Examining CPS' Plan to Close, Turn- Around, Or Phase out 17 Schools

Data and Democracy Project: Investing in Neighborhoods

Research Paper Series, Paper #3

Examining CPS’ plan to close, turnaround, or phase out 17 schools

February 21, 2012

A collaboration of

Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education, College of Education University of Illinois-Chicago and Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs University of Illinois-Chicago

Pauline Lipman Janet Smith Eric (Rico) Gutstein with assistance from Lisa Dallacqua

http://www.uic.edu/educ/ceje/

http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/voorheesctr/

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Urban development policy is much more employed in predominantly African locally driven today than in the past and American and Latino neighborhoods to much more reliant on a variety of improve schools, create jobs and build intersecting streams of pubic and private new housing: Renaissance 2010, which resources. As a result, efforts to revitalize aims to ―transform‖ 20 percent of communities are more interrelated, Chicago‘s public schools into new high- interdependent, and potentially conflicting performing but often select or special in practice. In turn, the ability to evaluate enrollment schools; Tax Increment the effects of policies and programs Financing (TIF), a public financing intended to improve communities requires mechanism that is used to attract and information that is more crosscutting and retain new businesses and private interdisciplinary in nature. investment through infrastructure improvement and tax incentives; and the The Data and Democracy Project aims to Plan for Transformation, which is make a contribution to study of education, redeveloping public housing into mixed- economic development, and housing income communities policies in Chicago through an in-depth study of their relationship on the ground. The Data and Democracy Project is developing a more comprehensive and in- The overarching question we aim to depth framework to analyze and interpret answer is: ―How do these three policy changes in community conditions relative agendas intersect when used to revitalize to policy goals and stated beneficiaries. communities, and what kinds of benefits Our intent is to make this data and are produced?‖ Recognizing that the term analysis available to policy makers, ―benefits‖ is relative and often subjective, planners, non-profit agencies, foundations, we are producing new measures that go residents and community leaders, as well beyond the traditional indicators of as other researchers, concerned with neighborhood improvement (e.g., change making sure the development of new in household income), educational schools, housing, and businesses in achievement (e.g., test scores), and communities of color actually benefit –and economic development (e.g., change in not push out – the very families that are property values). Instead, we examine assumed to be the target for these ―benefits‖ from three interrelated improvements. dimensions of social justice: economic redistribution, cultural recognition, and Groundwork for the Data and Democracy political representation. Project began when UIC acquired two databases from the Neighborhood Capital While research on each area of policy housing policy education policy economic exists – much of it produced by UIC development policy Budget Group, a well- researchers including those on this known fiscal watchdog organization in research team – there is a dearth of data Chicago that closed its doors in February that can be used to answer basic 2007 after 18 years of organizing and questions about the interrelationships information dissemination about capital between these different policy arenas. improvements and tax policy. The Chicago provides a fertile site to explore databases contain historical information on these intersecting policies, and to capital improvements for the Chicago specifically look at how race and ethnicity Public Schools and property values and affects and is affected by public and public investments in each of the city‘s private interventions. This is important approximately 173 TIF districts. This data since an array of strategies are being has been updated and shared with

university scholars and community neighborhoods that have been the leaders/activists to examine education and recipients of new or modernized the contested nature of the city. This schools more or less satisfied with dialogue with people affected by and these facilities? What additional public acting on housing, community economic services and investments are development, and education issues on the necessary to improve the quality of the ground helped to sharpen our research education received in these schools? questions, which include: • When new schools are constructed, or • What kinds of new schools are being created from existing schools under constructed, where are they being Renaissance 2010, what are the opened, and from which internal and external effects of drawing neighborhoods are students being students from new and dispersed pulled? feeder neighborhoods? • What kinds of schools are being • What are the educational opportunities closed, where are they located, and in new schools, which students do they what was the justification for their serve, and do these represent more closure? Where have students that equitable educational experiences for previously attended these schools African American and Latino students? been placed? • Which schools have received TIF funds • Where are areas of new housing for modernization and school construction, condominium conversion construction? activity, foreclosures, and public • What are the advantages and housing demolition relative to the disadvantages of using TIF funds to placement of new schools, modernized finance school improvements instead schools, and closed schools? of going through the Board of • Where are areas of greatest racial and Education‘s normal capital budgeting ethnic change relative to the procedures? placement of new schools, modernized • How are community residents, schools, and closed schools? students, parents, and school-, • Where are areas of greatest property neighborhood- and city-wide- value change relative to the placement organizations shaping development of new schools, modernized schools, policy through local organizing efforts? and closed schools? What voice do they have in shaping the changes occurring in schools and

communities? • Are parents and students in

For more information contact Pauline Lipman at [email protected], Janet Smith at [email protected], or Rico Gutstein at [email protected]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary ...... 1 Focus of this report...... 2 Putting the CPS plan in context ...... 5 Neighborhood destabilization ...... 9 Disinvestment and destabilization of schools ...... 14 Effectiveness of proposed actions? ...... 18 Parent and community participation ...... 25 Bronzeville case studies ...... 29 Crane high school case study ...... 42

“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.” Ellen Glasgow

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report provides data that can be used evidence to support the efficacy of the to examine Chicago Public Schools plan, AUSL turnaround strategy or the school announced November 30, 2011, to close, closing strategy, particularly when phase out, turnaround, or co-locate 20 weighed against the destabilizing effects schools. The report focuses on school of replacing all familiar and trusted adults closings, phase outs, and turnarounds. or transferring students to other schools.

Neighborhood Conditions: Many of the Community Involvement in Local schools to be closed or turned around are Decision-making: Another consideration in areas with higher than average poverty is what role parents and others in the rates in 2000 and in 2010 and a majority of community get to play in the decision- residents African American. Some making process prior to CPS announcing neighborhoods have seen dramatic plans to close, consolidate, phase out, or increases in housing prices since 2000, turn around a school. Concern about lack resulting in significant demographic of serious consultation has been raised changes. This suggests there may be a repeatedly since Renaissance 2010 was correlation between school closings and announced in 2004, and again every year gentrification. Others are showing signs of the CPS has announced school closings stress from recent extreme swings in the and turnarounds. 2012 is no exception. housing market, foreclosures, and The lack of adequate time for participation, homelessness. Rapid neighborhood location of hearings outside the community change produces neighborhood instability and school, lack of access to information, and population mobility, and this trend is and lack of transparency all impede likely to get worse. School closures, community members‘ participation in consolidations, phase outs, and decisions that significantly affect them. turnarounds are destabilizing for children and families and contribute to the Promising School/community based instability working class communities‘ face. alternatives to top-down CPS actions: Research points to the productive role of Disinvestment and Destabilization of community organizing and community Neighborhood Schools: Schools involvement in school improvement. targeted for closing, phase out, and Several of the school-communities turnaround report that CPS has not affected by CPS actions have developed invested in their schools to provide promising alternatives to closings, phase- necessary material and human resources outs and turnarounds. and a robust, all-rounded educational program to be successful. They also have Time Out is needed. We call for a been destabilized by a revolving door of moratorium on school closings and turn mandated interventions, appointed area around schools – and any proposal going leaders, and school administrators. forward from CPS that does not seriously engage communities in the decision Efficacy of proposed school actions: making process. While this is a start, CPS This report raises several questions about must do more. Invest resources to support the turnaround strategy: how CPS struggling neighborhood schools. Work assesses the success/failure of schools to closely with community-driven school be closed or turned around, the efficacy of transformation processes and plans. Tap the proposed alternative, what resources the wisdom and experience of Chicago the school has received up to now, and families and community leaders. effect of disruption on students and community, We find there is insufficient 1

FOCUS OF THIS REPORT

This report provides data that can be used to quality of leaders and community examine the Chicago Public School district‘s feedback. plan announced November 30, 2011. The plan – if approved – is to be implemented following a decision made by the CPS board Turn around schools at its February 22nd meeting. CPS is These schools will continue to serve the proposing actions affecting 20 schools: same students but positions of all adults in the building will be terminated and the o close two schools turnaround organization will hire a new o close three schools in the final principal, teachers, and staff. There are stages of phasing out more turnarounds proposed this year than in any previous year. Turnarounds will affect o phase out two schools approximately 5,800 students. The Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), an o co-locations at three schools. external education management o turnarounds in 10 schools organization which currently runs 19 turnaround schools, would take over 6 more CPS announced that proposed school schools serving nearly 3,200 students. CPS actions ―focus on providing students from Office of School Improvement would operate among the district‘s lowest performing 4 new turnaround schools serving 2,650 schools with access to higher quality students. Each turnaround school will school options and making significant receive $2 million to upgrade facilities and investments to help boost their academic educational programs. Several schools will development.‖ CPS states the schools receive additional funding for major renovations. proposed for action meet the Board‘s School Actions Guidelines. The Guidelines AUSL Turnarounds stipulate: o Pablo Casals Elementary o The lowest performing schools in the School, 3501 W. Potomac Avenue district are identified using CPS‘s in the West Humboldt Park Performance Policy which establishes neighborhood. the standards for placing a school on o Brian Piccolo Elementary Remediation or Probation for the 2011- Specialty School, 1040 N Keeler 2012 school year based on tests Ave. in the West Humboldt Park administered in Spring 2011 and other neighborhood. performance data from prior school years. Schools rated ―level 3‖ for two o Melville W. Fuller Elementary consecutive years are included in the School, 4214 S. Saint Lawrence pool. Avenue in the South Side Bronzeville community. o Schools with a pattern of underperforming other schools in their o Theodore Herzl Elementary network – including low test scores School, 3711 W. Douglas Blvd on and low graduation rates –remain on the West Side. the list. o Amos Alonzo Stagg Elementary o Schools with low school improvement School, 7424 S Morgan St. in the rates remain on the list. South Side Englewoood community. o The school actions list takes into o Marquette Elementary School, account other significant factors that 6550 S Richmond St. on the influence school quality, including the Southwest Side in the Chicago school climate, condition of facilities, Lawn community. 2

CPS Office of School Improvement (OSI) Phase-out Schools Turnarounds The proposal will affect 2 schools and 950 students. Existing students may remain o Chicago Vocational Career enrolled in the school, but no new students Academy (CVCA) High School, will be enrolled, and the school will 2100 E 87th St. on the South Side decrease by one grade level per year. All in Avalon Park. students currently enrolled in these schools will be allowed to graduate. o Edward Tilden Career According to CPS, ―incoming freshman Community Academy High students who live in the current boundary School, 4747 S. Union Ave. in the for either school will be reassigned to a Back of the Yards neighborhood on higher performing neighboring high the South Side. school.‖

o Wendell Smith Elementary o Walter H. Dyett High School, 555 School, 744 E 103rd St., in the E. 51st St., in the Bronzeville Roseland neighborhood on the neighborhood on the South Side. South Side. o Richard T. Crane Technical o Carter G. Woodson South Preparatory High School, 2245 Elementary School, 4414 S W. Jackson Blvd., in the Near West Evans, in the Bronzeville Side community. community on the South Side. Co-locations of Charter Schools Closing schools CPS proposes co-locations of charter or Five schools will be closed by Fall 2012: contract schools within three existing CPS two schools, affecting 400 students and schools that have the capacity to hold three additional schools already in the additional students. This will involve 3 phase-out process, affecting 127 students. schools and 1,292 students.

o Simon Guggenheim Elementary o ACT (KIPP) charter school within School, 7141 S. Morgan St., in Henry H. Nash Elementary Englewood on the South Side. School, 4837 W. Erie St. on the West Side in the Austin o Florence B. Price, 4351 S Drexel community. Blvd., in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. o Chi Arts High School, a CPS contract school operated by a o Julia C. Lathrop Elementary non-profit corporation, within School, 1440 S. Christiana Ave., James R. Doolittle Jr. on the West Side in North Elementary School (Doolittle Lawndale (previous phase out). East), 535 E. 35th St., in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the o Walter Reed Elementary School, South Side. 6350 S. Stewart Ave., in the Englewood community on the o Talent Development charter South Side (previous phase out). school within Richard T. Crane Technical Preparatory High o Best Practice High School, 2040 School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd. in W. Adams St., in the Near West the Near West Side community. Side community (no longer has students (previous phase out).

