighborhood. This gentrification often includes a selective charter to serve the new white middle class families that will move into the area. We have seen this same pattern play out in multiple cities across the country.
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More to the point, it’s right next to the University of Chicago, which has been expanding a lot lately. Housing especially is rather tight in the area. Englewood would be a great new source of affordable university housing. If only we could figure out how to get rid of those pesky poor black people who are already there….
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Englewood lies directly west of the Dan Ryan. It is near the lake only if you are using the euphemistic language of Realtors. Similarly, its commonly accepted northernmost border lies about 8 miles south of Madison.
Englewood is desperately poor, relatively dangerous, as hypersegregated and isolated as any neighborhood in the US, and it is surrounded by neighborhoods just like it. It does have a Whole Foods, but you need to have a really long term plan if you are looking at it as a gentrification play.
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Every decade or so we get a newcomer who wants to consolidate school districts- we have some tiny high schools in rural areas. It doesn’t make much sense to have tiny high schools in every burg, but people love these schools and they want them.
Every time it’s proposed it’s shot down by a huge margin. They just don’t get it. These people are attached to their schools and there’s value in that.
People have few enough attachments. They cling to these things because it grounds them. They’re not efficiency experts. They’re human beings and this is where they live.
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It’s unfortunate that Englewood has been so torn apart by poverty, disinvestment, reverse redlining, racist policing and mass incarceration, and a huge loss in population–the truth is that for years families have been frantic to move or send their kids to school in a safer neighborhood.
The good news, though, is that Chicago’s strategy of charter schools and the portfolio approach to district schools is working in a big way, even if it might require kids to travel:
“In the Chicago Public Schools system, enrollment has been declining, the budget is seldom enough, and three in four children come from low-income homes, a profile that would seemingly consign the district to low expectations. But students here appear to be learning faster than those in almost every other school system in the country, according to new data from researchers at Stanford.”
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Doesn’t Illinois have a constitution Rahm is violating?
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Publicity for the “best” “public” school in America: http://www.businessinsider.com/basis-scottsdale-best-public-school-in-us-2017-11/#but-bailey-has-learned-that-if-you-hold-students-to-a-high-bar-they-will-actually-perform-better-she-added-they-may-not-reach-the-bar-but-theyre-pushing-their-potential-to-more-than-what-they-thought-they-could-do-30
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Read Carol Burris on BASIS:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/03/30/what-the-public-doesnt-know-about-high-performing-charter-schools-in-arizona/?utm_term=.47492a6fb784
BASIS has very rigorous demands and weeds out those that can’t meet them.
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This is so very sad. We are facing school closing in our City as well.
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The school closings are primarily the result of a declining student population. The school board is really up against a rock and a hard place. It is not a good allocation of tax resources, to keep a school open, that does not have an adequate student population, to justify keeping it open.
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Why do they open new charter schools for a declining enrollment?
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The public schools, are facing a declining enrollment (This is the reason that 50 schools closed, and the high school in the article is closing). Obviously, some of the children, who have left the public system, are going to the newly opened charter schools.
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Charles,
Why are new charters opening if enrollment is declining?
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Enrollment is declining at the publicly-operated schools, and increasing at the charter schools. Parents are opting-out of the publicly-operated schools. The school board is basically forced to close and consolidate, some of the publicly-operated schools, when there is an insufficient student base.
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Charles, did you notice that the NAACP called for a moratorium on new charter schools? Did you notice that the conservative journal Education NEXT reported an 11% drop in support for charter schools among both Republicans and Democrats?
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I am well-aware that the NAACP has called for a moratorium. The organization has their reasons (some of which I agree with). The support for charter schools has varied over time. The original idea, and the reality in 2017, are at variance. “The crowd, like a woman, is fickle”- John Carradine in “Blood and Sand”
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