FIGURE 1. SCHOOL CLOSURES, PHASE OUTS, TURNAROUNDS (2012)1

1 Does not include Best Practice High School, which no longer has students. 4

PUTTING THE CPS PLAN IN CONTEXT

A lot has changed in Chicago in the last 25 alternative, selective enrollment, years. Neighborhoods that were once performance contract, military, and home to working class families have been charter, turn around, as well as traditional up scaled while many middle class neighborhood elementary and high enclaves around the city are now schools. Many of the new schools are struggling with foreclosure and declining operated by non-profit private property values. Gentrification pressure in organizations, such as the Academy of communities along the lake – north and Urban School Leadership (AUSL), a south – pushed many families with private organization, currently operates 19 children out, resulting in a loss of over schools and has aspirations to operate at 15,000 school age young people between least 6 more, with some reports of a total 1990 and 2000.2 This was further of 35 schools in the near future. These exacerbated with the transformation of privately run schools operate under a public housing beginning in the late 1990s, contract with Chicago Public Schools which has moved thousands of families (CPS), and some contract out around the city and is still not completed. management to for-profit corporations. All And while the central area of the city grew rely on investors including the CPS and 66 percent this past decade and is now other public agencies but also foundations home to nearly 185,000 people, mostly and corporate philanthropy to operate. higher income Whites, the City‘s south and west sides lost nearly 180,000 middle and In this new education market, many lower income African Americans between neighborhood schools are competing with 2000 and 2010.3 schools with open attendance boundaries that recruit children from all over the city. Our schools have also changed. We now Others restrict access. Magnet and have a market of schools to shop from: selective schools only enroll students that fit their criteria.

Figure 2. Types of schools in CPS system, 2011-12

Includes: 14 open attendance 8 select enrollment 3 magnet

Includes: 22 open attendance 31 magnet

2 Affordable Housing Conditions and Outlook in Chicago, UIC Voorhees Center, 2006 http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/voorheesctr/Publications/v nc_woodsrpt_0706.pdf 3 US Census 2000, 2010, and Local Economic Study and Impact Report, Chicago Loop Alliance, February 2011 http://www.chicagoloopalliance.com/pdfs/2011_Loo p_Economic_Study_FINAL.pdf 5

The language of choice suggests that parents now have better school options to Chicago Educational Facilities choose from. This assumes being able to Task Force (CEFTF) meet the criteria, which relatively speaking very few students in CPS schools can PA 96-0803 established the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force. when it comes to the select enrollment The purpose of the task force is to schools. It also assumes that parents will ensure that school facility-related have the know-how and time to be savvy decisions are made with the input of consumers. More importantly, the new the community and reflect types of schools are presented as better educationally sound and fiscally alternatives to public neighborhood responsible criteria. The task force, elementary and high schools. In reality, with the help of independent experts, this is not the case. Currently, 24 charter will analyze past Chicago schools are listed as either being on experiences and data with respect to Academic Watch Status or Academic school openings, school closings, Early Warning Status.4 school consolidations, school turnarounds, school phase-outs, school construction, school repairs, While new schools were being added, the school modernizations, school CPS has been closing, turning around and boundary changes, and other related phasing out neighborhood schools, school facility decisions on students; pushing thousands of students out of their consult widely with stakeholders, neighborhood. In three years – 2008-2010 including public officials, about these –CPS closed, phased out, consolidated or facility issues and their related costs; designated as ―turn around‖ 53 schools. and examine relevant best practices from other school systems for An estimated 15,000 youth were directly dealing with these issues impacted. This does not include the youth systematically and equitably. at nearly 100 schools receiving displaced students. The justification that students would get into better schools did not hold based on research in 2009, which found that only about six percent of recent displaced students had moved to the top schools in Chicago and gained academically.5 The same concerns are State legislation introduced in 2009 being raised now as CPS announced that created the Chicago Educational Facilities 10 schools would be closed or turned Task Force, which is charged with around in 2012. ensuring that ―school facility related decisions,‖ such as the ones being made now, are educationally sound and fiscally responsible, and made with community 4 Data from the Illinois Interactive Report Card, input. When CPS announced its proposal, retrieved February 12, 2012 from the reaction from a large number of http://iirc.niu.edu/Default.aspx. AEWS means residents and public school supporters Academic Early Warning Status. These schools did was that these decisions were neither not make Adequate Yearly Progress for two grounded nor necessary. The Task Force consecutive years and are eligible for state sanctions. AWS means Academic Watch Status. agreed and in January 2012 called for a These schools failed to make AYP for two additional moratorium on closings and turnarounds. years after being placed on Academic Early The reasoning: ―CPS‘s historic and Warning (or four annual calculations of missing continuing lack of transparency and AYP) and are eligible for additional state sanctions. 5 de la Torre, M. & Gwynn, J. (2009). When schools evidence-based criteria for decisions close: Effects on displaced students in Chicago resulted in the pervasive climate of public public schools. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago suspicion about what drives CPS to take School Research. 6

school actions and allocate resources, Renaissance 2010 plan, CPS opened 155 often in ways perceived to be highly new schools and closed 82 schools in just inequitable.‖6 Further, as the Task Force eight years (2001-2009). While graduation chair state Rep. Cynthia Soto, D-Chicago rates increased during this time, so did the noted: "This is a new (CPS) percentage of students leaving the system administration. They really have to get to and racial gaps increased, especially know these communities before they start between African American and white to take school actions. Some of the students.9 schools they've proposed are performing and should not be targeted."7 During this period, a lot of resources were put into magnets, turnarounds and How did we get here? charters – buildings, equipment and classroom materials. While selective Clearly, the current state of instability at enrollment and magnet schools have state CPS and in our neighborhood schools is of the art school facilities and resources, not a recent phenomenon. We can trace many neighborhood schools in African back the 25 years when school reform in American and Latino working class Chicago began as an earnest, communities have no library, science or democratically based effort. Back then, computer lab , are lacking up-to-date Chicago was hailed as a pioneer for books or even enough texts for children to putting local school decision making into take home. While CPS has put millions of the hands of elected local school councils. dollars into upgrading buildings and Progress was made in some communities, providing additional resources for however, it was short-lived. By 1995 a new turnaround schools, other schools in close agenda started with the introduction of proximity have overcrowded classrooms high stakes accountability under Paul and lack basic resources. As a result, Vallas – the first Chief Executive Officer of Chicago has produced a two-tier school CPS. The shift toward a business system with most of its neighborhood management approach to schools set the schools on the bottom. stage for today‘s education market in Chicago.8 However, it was the arrival of Framed as creating choice, these efforts Arne Duncan in 2001 that really laid the have instead created turmoil and stress for groundwork for what is happening today. many families whose children are traveling CEO Duncan‘s tenure is often referred to all over the city in search of better as the ―diversification‖ period of CPS educational opportunities Many parents because he featured so many different either spend time driving their children approaches to educational reform. Duncan around or worrying about them taking favored an education market and public transportation, or they spend their expanded the number and types of money on private transportation. For schools in the system. Under the families sending children to their local underperforming neighborhood school, many worry about the quality of their 6 Quoted in Curtis Black, ―The Chicago Tribune and child‘s education but also that their school CPS‘s Big Lie‖, Jan 29, 2012 at will be closed or somehow changed, which http://www.newstips.org/2012/01/the-chicago- may or may not benefit their child. Still, tribune-and-cpss-big-lie/#more-5586 others have decided to take matters into 7 Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, ―Task force wants to halt school closings, turnarounds,‖ Chicago Tribune, their own hands, developing their own January 19, 2012. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01- 18/news/ct-met-cps-closing-moratorium- 9 Luppescu, S., Allensworth, E. M., Moore, P., de la 20120113_1_closings-cps-spokeswoman-becky- Torre, M., Murphy, J. & Jagesic, S. (2011). Trends carroll-task-force in Chicago Schools Across Three Eras of Reform. 8 Lipman, P. (2011). The New Political Economy of Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research. Urban Education. New York: Routledge. 7

strategies to improve school conditions This report reviews the current CPS plans and outcomes for their children. Parents, through a lens of ―sound‖ community teachers and principals, with what little driven practices to illustrate why these resources they have are trying to ―turn strategies are problematic and how they around‖ their school without emptying it are likely to contribute to neighborhood out or bringing in all new staff. destabilization. Also included are case studies that illustrate how currently CPS needs a time out! struggling schools have been disinvested and set up for failure. Some of these What this data suggests is that with all the cases also demonstrate community driven dramatic changes to Chicago Public ―promising‖ efforts that present an Schools in the past decade, we have seen alternative to the CPS plan. relatively little progress in academic achievement. Instead, we have closed Despite the efforts of legislators, CPS neighborhood school doors on thousands continues to plan closures and of students, mostly Latino and African restructuring schools with seemingly no American – who make up the majority of consistent evidence-based justification. As public school students. At the same time with the Chicago Educational Facilities that dropout rates have gone down for all Task Force, we call for a moratorium on students, the number of homeless more school closings and turn around students has increased. As of December schools – and any proposal going forward 2011, 13,888 students were homeless – from CPS that does not seriously engage while only 3.4 percent of the CPS communities in the decision making enrollment, that number is up by nearly process. While this is a start, CPS must do 3,000 children since the start of the2011- more. This includes investing resources to 12 school year count! And the problem is support struggling neighborhood schools wide spread with nearly 80 percent of the and working closely with community-driven schools reporting at least one homeless school transformation processes and student.10 plans, tapping the wisdom and experience of Chicago families and community All this is occurring in a context of leaders. increased neighborhood instability and stress in communities experiencing rising levels of poverty, unemployment, incarceration, foreclosures, and public housing demolition. School closings and transferring students to schools out of their neighborhoods has not only contributed churning in our communities, it has increased school violence.

10 CPS data on homeless youth in CPS schools as of December 30, 2011 provided to Laurene Heybach, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. 8

NEIGHBORHOOD DESTABILIZATION

Overwhelmingly, the students affected by includes East Garfield Park, Fuller Park, school closings in the past five years are Greater Grand Crossing, Roseland, and African American or Latino. As Figure 3 South Chicago – and even in North shows the schools to be closed or turned Lawndale and Englewood which had fast around in 2012 are in areas that have a increases in sales prices 2004-06. While majority of African American residents. the housing market has slowed way down, These are the same communities that lost it has not reversed the impact of the boom, thousands of residents between 2000 and and in many cases, the bubble bursting 2010 according to the US Census. Some has left these communities worse off with of this can be explained by the Chicago even lower housing values and more Housing Authority‘s Plan for vacant properties than before the boom. Transformation, which relocated several thousand families out of public housing on Economic bust. The late 1990s marked the south side. In addition, we suspect that some of the lowest unemployment rates some families may have had to move due and the fastest growing housing prices in to foreclosure while others were displaced decades. Yet while property values by gentrification pressures and speculation increased 63 percent between 2000 and (see Figure 4). 2005 (the market began slowing in 2006), annual median family income actually Adding to the volatility of these went down by about $4,000 in that same communities is the effects of the housing time period (both values adjusted for market, which shot prices way up in the inflation).11 Even now as housing values last decade only to bring them way down have dropped, unemployment and when the bubble burst in 2008. As Figure stagnant wages have not made housing 5 illustrates, the change in housing values that much more affordable for many lower- (based on actual home sale prices) varies income families. greatly around the city. While some neighborhoods have seen increases in Foreclosure effects. A broader concern housing prices since 2009, they were by now is that with the recent and sharp no means seeing signs of what might be downturn in the economy we are likely to considered the classic form of see many more communities losing gentrification. Instead, these communities families because of foreclosure. For the along with many others are showing signs most part, this includes families living in of stress from recent extreme swings in single family homes that for whatever the housing market. reason fell behind in paying their monthly mortgage. Looking at Figures 3 and 4 Housing boom. The last two decades in together, we see that most of the recent the US and particularly in Chicago has foreclosures in Chicago were in non-white been a phenomenal testimony to the communities where housing sales prices power of investment over our in the previous few years had been communities. Whether attributed to climbing. A lesser known but important speculation, gentrification, or simply higher statistic nested in these maps is the demand for certain neighborhoods, the number rental units impacted by changes in the housing prices in many foreclosure. In 2010, nearly 6,000 Chicago communities are striking. This apartment buildings went into foreclosure includes several communities with schools – an average of 123 buildings a week. now slated to close which began seeing housing sales prices increase rapidly 11 City of Chicago Housing Fact Sheet, Chicago beginning in the early 2000s with several Rehab Network. 2005. Available at in double-digit figures through 2006. This http://www.chicagorehab.org/resources/docs/other/c ity_of_chicago_acs2005_public.pdf. 9

These buildings contained over 17,000 latest data from CPS, there are 13,888 units. The estimated 37,700 rental units homeless students in the system as of foreclosed on between 2009-2010 is December 2011.14 In the fall, this number greater than the number of owner- was 10,535 -- a 31% increase in four occupied units in the same period, months – which was higher than that past few years.15 Mobility continues, especially for renters. Last decade a lot of families In sum, a variety of factors in the housing moved. About half of all households in market have contributed to rapid Chicago had moved once between 2000 neighborhood change affecting and 2005, which was about 10 percent neighborhood demographics and school higher than the US.12 This is likely due to enrollments. These factors also produce the loss of affordable housing due to neighborhood instability and population demolition and condominium conversions mobility, and this trend is likely to get in the private market, the demolition of worse. In this context, it is important to public housing and the loss of thousands ensure that education policies do not of subsidized housing units.13 At that same exacerbate student mobility and further time, many higher-income families were destabilize communities. Schools may be also moving into new homes. The most one of the few anchors in communities in recent data from the US Census provides flux and under stress. Policies that a startling statistic: 52 percent of renters in destabilize schools and displace children Chicago moved into their unit between the or their teachers en mass undermine this beginning of 2008 and spring of 2010. At important role for schools in a time when the same time, less than 10 percent of many of Chicago‘s mostly low-income owners moved during that 2.5 year period. students of color and their families face While the housing crisis may have slowed destabilizing conditions. down the movement of owners, it has clearly accelerated the mobility of renters.

Homelessness continues rising. When a rental building is foreclosed, tenants are evicted. For some families, this means moving to another apartment with little notice or time to search. For some, decisions are made to keep children in the same school, which may mean families separating when they are forced to move outside an attendance boundary. For others, eviction can mean becoming homeless if you have limited resources and cannot afford the necessary deposit and first month‘s rent. According to the

12 Based on data from the 2005 American Community Survey, US Census available at http://factfinder.census.gov/. About the same 14 number—562,500—moved between 1995 and early CPS data on homeless youth in CPS schools for 2000. September and December 2011 provided to 13 For more detail read Affordable Housing Laurene Heybach, Chicago Coalition for the Conditions and Outlook: And Early Warning for Homeless. 15 Intervention. 2006. Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for See ―Number of Homeless Students Increases.‖ Neighborhood and Community Improvement, December 2008. Chicago Coalition for the University of Illinois at Chicago. At Homeless. http://www.uic.edu/cuppa/voorheesctr/ . 10

Figure 3 Percent African American (2010) by planned school actions (2012)

Figure 4 Planned school actions (2012) with foreclosures and public housing

Figure 5 Percent change in median home sales price, 2009-2012 with potential school actions (2012), existing turnaround schools and schools closed in last decade

DISINVESTMENT AND DESTABILIZATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS

For schools to succeed and to provide going to continue to be a school, we're not students a robust, all-rounded education, going to invest in that building."17 they must have the necessary material and human resources. In examining why Overall, CPS has not prioritized essential schools are struggling, a basic question is: components of a quality education and Has CPS invested in the schools? Do they social support for all students. CPS has have the basic resources to be not allocated funding for every school to successful? have at least one full time art and music teacher, comprehensive physical Schools also need the stability of education, enough school nurses and sustained, high quality programs, counselors, support for emergent bilingual curriculum, and leadership chosen and learners, and smaller class sizes.18 implemented through a school-based, Schools that are named as failures and collaborative process. Thus, in examining proposed to be closed, phased out, or why schools are struggling, a second turned over lack necessary resources, important question is: Has the school had adequate teaching and support staff, arts sustained, research-based interventions and music, libraries, science labs, and text and leadership stability? Was the school- books. Many of the schools also have community part of the process? large class sizes even though education research has established that students Disinvestment in neighborhood who learn in smaller classes, especially in schools facing closing, turnarounds, the crucial early grades, have higher phase out. The quality of a school‘s academic achievement and on-time physical plant is a fundamental factor in its graduation rates, lower drop out rates, and success. Up to date science labs, libraries, greater academic engagement than peers physical education facilities, and in larger classes. Reducing class size is technology as well as a well-functioning most beneficial for low-income students and maintained building provide a and students of color.19 productive learning environment and send a message to students and teachers that Parents, teachers, and students testifying CPS cares about them and supports at hearings on school actions cited a learning. Investing in struggling history of CPS failing to invest in their neighborhood schools is an important schools (see below). They cited large indicator that CPS wants them to succeed. class sizes and lack of funding for Yet many neighborhood schools in necessary staff, libraries and art and Chicago are in disrepair.16 Yet Tim music classes. These are basic building Cawley, Chief Operating Officer of CPS, blocks of quality education. seemed to indicate that CPS policy is actually to disinvest in these schools. In December, 2011 he told the Chicago 17 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12- Tribune, "If we think there's a chance that 15/news/ct-met-cps-buildings-20111215_1_urban- school-leadership-cps-operating-officer-tim-cawley a building is going to be closed in the next 18 five to 10 years, if we think it's unlikely it's See data provided by Chicago Teachers‘ Union (2012). The Schools Chicago‘s Students Deserve. http://www.ctunet.com/blog/schools-chicagos- students-deserve-presents-comprehensive-plan-to- improve-student-academic-performance-and- strengthen-neighborhood-schools 19 Boyd-Zaharias, J. & Pate-Bain, H. (2000). Early 16 Finkel, E. (2007). Roof leaks 'gushing like a and new findings from Tennessee‘s Project STAR. waterfall.' Catalyst Chicago, vol. XVIII, 8, pp.12-13. CEIC Review, 9(2), 4. 14

Class size: Libraries: o Woodson, a proposed turnaround o Across CPS, 1 in 4 elementary schools school, has over 30 students in its 1st do not have school libraries. grade class. The other 1st and 2nd o Out of the 12 elementary schools grade class is a spilt-level class with a proposed for closing/turnaround, total of 29 students neither Lathrop, Piccolo, Fuller, nor Smith have a designated librarian o Casals‘ early grades also have staffed at their schools. overcrowded classes with nearly 30

students per classroom from

kindergarten through 2nd grades. Inequitable investment in turnaround o At Guggenheim, proposed to close, and charter schools. On the other hand, last year's 3rd grade class had 32 turnaround schools receive significant students, greater than 91% of all CPS additional funding, more instructional staff, schools. Its kindergarten had 28, resources, and improvements to the greater than 70% of all CPS schools. school facility. The proposed 2012 The situation has not improved this turnaround schools are slated to receive at year with both split-level classes and least $20 million, and this does not include overcrowded classrooms – 35 3rd & millions more in capital spending on 4th graders, 26 5th & 6th graders and building renovations. In addition, AUSL 29 7th & 8th graders are taught in split- schools have additional adults in the level classes. Class sizes are not any classrooms. Chief Operating Officer, better for classes that are not split- Crawley, said that buildings housing grades. There are now 32 students in turnarounds are more likely get interior the 2nd grade class and 29 in 1st renovations, bathroom facilities or an grade. addition. "We believe that we get more o At Lathrop, instead of providing the bang for our capital investment buck when school with the necessary funds for we couple it with a program change in the staff to teach each grade separately building," Cawley said. "When we turn a with reduced class sizes, the 4th and school around, when we add a new gifted 5th grades, and the 6th and 7th grades program or a language program … we are combined in split-levels classes. believe there's a synergy that communicates to students and families that it's a new day, that there's new things Art and Music: happening at the school."20 o Only 25% of CPS elementary schools While CPS plans to cut back investment in are provided funding for both arts and struggling neighborhood schools, which music. Most schools are forced to are in low-income African American and choose between the two. Latino communities, CPS also plans o Out of the 12 elementary schools significant additional funding for proposed for closure/turnaround, only turnaround schools and charter schools in one has both art and music positions the next school year. This continues a funded. record of prioritizing Renaissance 2010 o Price, Lathrop, Guggenheim and Reed schools, including charters, for capital have neither. o Herzl, Smith and Fuller and Stagg are only allotted a part-time teacher for one of the subjects. 20 Ahmed-Ullah, N. S. (Dec. 15, 2011). CPS: Poorer-performing schools less likely to get funds. Chicago Tribune. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12- 15/news/ct-met-cps-buil... 15

improvements.21 The CPS capital budget As Table 1 below shows, many schools plan announced at the December 14, 2011 faced with closing, phase out, or Board of Education meeting shows capital turnaround have experienced a significant improvements disproportionately in turnover of school administration and area schools serving a higher proportion of leadership. On average, over six years white and affluent students than the district (2005-2011), they have had a new average. And almost one-fifth of the $660 principal every two years. Reed has had million will go to schools proposed to be five principals and Price four during this closed down, turnarounds, or required to period, and many of the schools have had share space with charter schools.22 three principals. During this period, each area officer lasted approximately 2.4 Charter schools are also slated to receive years. The Area Officer is CPS‘s chief a bigger chunk of district funding and executive officer of the area. A new Area support from CPS. A new ―District-Charter Officer means new CPS leadership and Compact‖ will give charter schools in often new instructional programs, new Chicago easier access to school facilities mandates, and new kinds of professional and an increase in per-pupil public development. The merry-go-round of funding. The Compact is part of a Gates initiatives driven by a revolving door of Foundation initiative called ―District- leadership is highly destabilizing. Charter Collaboration Compacts.‖ Gates will provide CPS with $20 million to help In addition, the schools slated for CPS charters find and buy facilities. Mayor actions have experienced multiple school Rahm Emanuel said ―he hopes high- openings and closings in their area. performing charter operators from around School closings involve transfer of the country will ‗look at this as an students, often to schools now slated for opportunity to set up shop.‘‖ 23 closing or turnaround. These are also areas with large numbers of charter Destabilization. Schools slated for school schools opening and competing with actions have experienced a revolving door neighborhood schools for students. The of top-down imposed interventions and destabilizing effects of all these school programs, principals, and area leadership. openings and closings are documented in This churning has been destabilizing. the Bronzeville case studies. This is in a Perhaps this is why a theme running context of neighborhood instability due to through community hearings was that volatile housing markets, gentrification, teachers and parents felt they had been and high mobility. The instability of ―set up fro failure‖. housing and population are undoubtedly contributing factors to the huge drop in student enrollment and high mobility rates in schools facing actions as compared with 21 Meyers, J. (2007). Going to the head of the class. the city average (see Table 1). Charter Chicago Catalyst, Vol. XVIII (8), pp.6-10. school openings are likely also a 22 Ahmed-Ullah, N. S. (December 15, 2011). CPS: Poorer-performing schools less likely to get funds. contributing factor. In sum, through school Chicago Tribune. closings, turnarounds, and opening charter http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12- schools that compete for students with 15/news/ct-met-cps-buil... neighborhood schools, CPS is contributing Chicago Public Schools FY 12 Capital Budget to the churning of the low-income African Proposal. http://cps.edu/News/Press_releases/Pages/12_14_ American and Latino neighborhoods 2011_PR1.aspx where the proposed school actions are 23 Harris, R. (December 06, 2011). Charter compact located. could bring new operators to Chicago. Chicago Catalyst Notebook. http://www.catalyst- chicago.org/notebook/2011/12/06/19689/charter- compact-could-bring-new-operators-chicago 16

TABLE 1: DESTABILIZATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS

New School Former # Area # # # of # of % Change 2011 Network Instructional Officers, Principals AP's Nearby Nearby in Mobilization Area 2005 - 2005 - Schools Charters Enrollment Rates Area 2011 2011 Closed Opened 2005-2012 Austin-North Herzl 9 3 3 4 5 13 -31.7% 19.0% Lawndale Lathrop 10 1 1 4 5 13 -78.9% 27.3% Elementary Nash 3 2 2 6 7 10 -53.9% 39.3% Burnham Park Fuller 13 3 2 3 7 9 -42.7% 34.0% Elementary Doolittle 15 3 2 2 6 9 -58.6% 28.0% Price 15 3 4 3 5 9 -78.5% 34.1% Woodson South 13 3 3 4 6 9 -33.7% 26.6% Englewood- Guggenheim 14 3 3 3 3 9 -29.9% 28.4% Gresham Reed 14 3 5 5 6 10 -90.4% 8.8% Elementary Stagg 14 3 2 3 3 5 -18.4% 29.2% Garfield-Humboldt Casals 4 2 3 5 7 11 -25.1% 23.6% Park Elementary Piccolo 4 2 3 4 6 11 -43.9% 28.4% Lake Calumet Smith 18 2 2 3 0 2 -44.0% 35.1% Elementary Midway Elementary Marquette 11 2 2 8 3 4 -0.02% 23.9% South Side High CVS 24 3 3 7 5 4 -64.6% 15.9% School Dyett 21 3 3 6 5 9 -45.8% 40.9% Southwest Side HS Tilden 23 3 3 8 8 10 -65.9% 39.6% West Side HS Crane 21 3 2 7 12 18 -50.3% 39.0% City Average -1.6% 17.9%

SCHOOL CLOSING AND TURNAROUND STRATEGIES: EDUCATIONAL AND COMMUNITY CONSIDERATIONS

Proposed School Actions Have income/working-class students of Potentially Serious Consequences color.25 In contexts where students If schools are consistently failing to experience destabilized housing and educate children and support their economic conditions and development, serious action is warranted. disinvestment in their neighborhoods, However, phasing out, closing, and turning long-term relationships with trusted around schools are drastic steps that can adults in their schools can be an destabilize schools and displace students, important stabilizing factor, giving parents, teachers, and communities. The them support for learning and Board of Education should consider the development. effects of proposed school actions on: o Mobility. Student mobility is harmful to 26 o Student safety. Since 2004, closing academic progress. Most school schools and transferring students to districts develop policies to limit the schools outside their immediate harmful effects of mobility, e.g., neighborhood has resulted in spikes providing transportation for homeless in violence in elementary and high students to remain in a ―home‖ schools.24 In addition, parents are school. In addition to mobility caused concerned about the safety of young by closing schools, turnarounds that children bused to schools far from remove all familiar adults from a home or forced to cross dangerous school building and bring in a new set streets on their way to school. In of unfamiliar teachers, administrators, 2009, a student at Fenger High and staff with whom neither trust nor School was killed in a student fight. personal connections exist is a form When Carver High School was turned of mobility that is destabilizing to into a selective enrollment school students and families. beginning in 2000, students were o Loss of committed educators and transferred to Fenger (5 miles away), school staff. Terminating the contracts despite a history of conflict between of educators and staff, some of whom students from the Carver and Fenger have given years of committed neighborhoods. In 2009, CPS made service to schools and communities, Fenger a turnaround school. Most represents a loss of important adults in the school were fired. As a resources and is devastating to the result, when student conflicts erupted teachers and staff concerned. Many in Fall 2009. There were few trusted support and service staff in adults who knew the students and neighborhood schools live in the could defuse the situation. Parents communities where they work. Their directly attributed the student death to termination breaks connections the destabilization of both Carver and between the school and its Fenger. community. o Disruption of relationships with trusted adults. Research demonstrates that

authentic caring is a key ingredient of 25 school success for low- Valenzuela, A. (1999). Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Albany: SUNY Press. 24 Karp, S. (2009, October 27). Chicago schools 26 Kerbow, D. (1996). Patterns of urban student plan to combat violence: kinder, gentler security mobility and local school reform. Journal of guards, disciplinarians. On-line: http://www.catalyst- Education of Students Placed At-Risk, 1(2), 147- chicago.org/notebook/ 169. 18

o Demoralization of phase-out schools. science projects, and assessments of A phase-out is a death sentence for a students‘ ability to synthesize and apply school. No additional students are knowledge to solve problems, including admitted but existing students are real world problems. allowed to graduate. For these remaining children, the school withers There are other aspects of a good or in front of them as teachers are let go, improving school, including the level of programs are cut, space is co-opted student support and safety, teachers‘ by a new school that moves in, and commitment to students and community, resources dry up. The decline ways in which the school contributes to accelerates flight from the school,27 building community stability, strong hastening its demise. This runs expectations for students‘ academic counter to CPS‘s stated goal of success, quality of curriculum and providing ―access to higher quality instruction, professional growth of the school options‖ and ―making staff, and programs that support children‘s significant investments to help boost all-round development. [students‘] academic development‖. 2. Has a school been given the As a whole, the negative effects of school resources to succeed? Support includes actions are of particular concern in strong and stable leadership; high quality communities that already face instability, educational programs sustained over time violence, and stress due to poverty, with adequate professional development racism, unemployment, housing instability, and support; current and sufficient high and disinvestment. quality educational materials, facilities, and technology; necessary school staff for a Thus, we propose several points to well-rounded educational experience: consider in assessing if the proposed CPS appropriate student support staff and actions are appropriate and necessary and services. if better alternatives exist. The following combination of factors should be taken 3. Has the proposed school action into account in taking action to close or demonstrated its efficacy’? Is there phase out schools and terminate school substantial independent research staff. supporting closings, turnarounds, and phase outs? Is the efficacy of these 1. How are academic achievement and actions sufficient to warrant serious progress measured? This should be disruption to students and the school multisided. Test scores are just one community? measure of academic achievement, and a narrow measure of what students know 4. Is there a viable alternative? Does the and can do. They are insufficient to assess school-community have a promising plan student learning or the quality of a school‘s for school transformation? Are there educational program overall. Other forms promising developments in school of assessment are necessary to holistically leadership, curriculum, teaching staff, and assess student learning and progress, for school culture that suggest the school can example, evaluation of student work over lead its own transformation? Would the time, projects such as research papers or school community plan and promising steps underway benefit from additional CPS resources targeted for schools facing 27 See for example the School Improvement Plan for actions? Advancing Academic Achievement (SIPAAA) for Reed Elementary which has been phasing out for two years: http://schoolreports.cps.edu/SIPAAA/SIPAAA_REE D_610264.pdf 19

EFFECTIVENESS OF PROPOSED ACTIONS?

The federal No Child Left Behind Act ineffective, creates turbulence, and (NCLB) requires corrective action for violates professional norms of educators schools persistently failing to make and leads to demoralization.30 ―Adequate Yearly Progress.‖ Options to restructure failing schools through Effectiveness of school closures in comprehensive changes in leadership, Chicago staffing, and governance include: reconstitution/turnaround (replacing Chicago‘s policy of closing schools and administrators and teachers), transferring students to other schools conversion to charter schools, closing (Renaissance 2010) has not improved schools and sending students to a better learning for displaced students. school in the district, take-over by Research shows school closings did not education management organization. generally improve elementary students‘ Since 1997, CPS has employed five educational opportunities as most restructuring strategies: Reconstitution, displaced students were transferred School Closure and Restart, School from one low-performing school to Turnaround Specialist Program (STSP), another with virtually no effect on Academy for Urban School Leadership academic achievement.31 Moreover, (AUSL) turnarounds, and CPS Office of new schools did not necessarily benefit School Improvement (OSI) these students. Schools that were 28 turnarounds. reopened as charter schools or under new management showed substantial National research indicates that changes in the composition of the although these actions may work in student body. The reopened schools some situations, they have not worked served students who were more affluent across the board. The research and had higher prior achievement and concludes that, in general, turn-around fewer special education students. The strategies are either unproven, schools also served fewer students from ineffective, or harmful.29 An authoritative the neighborhood around the school.32 review of the research found that NCLB‘s top-down model of accountability and coercive action, such as school closings and turnarounds, is 30 Mintrop, H. & Sunderman, G.L. (2009). Predictable Failure of Federal Sanctions-Driven Accountability for School Improvement--And Why 28 de la Torre, M., Allensworth, E., Jagesic, S., We May Retain It Anyway. Educational Sebastian, J., Salmonowicz, M., Meyers, C. & Researcher, 38 (5), 353-364. Gerdeman, R. D. (2012). Turning Around Low- 31 Displaced elementary students in general Performing Schools in Chicago. University of transferred from one low-performing school to Chicago Consortium on Chicago School another with virtually no effect on student Research and & American Institutes for achievement, Gwynne, J., & de la Torre, M. Research. (2009). When schools close: Effects on displaced http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php students in Chicago Public Schools. Consortium ?pub_id=163 on Chicago School Research. 29 David, J.L. ( 2010). Drastic school turnarounds 32 de la Torre, et al. (2012). Turning Around Low- are risky. Educational Leadership, 68 (2), p.78- Performing Schools in Chicago. University of 80. Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Mathis, W. (2009). NCLB‘s Ultimate Research and & American Institutes for Restructuring Alternatives: Do they Improve the Research. Quality of Education? East Lansing, MI: The http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php Great Lakes Center for Education Research & ?pub_id=163 Practice.

Effectiveness of Turnarounds in turn around in the way described in the Chicago report,‖ said Geoffrey Borman, professor of education and sociology at the In February 2012, the Consortium on University of Wisconsin-Madison. 35 Dan Chicago School Research released a McCaffrey, a statistician at the Rand summary report on top-down Corporation, criticized the study's restructuring models in Chicago. This is inclusion of schools that experienced the first substantial study of turnarounds drastically different interventions. and other restructuring models in Schools that were closed and re-opened Chicago. The findings are as charters and magnets had new inconclusive.33 The report shows small higher performing students than the gains in achievement in mathematics students previously enrolled in the and reading, while high schools that school. "Shifting students and changing underwent interventions showed no labels is not a legitimate way to improve differences from similar schools in rates a school," said McCaffrey. The U.S. of student absence or students on track Department of Education refused to to graduate. Positive effects are also endorse the study because of confounded by the huge infusion of methodological questions. resources in turnaround schools and by the fact that some neighborhood Data provided by the Chicago Teachers schools were "turned around'' by Union (CTU) also dispute the report‘s replacing them with schools that conclusion that turnaround schools did selected students by lottery, i.e., charter not systematically push out students. schools. As the Catalyst Chicago review (The report shows that reenrollment of the study notes, ―In fact, the study rates in the first year of intervention draws no conclusion about whether were similar to the rates before turnarounds are the best strategy to intervention, with the exception of improve the lowest-achieving schools, schools that were closed and restarted.) or whether the Academy for Urban CTU data show a pattern of loss of large School Leadership is the best percentage of students in turn around organization to carry it out.‖34 schools compared with neighborhood schools in the same area.36 The CTU Several national researchers have also raised questions about the study‘s 35Prof. Borman noted it is difficult to control for methodology and the significance of the the huge influx of resources and the fact that some schools replacing neighborhood schools reported gains. "There are many picked students by lottery. limitations to this study and if one were http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/105203 to take a true, critical eye at these 20-418/study-cps-has-some-success-turning- results, they do not conclusively show around-grammar-schools-not-high-schools.html these reforms caused these schools to Dan McCaffrey, a statistician at the Rand Corporation, commented, "0.07 is a pretty small effect,…It doesn't mean that it is not meaningful, 33 de la Torre, et al. (2012). Turning Around Low- but it is small." Karp, S. (2012, Feb. 08). Performing Schools in Chicago. University of Turnaround study shows only small gains. Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Catalyst Notebook. http://www.catalyst- Research and & American Institutes for chicago.org/notebook/2012/02/08/19839/turnarou Research. nd-study-shows-only-small-gains http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php 36 www.ctunet.com/for- ?pub_id=163 members/text/SchoolClosingResearchBulletPoint 34 Karp, S. (2012, Feb. 08). Turnaround study s_3-2.pdf Fenger High School went from an shows only small gains. Catalyst Notebook. enrollment of 1200 in 2009, its first year of http://www.catalyst- turnaround, to fewer than 700 students in 2011, a chicago.org/notebook/2012/02/08/19839/turnarou loss of 42%. Neighboring Julian lost 200 students nd-study-shows-only-small-gains over that time period, a loss of 14%. Harper High

data continue to raise questions about represents a rupture of established ties whether students at turnaround schools between educators and the students are being pushed out or choosing not to and families in those schools. The new attend. teaching staffs were whiter, younger, less experienced, and more likely to School actions at what cost? have provisional certification than the teachers who were at the schools before 38 School closings and turnarounds are the intervention. drastic actions under any circumstances, but they can have Of particular concern is the loss of particularly serious consequences in African American teachers. Over the communities that are already past 10 years, CPS has experienced a destabilized by disinvestment in jobs disproportionate loss of African and community institutions, poverty, American teachers. From 2000 to 2010, high unemployment, high rates of the African American teaching force incarceration, and housing instability declined by 11% (from 40.6% to 29.6% due to closing of public housing, of all teachers) while the percentage of gentrification, and home foreclosures. white teachers increased by 5.2%.39 Schools are anchors in these ISBE state report cards show that the communities. A school closing can be district lost 2,759 African American the ―last straw‖ pushing low-income teachers.40 Because most schools residents out of a gentrifying closed or turned around in Chicago neighborhood, facilitating the process of were in African American communities turning it over to middleclass residents. with the heaviest concentrations of A school closing or turnaround results in African American educators, African loss of community programs and trusted American teachers have been educators, lack of safety, and may particularly affected, especially since increase student mobility. It means replacement schools are hiring more disruption of established parent-school white teachers. The loss of 11% of connections.37 African American teachers in a district whose student population is nearly 50% The February 2012 Consortium study African American has serious raises concerns about the loss of implications for equity and for students‘ experienced teachers and teachers of educational experiences. There is a color. The study found that less than 10 large body of research demonstrating percent of teachers in schools that were that successful teachers of African closed and reopened as new schools or American, Latino, and other students of turnarounds were rehired. This color understand and relate to their

School went from over 900 students in its first 38 de la Torre, et al. (2012). Turning Around Low- year of turnaround to a little over 600 in 2011. Performing Schools in Chicago. University of Phillips High School started 2010, its first year of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School turnaround, with slightly under 700 students, and Research and & American Institutes for has fewer than 600 in the 2011-12 school year, Research. despite an increase in its freshman enrollment. http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/content/publications.php Phillips has just 83 students in its 2011 Junior ?pub_id=163 class, while the 2010 Sophomore class was over 39 200, a loss of 60%. In comparison, neighboring http://iirc.niu.edu/District.aspx?source=About_Ed Dyett lost 30% of its sophomores and Tilden lost ucators&source2=Teacher_Charaacteristics&dist 8.5%. rict 37 Weissmann, D. (2002). How three families are ID-=15016299025&o3f3o=D dealing with 40 Illinois Interactive Report Card (2011). displacement. Catalyst, XIII (5), 12. http://iirc.niu.edu/District.aspx

students‘ communities, backgrounds, resources and support and cultures, and these teachers are earmarked for turnarounds and more likely to be teachers of color. CPS charter schools in existing officials should consider the psycho- schools and their promising social cost of proposed actions for school-community plans and students of color. initiatives?

Third, there are concerns about the Building the AUSL district? destabilizing effects on homeless students. Almost 10% of the students In 2008, AUSL Executive Director, enrolled in the schools facing school Donald Feinstein, stated that by 2012, actions are homeless as compared with AUSL planned to operate 25 schools, an average of 2.6% of students in the including 20 schools serving grades K-8 district. At Dyett High School, proposed and 5 high schools.42 Feinstein also to be phased out, 30% of students are commented in an interview with the U.S. homeless.41 Homeless students already Dept. of Education that AUSL did not face high mobility, so school actions will expect to return the schools to the have a disproportionate impact on one district, as with some other turnaround of the district‘s most vulnerable student models, but planned to operate them populations. long term as a district within CPS.43 AUSL now operates 19 schools. If the Questions to consider Board approves proposed 2012 school actions, in fall 2012 AUSL will operate o If there is not conclusive 25 schools -- 20 k-8 schools, 5 high evidence that turnarounds are schools. The location of proposed the best strategy to improve the turnarounds and school closings lowest-achieving schools or that indicates that many would directly feed the Academy for Urban School into AUSL‘s networks (see Figure 6). Leadership is effective, why is For example, Fuller students would be the district expanding this transferred to National Teachers strategy? Academy (AUSL); Dyett Students would be transferred to Phillips (AUSL); Casals o Are the huge investment and the and Piccolo students would be part of turmoil and harmful side effects an AUSL feeder network to Orr High caused by turnarounds worth it? School (AUSL). If this trend continues, o In a number of schools slated for in the future we could see an AUSL high school actions, school data and school on the South side serving Dulles, evidence presented at school Deneen, Harvard, and Stagg. hearings indicate that the schools have begun a promising A question to consider school-based improvement (see Are the highly contested and disruptive Piccolo case study) or that the proposed school actions warranted or schools and communities have are they part of an agreement between developed a viable plan for CPS and AUSL to develop an AUSL school transformation (see district within CPS? Bronzeville and Crane case studies). Why not invest the

41 www.ctunet.com/for- 42 http://www.newschools.org/news/ausl-2008 members/text/SchoolClosingResearchBulletPoint 43 http://www.ed.gov/oese-news/ausl-chicago s_3-2.pdf

FIGURE 6. AUSL NETWORKS AND FEEDERS FROM 2012 ACTIONS

PARENT AND COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION

Participation in decisions about exclusion of community participation school actions and lack of a transparency was so An important consideration is what role widespread that in 2009 the Illinois State parents and others in the community Legislature established the Chicago play in the decision-making process Educational Facilities Task Force prior to CPS announcing plans to close, (HB630) to oversee the process by phase out, co-locate, or turn around which CPS makes facilities decisions schools and what role they play in and ensure that school facility decisions transforming their schools. are transparent, made with the input of the community, and reflect educationally The 1988 Chicago School Reform law sound and fiscally responsible criteria. established elected Local School Councils, making Chicago a national Despite mandated legislative oversight, model for democratic parent and the CPS process continues to raise community participation in school doubt about its commitment to genuine decision-making. The law established community participation and its respect that parents and community members for the views of those affected. Public are legitimate and necessary decision- meetings on school turnarounds and makers in what happens in their closings for 2012 were held at CPS children‘s schools. headquarters, making it difficult for many parents to attend. Some meetings However, since the Renaissance 2010 were scheduled until 10:00 PM, adding plan was announced in 2004, parents, another obstacle for working parents. community members, students, Meetings that were held in the teachers, staff, administrators, and LSC community were not at the affected members have consistently maintained schools. The hearing structure does not they have not been consulted and their allow for dialogue. At the final set of perspectives have not been taken into hearings, CPS power point account when CPS has decided on presentations supporting proposed actions affecting their schools. They school actions took up as much as half have argued that the process is not of the allotted two hours. Parents, transparent, and they have been shut teachers, principals, students, and out of decisions. These concerns have community members were allowed just been raised repeatedly at community two minutes each, and there was no meetings and during public comment sessions of meetings of the Chicago Series, Paper #1: Examining CPS‘ plan to close, 44 Board of Education. Concern about consolidate, turn-around 18 schools. Data and Democracy Project: Investing in Neighborhoods. Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education 44 Fleming, J., Greenlee, A., Gutstein, E., Lipman, and Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for P. & Smith, J. (2009, February). Research Paper Neighborhood and Community Improvement, Series, Paper #2: Examining CPS‘ plan to close, University of Illinois-Chicago. consolidate, turn-around 2 schools. Data and http://www.uic.edu/educ/ceje/index.html. Democracy Project: Investing in Neighborhoods. Lipman, P., Person, A. & Kenwood Oakland Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education Community Organization. (2007). Students as and Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for collateral damage? A preliminary study of Neighborhood and Community Improvement, Renaissance 2010 school closings in the University of Illinois-Chicago. Midsouth. Chicago: Kenwood Oakland http://www.uic.edu/educ/ceje/index.html. Community Organization. Greenlee, A., Hudspeth, N., Lipman, P., Smith, http://www.uic.edu/educ/ceje/index.html. D. A., & Smith, J. (2008). Research Paper Fleming et al, 2009; Greenlee et al, 2008.

opportunity for the school community to Essential Supports for effective and present its case in a unified presentation sustainable school improvement 45: or to systematically present their own 1. Strong school leadership as the plans for school transformation. Few driver for change Board of Education members attended 2. Strong links to parents and the these meetings, and there was no community opportunity for parents, students, 3. Development of teachers‘ teachers, or community members to professional capacity question CPS officials. 4. Safe and stimulating, student- centered learning climate This is particularly troubling because 5. Instructional guidance and while CPS presents quantitative data materials supporting closing or turning around schools, the community has little The researchers contend that all five opportunity to challenge or question supports are integral to transforming these data. Even some school schools. Because schools are complex principals, who should have the best organizations, the researchers overview of their school, were allotted concluded that all five supports are only two minutes to speak. The interdependent—they function as part of qualitative data presented by teachers a unified whole. The overall success of and parents—their observations on school transformation depends on all improvements in school leadership, five supports working together. As the school climate, academics and authors state, ―…we ultimately came to importance of the school to the view the five supports as an organized community are not given equal weight system of elements in dynamic with CPS data. Yet, established interaction with each other.…‖ (p. 66). educational research and school Using an analogy of baking a cake, they evaluation use a mixture of both argue that the absence of one of the quantitative and qualitative data. supports does not just mean that the ―cake‖ tastes bad—it means, ―…if one of As a result, on January 12, 2012, the the ingredients is absent, it is just not a Facilities Task Force approved a cake‖ (p. 66). Strong links to parents resolution stating that CPS was out of and the community is one of the five compliance with House Bill 630. They supports. accused CPS leaders of being disingenuous in engaging parents and A Designs for Change study of 144 community members Chicago K-8 Schools with 15 Years of sustained achievement gains also Parent-community role in school identified Family and Community transformation Partnerships as one of five essential Research on school improvement supports for student learning.46 Thus, supports the collaboration of educators, there must be strong ties between a students, communities, and parents in transforming schools. 45 Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. O. (2010). Organizing Researchers at the Consortium on schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago School Research identified Chicago: University of Chicago Press. what are now known as the Five 46 Designs for Change (2005). The Big Picture: School-Initiated Reforms, Centrally Initiated Reforms, and Elementary School Achievement in Chicago (1990 to 2005). www.designsforchange.org.

school and parents and community for a change that would require school successful process of school districts to: 1) undertake a transformation and on-going comprehensive needs assessment— improvement. done in partnership with parents, educators, students and community Top-down actions by CPS officials run members—so that local solutions are counter to the essential supports for tailored to local problems, 2) implement school improvement identified in the research-based instructional and research. Failure to work with, consult, educational reforms, 3) address and develop relationships with parents essential social, emotional and physical and communities in a process of school needs of students, and 4) recognize change demonstrates lack of respect for parent, student, and community the members of the school community, leadership as key to sustainable student lack of democracy in decision making, success.48 This proposal is based on the and failure to tap community wisdom. premise that parents, community members, and students have knowledge Promising School-community valuable to a school vision and they alternatives to top-down CPS actions should play an integral role in transforming their schools. The Over the last decade, researchers have coalition‘s report emphasized a begun to document the role of combination of community wisdom and community and parent organizing in research-based strategies: democratizing education policy making and promoting sustainable and These are our communities. We equitable school reform.47 This research know the strengths and the analyzes how parents and school challenges in our schools. communities across the U.S. have Responsible school change is a collaborated with teachers and process of collaboration between principals to create more equitable students, parents, communities school cultures, foster culturally relevant and educators. Successful school teaching, and create more powerful change must employ research- learning communities. based strategies that have the greatest likelihood of actually In 2010, a coalition of 35 local, state and improving conditions for learning. national parent, student and community Dramatic action is not enough; we organizing groups petitioned the U.S. need to get it right. 49 Dept. of Education to adopt a Sustainable Success Model for Several of the school-communities ―dramatic and sustainable‖ school affected by CPS actions have developed promising alternatives to closings, phase-outs and turnarounds. 47 Gold, E., E. Simon, and C. Brown. 2002. Strong Neighborhoods, Strong Schools: The proposal for a Global Achievers‘ Successful Community Organizing for School Village would create a network of Reform. Chicago: Cross City Campaign for Urban Bronzeville schools including, Dyett, School Reform. Mediratta, K., S. Shah, and S. Price, and Fuller (see Bronzeville case McAlister. 2009a. Community Organizing for Stronger Schools: Strategies and Successes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. 48 http://ceps-ourschools.org/policy- Oakes, J., and J. Rogers. 2006. Learning Power: issues/current-policies/ Social Inquiry, Grassroots Organizing, and 49 Our Communities Left Behind: An Analysis of Educational Justice. New York: Teachers College the Administration‘s School Turnaround Policies, Press. July 28, 2010. Communities for Excellent Public Schools. www.ceps-ourschools.org

study below). Crane High School A question to consider: Rather than parents and teachers have proposed a forge ahead with drastic actions that do plan to improve their school. Other not have the support of the school schools facing CPS actions have community, why not work with teachers, already begun promising new practices principals, parents, and community initiated by new leadership (see Piccolo members to transform their schools by case study) while other schools have building on existing strengths, promising strong existing programs that could be developments, and school-community built on to develop their schools. plans to transform their schools?

BRONZEVILLE CASE STUDIES

Bronzeville has been ground zero for schools that closed were school actions since 2001. Since that neighborhood schools with time, CPS has closed and turned attendance boundaries. More than around 15 schools and proposes to half of the replacement schools admit close/turn around 4 more in 2012 (see students by lottery or test scores.51 Figure 7 below). These school actions have exacerbated conditions for a These closings and openings have stressed and polarized community—one created substantial dislocation of in which the destruction of public students, as some students have housing and the shuttering of healthcare attended as many as four schools in and childcare facilities, along with their elementary school careers.52 massive displacement and home foreclosures exist side by side with Figure 7: Completed (Red) and upscale housing development and Proposed (Yellow) School Actions, gentrification (partially tempered by the Mid-South Area, 2001-Present.53 2008-09 economic crisis) and new schools (charters and turnarounds). The Small circles are Bronzeville community has been hard turnarounds, teardrops are hit by destabilization and disinvestment closings/phase- by the city of Chicago as a whole. This outs. year, CPS proposes to close, phase out, or turnaround four Bronzeville schools: Dyett High School (phase-out), Price Middle School (close), Fuller Elementary School (AUSL turnaround), and Woodson Elementary School (CPS turnaround). The case studies of Dyett and Price examine and illustrate CPS‘ disinvestment and destabilization of Bronzeville schools and its disregard for meaningful community input.

Neighborhood Destabilization The map below shows school actions in the greater Bronzeville community over the past ten years (Figure 7).50 This year‘s proposed CPS actions are marked in yellow, including Dyett and Price. According to a report issued by WBEZ and the Catalyst: 51 Lutton, L., Karp, S., & Ramos, E. (December 7, 2011). Mapping 10 years of school closures. WBEZ. Very few of the schools shut down Retrieved from http://www.wbez.org/no- sidebar/Chicago-school-closings have remained vacant. Many house 52 charter schools, magnets or selective Brown, J., Gutstein, R., & Lipman, P. (2009). Arne enrollment schools. Almost all of the Duncan and the Chicago success story: Myth or reality? Rethinking Schools, 23(3), 10-14 53 Source: http://www.wbez.org/no- sidebar/Chicago-school-closings 50 http://www.wbez.org/no-sidebar/Chicago-school- closings

Bronzeville Global Achievers Village: BGAV makes clear that CPS intends to A Community-School Developed Plan ignore the proposals. This is the case, for School Transformation even though the plan comes directly Three of the four Bronzeville schools from the community—that is, it is home that CPS is proposing to close grown in Bronzeville. The CPS proposal (Woodson is not included) are part of to close or turnaround half of the the Bronzeville Global Achievers Village schools in the Village is seen by many (BGAV). This plan is facilitated by the community members as a summary Kenwood Oakland Community rejection of the plan, despite months of Organization (KOCO), an established patient, painstaking work. Many organization started in the 1960s. The Bronzeville residents interpret this as a BGAV plan also includes Reavis slap in the face to the community, Elementary, Robinson Primary (K-3), students, parents, teachers, and and Mollison Elementary. The thrust of administrators, and cite it as a prime the plan is to have a ―village‖ of six example of the disrespect CPS pays to schools, five of which feed into Dyett community wisdom and democratic High School (although Robinson feeds inclusion. into Price, which feeds into Dyett). The six schools will be connected through a shared vision of education based on the community and its culture, strong LSC and family involvement, wrap-around Florence B. Price Middle supports for students‘ emotional and School Case Study social needs, and a globally oriented and rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum.

The BGAV plan has been developed over the past 18 months with much community participation. KOCO staff have held numerous planning sessions with parents, teachers, administrators, community residents, students, and outside partners to develop coherent and cohesive curricular frameworks, shared values and mission for the village, and a workable strategy. The plan is also well supported by numerous Price Middle School Gardens external professional partners, including the Strategic Learning Initiative, an organization with a documented track record of successfully working with school communities to transform teaching and learning. CPS is well aware of the network, and KOCO and school staff have repeatedly reached out to CPS administration for partnership and support.

However, the plan to close, phase out, and turnaround half of the schools in the

Shania [Interviewer from the inclusion in the decisions CPS has Philadelphia Student Union]: Your made for the school. Destabilization, middle school, Price Elementary School disinvestment, and lack of democratic in Chicago, was part of the Renaissance inclusion at Price, taken together, have 2010 plan. Can you talk about what it severely hampered the education of was like? Price students over the past decade.

Osha [Chicago HS student, former Price CPS Proposal to Close Price th student]: Well before it was turned into a Price is located at 44 Street and Drexel middle school [2006-7], violence wasn‘t Boulevard in Chicago‘s Bronzeville really an issue. Then they started to neighborhood on the Southside. Its close all these schools around our student body is 99.3% African community and started sending students American, 96.6% low-income, and our way. The violence did increase 16.4% of students are classified as 55 because the new students didn‘t get special education. CPS officials argue along with each other. So it was like a that Price should be closed because, whole shake up. ―…year after year, Price has failed to give its students access to the quality Shania: Could you think a little bit more education they need to grow about why the violence was happening academically….Price‘s chronically low between students? performance is hurting its students and their futures. We must provide students 56 Osha: Closing schools in our with access to a better education now.‖ community —well, not in our community, The CPS rationale for closing Price, but schools that were nearby—brought presented at its January 6 hearing, students into our schools who had revolves around three claims: conflicts. They [CPS] kicked those 1. Price has been on probation for students out and when they got into our four consecutive years. school, [students] fought each other, 2. Almost one out of two Price because of basketball rivalries or students are not meeting IL state because of where we live, you know? standards. One person was with this group and 3. Price is in the bottom 8% of another person was with that group and schools in the District. then someone says ―that‘s the guy who tried to jump me‖ or something like Understanding Price’s Performance that...then they just start fighting and in its Larger Context stuff. The violence just started increasing. [Spring 2011]54 Price‘s academic performance has to be seen not only in light of the The above dialogue captures one destabilization, disinvestment, and lack aspect of the destabilization—spiked of democracy perpetrated by CPS in the violence in communities saturated with school community, but also through school actions and student transfers— understanding the larger neighborhood that Price Elementary (now Middle) effects of poverty, massive School has experienced over the past displacement, and gentrification in the 10 years. Price has also faced insufficient investment and lack of 55 http://iirc.niu.edu/ 56 CPS Price Presentation, Public Hearing January 6, 54 http://phillyeducationjustice.org/“we-had-fight- 2012. lessons-chicago-communities’-struggle-against- http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_guideli school-closings nes/documents/TransitionPlan/PricePresentation.pdf

Mid-South area. Furthermore, one CPS also states that ―almost one out of cannot examine Price‘s performance two Price students‖ does not meet state without also considering how CPS, as a standards. Conversely, this means that whole, has succeeded—or failed—in more than one out of two is meeting supporting schools across the city in state standards. This was not the case low-income communities of color. For in 2001, when less than one out of four example, while it is true that Price has (22.9%) Price students met state been on probation for four straight standards. Since that time, there has years, so have hundreds of other CPS been a steady, gradual, but definitely schools. A cursory examination of the uphill trend. That is, Price has been an 250+ schools listed on the FY12 improving school over the past decade, Probation List shows that almost 200 of according to CPS‘ own data, as shown them have been on probation for four (or in Figure 8 below. more) consecutive years, or about 80% of the schools on probation.57 Price is These two points—Price is similar to not exceptional. A pertinent question is: hundreds of other schools on probation, Since the number of schools on and it has steadily if slowly improved— probation in CPS has almost tripled call into question CPS‘ argument that since the beginning of Renaissance Price should be closed. And, it does not 2010 (CPS‘ signature effort at improving address an important question: How underperforming schools by closing does the history of disinvestment and them, transferring students, and destabilization impacting Price affect its supporting turnarounds and charter academic performance as measured by schools), in what ways can one frame CPS metrics? Renaissance 2010 as a successful school improvement project? And why is CPS continuing the same policies this year?

Figure 8: Price Elementary School, Composite ISAT

Over Time—Percent Meeting/Exceeding

/ Exceeding Meeting

57 http://research.cps.k12.il.us/cps/accountweb/Report s/allschools.html

History of Destabilization and in the quote at the start of the case Disinvestment study. This was a major destabilization of Price school. No analysis of Price‘ academic performance can be complete without After Price and Robinson‘s attendance taking into account the churning of boundaries were combined, near-by schools in Bronzeville or the turnover of academically higher-scoring schools leadership at Price – both have (e.g., Ariel Community Academy and destabilized the school. Pershing West Magnet School) and new, well-financed charter schools (e.g., At the end of the 2003-4 school year, Perspectives Charter at IIT Campus) CPS closed two elementary schools in siphoned off some higher-achieving Bronzeville, Raymond and Douglas. students. Price, a neighborhood school Students from Raymond were mandated to take all students, admitted supposedly to attend a Perspectives students with lower test scores. Once Charter School, but that school has a Robinson became a K-3 feeder to Price, lottery and neighborhood students have the Robinson principal, according to a no guarantee of being accepting. Price LSC member, recommended that Similarly, students from Douglas were to higher-achieving students avoid Price attend Pershing West Middle School, and instead go to Ariel and Perspectives but that school became Pershing West Charter. Furthermore, after Robinson Magnet School in 2007, again, with no became a feeder to Price, Price‘s guaranteed acceptance of neighborhood percentage of special needs students students. Thus, some students came to spiked, from an average of a little over Price from Raymond and Douglas, with 12% the preceding three years, to an no extra support or resources. Each of average of about 17% over the next those schools is about 2 miles from five.58 Both the loss of academically Price. Given turf and gang lines in more prepared students and the Chicago, this had a major destabilizing disproportionate numbers of impact on Price. academically less prepared students and special needs students further In 2006-7, CPS combined Price and contributed to the destabilization of Robinson elementary schools, both of Price. which were K-8 schools, but from different geographic areas that had At the end of 2004, Price‘s principal of different gangs. CPS turned Robinson 14 years, Dr. Carl Lawson, retired. into Robinson Primary School (grades Since he left, there have been six K-3) and Price into Price Middle School principals in eight school years (one of (grades 4-8), with no extra resources to whom was an interim principal). Strong either school to handle the complexities school leadership is key to improving of merging students from different schools. From this standpoint, the neighborhoods. Robinson was to be a extreme turnover in leadership at Price feeder to Price. According to a Price is very disturbing and certainly LSC member and to youth who were destabilizing. students at Robinson and Price at the time, the merger caused students from both geographic areas to form ―crews‖ for their own protection, increasing tension in the school. These actions 58 contributed to the spiked violence that http://acct.multi1.cps.k12.il.us/cps/accountweb/Rep former Price student, Osha, spoke about orts/allschools.html

CPS Plans for Price Students neighborhood schools, the disinvestment in Price especially If Price closes, the designated receiving compared to turnaround schools‘ school will be National Teachers resources, and the disregard for Academy (NTA), run by the Academy of community input. Urban School Leadership (AUSL). Students will be bused to the school, Safety and Destabilization: NTA is four which is four miles away. Price‘s current miles away from Price. Given CPS‘ attendance area would disappear and track record of protecting students from be spread between two other nearby closed schools who transfer to schools schools, Woodson and Fuller59 (both of in new neighborhoods,61 parents are which CPS proposed for turnaround this fearful for their children‘s safety. They year due to their probation and have consistently brought up this performance status—that is, they are concern at CPS community hearings on ―no better‖ than Price). Those students proposed Price school actions (January who chose not to attend NTA would go 6 and January 20, 2012).62 For example, to their new ―neighborhood‖ schools, a parent asked, ―How will CPS stop Woodson or Fuller. All three possibilities fights in the classrooms at National are in different gang territories than Teachers Academy (NTA) [if Price Price, furthering the possibility of students are relocated there]‖ and violence. Other students may be spread expressed ―concern over fighting far and wide. According to a recent between students from different CCSR study, ―Of the displaced students schools.‖ Another community resident who reenrolled in CPS elementary said he ―does not see how CPS can schools…less than half attended one of take an action like this [closing Price] the designated receiving schools.‖60 and view it as doing anything but Thus, two salient issues are that the disrupting a culture of calm.‖ majority of displaced Price students could attend schools no better than Strengthening, supporting, and investing Price, and all the students are in existing neighborhood schools: potentially in harm‘s way if Price closes. Parents throughout Chicago have consistently advocated for quality schools, with appropriate resources, in Community Response to CPS Plan

61 In response to CPS‘ proposal, For example, closing Austin High School, community members raised a number of with the resulting spiked violence at Wells issues at CPS hearings and in public and Clemente High Schools; closing Englewood High School, causing spiked meetings: the safety of the children and violence at Hyde Park, Dyett, Hirsch, and destabilization from school closings, the Robeson High Schools; making Carver Area need to develop and strengthen High School selective enrollment and the spiked violence at Fenger High School. 59 CPS Price Presentation, Public Hearing 62 January 6, 2012. http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_an http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_an d_guidelines/documents/TransitionPlan/Co d_guidelines/documents/TransitionPlan/Pric mmunityMeeting_Price.pdf and ePresentation.pdf http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_an 60 de la Torre, M. & Gwynn, J. (2009). When d_guidelines/Documents/TransitionPlan/Co schools close: Effects on displaced students mmunityMeeting_Price_Jan20.pdf All in Chicago public schools. Chicago: subsequent parent, teacher, and community Consortium on Chicago School Research (p. comments are from the January 6 and 14-15) January 20 hearing transcripts as cited here.

their own communities. The Price LSC be offered here in the community.‖ A chair said, at the January 20 hearing, parent LSC member at Price said, ―The LSC is committed to children Put the proper resources into the receiving a world-class education in school. If CPS can do it at NTA, their own neighborhood.‖ Another CPS can do it at Price. Price community resident commented, at the doesn‘t have music or art. There are January 6 hearing, that she was so many disparities in CPS. The ―concerned about children being taken disparities across the city are unfair from a school where they have been and unconstitutional. since kindergarten and that students and teachers have relationships with Another community member said, ―If parents….students‘ grades will drop if CPS does what it does in schools on the they are taken out of their school.‖ She north side, and gives the same amount also worried about ―the relationships of resources, they [Price] will get the that have been developed over the same results. It is unfair to expect the years.‖ same result when different resources are being provided.‖ And a parent said, Price LSC member and president of the ―You cannot hold schools accountable if PAC said, ―If the proposed action is they don‘t have the proper resources. about the children, why move them from Don‘t transport these students out of the building they are already in? Why their community – they need to know move students around when they have that they have been invested in and not a school in their own community?‖ A spread out across the community.‖ January 29, 2012 Chicago Tribune article reported that CEO Brizard himself Disregard for community input: There concurred with the importance of has been a consistent disregard for the neighborhood schools. Brizard: perspective of the school community emphasize[d] that the best school and a violation of the process the Board options come from improving is mandated to follow. On November 30, neighborhood [emphasis added] 2011, CEO Brizard wrote a letter to campuses rather than from Price parents proposing to close Price. increasing the number that have The letter stated, in part, ―…we are selective enrollment….―What we proposing today, after a very lengthy have to do, folks, is create great and thoughtful process, to close schools for kids, no matter where Price…‖64 This was the first letter they are,‖ Brizard said.63 informing Price parents that CPS intended to close their school. This A main theme at the hearings was CPS‘ suggests that the ―very lengthy and inequitable investment in schools and thoughtful process‖ never involved Price the historic lack of CPS support for administrators, teachers, counselors, Price. One teacher said that, ―the parents, students, LSC members, or support that CPS is offering [at NTA], other members of the school such as a full-time social worker, should community. A price LSC member, at the January 20 hearing, said that: Her son asked her why CPS wants 63 Byrne, J. (January 29,2012). Schools CEO: We're too to close his school—he loves Price obsessed with selective enrollment. Chicago Tribune. and doesn‘t want to go to another Retrieved from http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01- 64 28/news/chi-cps-head-create-great-schools-for- every-child-20120128_1_selective-enrollment- http://cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_guidelines/d brizard-cps-head ocuments/TransitionPlan/Price_Parent.pdf).

school. He asked her, ―Why do they churning of Bronzeville schools, and feel they need to make a decision other aspects of disinvestment and about my life and I have no say so destabilization. In sum, it seems that about it?‖ Little people are human CPS has failed to adequately support beings—they have feelings—they Price. feel that they are under attack, as if they are not worthy to come in to In response, the Price school their own school. community participated in developing its own plan, one that goes beyond raising The Price LSC Chair presented a letter test scores. The goal of the Bronzeville to the CPS hearing officer at the Global Achievers Village plan is world- January 20 hearing explaining its class schools with a rich curriculum, opposition to the proposed closing. She excellent academics, holistic supportive said, ―CPS wants to close the schools student development, and education for and shuffle around the children like global citizenship. Given the possibilities cattle. You [CPS officials and hearing and promise of the plan, Price‘s officer] would not accept this for your similarity to hundreds of other children.‖ overwhelmingly Black and Latino/a schools serving low-income Chicago Conclusion children, and the district‘s historic Price Elementary School has inability to ―fix‖ these schools ―from consistently improved its ISAT scores above,‖ it seems reasonable that, rather over the past 10 years. This is so than close Price, CPS administration despite the destabilization resulting from should commit to work with the school, being a receiving school when Price and and its community partners, to develop Robinson Elementary schools were the Bronzeville Global Achievers plan. combined and reconfigured, the general

Dyett High School Case Study

It was January 6th, 2012, the night of the the University of Chicago on its eastern first community meeting for the flank. CPS proposes to phase-out Dyett proposed phase-out of Walter H. Dyett High School based on chronic low High School. Rows of people held signs academic performance and the need to ―Business As Usual Is Not An Option,‖ provide ―higher quality education and ―I Choose Children, Not Adults,‖ as options‖ for high school students on the teachers, parents, and community Southside. Dyett High School is a members used their designated two neighborhood public school whose 2011 minutes to speak in support of saving enrollment was 492. Dyett students are Dyett. Who were these people? Later, it 90.7% low-income and 97.8% African was uncovered that many of them were American, and 25.6% of the students paid protesters who did not even have a are classified as special education. The relationship with the community of Dyett school received a Level 3 performance High School.65 But throughout the ranking for 2011, and only 6.0% of its evening, actual members of the Dyett students met Illinois state standards, school community approached the although this was more than twice its microphone and exposed a history of percentage from the previous school disinvestment in Dyett over the last few year.66 years: loss of teachers, classes online, cuts in counselors and this year no Dyett students protesting at CPS Assistant Principal. A retired CPS teacher and Reading Coach of 28 years articulately stated the core issue with phasing out Dyett. He said, ―The solution here is for every school, for every neighborhood school, to be made into a good school…I think things should change—that‘s not the issue. How should they change? And I just don‘t think that closing down a school like Dyett is the solution. The solution is to invest more in Dyett.‖ His passion moved the crowd as people burst into applause. The paid protestors holding The decision to phase out Dyett not only those signs could do little to combat the puzzles but also angers many parents, heartfelt words. students, and Bronzeville community members. In an area beset by school Dyett School Background closings and turnarounds over the last 13 years, Bronzeville certainly needs a Walter H. Dyett High School is located neighborhood high school. But if CPS at 51st Street and St. Lawrence Avenue phases out Dyett, its attendance at the northern-most tip of Washington boundaries will be reassigned to Park, a leafy, historic Chicago park Wendell Phillips Academy High School bordering the Hyde Park community and at the end of the 2011-2012 school year. Phillips is approximately two miles north 65 Lutton, L. (January 24, 2012). Paid protesters a new of Dyett High School, and is also a Level force in school closings debate. WBEZ. http://www.wbez.org/story/paid-protesters-new- force-school-closings-debate-95792 66http://iirc.niu.edu/Default.aspx

3 school with very similar metrics as over the past few years. In 2009, the Dyett. Because of this, many parents Chicago Botanical Gardens and the wonder why CPS would use the Chicago Park District created the Dyett- argument of ―chronic academic Washington Park Green Youth Farm, underachievement‖ and cite a Level 3 adjacent to the school.68 The farm has performance rating as reason to phase- provided employment for 17-21 students out Dyett—and then propose that Dyett each summer since 2009, after-school students be sent to Phillips. This programs, and community growing contradicts the CPS principle of space for residents. The ESPN series, providing a ―higher quality education‖ Rise Up, partnered with the Chicago and mirrors research on previous CPS Bulls‘ community outreach program to school closings which found that almost renovate Dyett‘s gymnasium.69 This half of students from underperforming four-week renovation included a new schools end up attending schools with gymnasium floor, basketball hoops, equal performance—while only 6% end signs and a paint job, uniforms for up at high-performing schools.67 In fact, Dyett's teams, and sports equipment for Dyett‘s performance is comparable to the physical education department. The nearby high schools. With the Kenwood Oakland Community exceptions of King High School Organization (KOCO) has invested time (selective enrollment) and Kenwood and resources into developing the youth Academy, all area high schools received of Dyett to be informed and organized Level 3 Performance Ratings, the same community members who are able to as Dyett. More to the point, Dyett and advocate for their rights and needs. Phillips have almost the exact same demographics and average ACT scores, CPS Disinvestment in Dyett and the school are not far apart on Despite investment from community PSAE scores. Thus parents question: members, there is significant evidence Why send Dyett students to a school that CPS has disinvested in Dyett since that has the same academic and 1999, when CPS turned Dyett— economic challenges? historically a middle school—into a high school. Dyett High School Farm  At community meetings and public hearings, teachers cited the loss of staff as contributing to school destabilization.  Dyett‘s LSC proposed that CPS fund the Read 1805 program, a highly researched and effective reading program, desperately needed for the school‘s under- developed readers. As one teacher testified at a CPS hearing, Community Investment in Dyett many of Dyett‘s students come to the school reading years below The greater Chicago community has invested thousands of dollars into Dyett

68 http://www.chicagobotanic.org/greenyouthfarm/ 67 de la Torre, M. & Gwynn, J. (2009). When schools 69 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-08- close: Effects on displaced students in Chicago public 29/sports/ct-spt-0830-prep-foot-dyett-renovation- schools. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School 20110829_1_dyett-high-schools-neighborhood- Research. school

grade level. However, CPS denied respect to high schools, there have the LSC proposal. been five key high school actions in  Another LSC member and parent Bronzeville since 1999. Some of these volunteer in the Bronzeville area have had documented impacts on Dyett. noted The Knock at Midnight  In 1999, CPS turned Dyett into a Program, a truancy prevention high school. This coincided with program, also did not receive any CPS turning King High School into funding. a selective enrollment school. Area  CPS mandates an art credit to students not meeting King‘s graduate high school, but Dyett selective enrollment criteria went to lost its art teacher this year due to other schools. While King accepted funding cuts. The result is that in higher-achieving students, many order to graduate, Dyett seniors lower-achieving students had to go must still take an art class, but to other schools. And while King got their only current option is to take it $24 million to renovate,72 Dyett got online. nothing for its transition to a high  When Dyett became a high school school. in 1999, there were only seven  When CPS phased out Englewood books in its library according to a at the end of 2005, Englewood long-time Dyett LSC member— students were reassigned to four and no honors or AP classes. Southside schools, including  In 2011, Dyett‘s athletic director Dyett.73 Dyett received no extra wrote an impassioned, and resources to handle the influx of successful, plea to the ESPN students, and there was a major media network for extra resources spike in violence. In 2006, a former for their athletics programs. At the Dyett student, not affiliated with any time, Dyett‘s principal commented gang, was murdered around the on the school‘s poor physical corner from the school while waiting condition: ―The school has for a bus in a case said to stem probably not been freshly painted from the closing of Englewood and in probably 20 or even 30 years.‖70 the mixing of students from rival gang territories. At the time, ―Lisa Destabilization Scruggs, senior policy advisor to CPS chief Arne Duncan, conceded Since 1999, students living in Chicago‘s that some of the receiving schools south side have experienced a large [from Englewood] need more degree of dislocation as dozens of money for security than CPS has 74 schools have been closed, created, and provided to date.‖ turned around. As we point out, in the immediate Bronzeville area, CPS closed or turned around 15 schools, not including this year‘s proposals. This has Midsouth. Chicago: Kenwood Oakland had a profoundly destabilizing effect on Community Organization. 71 http://www.uic.edu/educ/ceje/index.html. the community. In particular, with 72 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-12- 04/news/0212040273_1_martin-luther-king-iii- 70 http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/high- first-class-smaller-class-sizes 73 school/post/_/id/1293/dyett-picked-for-athletic- http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/The_Board_of_ facility-makeover Education/Documents/BoardActions/2005_02/05- 71 Lipman, P., Person, A. & Kenwood Oakland 0223-EX15.pdf Community Organization. (2007). Students as 74 Meyer, E. (March 29, 2006). CPS ups security collateral damage? A preliminary study of around Dyett following shooting. The Hyde Park Renaissance 2010 school closings in the Herald (126)13, 8

 DuSable High School closed at the conflicted areas to get from Dyett to end of 2005-6 and reopened as Phillips. This has raised concerns three new schools, two of which among community residents and were selective enrollment schools. parents of Dyett students. According to Students were pushed out and had one area grandmother, ―There are to attend other high schools. gangs at Phillips High School. I don't  CPS turned around Harper High want my daughter caught up over there. School in 2008, and the school‘s If Chicago wants a bloodbath, that's enrollment dropped dramatically— what they're asking for. You put these Harper‘s attendance went from children in other schools, you will have a 1258 in 2008 to 770 in 2011, a drop bloodbath.‖79 A student concurred: of 39%.75 ―People come from different schools and  When CPS turned around Phillips going to another school, they probably High School and turned it over to have a rival gang there, and so that‘s AUSL in 2010, its enrollment was kind of bad.‖ 857.76 However, AUSL‘s website now lists Phillips‘ enrollment at A former Englewood teacher and CTU 593,77 a drop of 31%. Representative noted at the January 6 hearing, ―Saying we are going to take No school plan attempting to improve extra precautions is like saying we are Dyett would be complete without a going start a fire, and then we will call thorough investigation of who went there the fire department…does this make over these years, from what schools, sense? Is this good for children?‖ He under what circumstances, what were reminded community members of the the impacts, with what additional transfer of Austin High School students resources—or not—and how did this to Roberto Clemente High School, and contribute to destabilizing Dyett and its the spike in violence that ensued as academic performance. children made the trek to school.

Reactions to Proposed Phase-out Parents and students fear a repeat of the tragic events that occurred near Parents and community members are Fenger High School in September 2009. concerned about students‘ safety and When CPS made Carver Area High security because Dyett‘s reassigned School a selective enrollment military attendance boundaries cross different academy beginning in 2000, they made gang territories. The designated it off limits to the vast majority of receiving school for Dyett students is students in the massive, adjacent Phillips Academy. According to an Altgeld Gardens CHA development. analysis by Chicago Magazine,78 Students from the Gardens were students traveling by public reassigned to Fenger High School in transportation (since the district will not Roseland, their new ―neighborhood‖ bus students) must pass through school—five miles and two bus rides away. CPS then turned around Fenger in summer 2009, eliminated the vast 75http://webprod.isbe.net/ereportcard/publicsite/get majority of experienced Black teachers SearchCriteria.aspx from Fenger who had known students, 76http://webprod.isbe.net/ereportcard/publicsite/get their families, and community for years. Report.aspx?year=2011&code=1501629900034_e.pdf In the first three weeks of school in 77 http://www.ausl-chicago.org/schools.html 78 http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago- Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-Map- 79 http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/12/01/brizard- of-Chicago-Gangs some-schools-are-too-far-gone-to-save/

2009, fights between Gardens and schools as a whole (13.1%) and is also Roseland students were rampant, twice the average of the area high setting the stage for the tragic death of a schools (13.2% -- this percentage, student in late September. These events includes Dyett itself). A Dyett teacher linger powerfully in the memories of commented that if CPS is comparing Chicago parents and students. Dyett‘s performance to the rest of the district, ―you‘re comparing apples to Student Voices oranges.‖ It is important to consider student perspectives in any school action. At the Conclusion final Public Hearing for the proposed Dyett‘s academic performance cannot phase-out of Dyett (January 27, 2012), be disentangled from the legacy of lack about 20 Dyett students spoke against of support, stability, and investment in closing their school. Their testimony the school and the destabilization and spoke to disinvestment in the school disinvestment in the larger Bronzeville and fears about safety. This is a and Southside Chicago community. The sampling of student voices. A Dyett school needs a massive infusion of student: extra support, especially when over a As proof of the continued quarter of its enrollment is special disinvestment, it is now 2012, and education students. now we only have one honors class…they put us on probation, the The author of an examination of CPS took away five teachers, and the policies in relation to Dyett commented worst part is now we are on the that Dyett could be seen as an exemplar phase-out list…CPS always says it of ―one public school‘s death by a is in the interest of the children, but thousand cuts.‖80 There is little historic in reality, it is not. record to suggest that phasing out Dyett and sending its students to an equally Another Dyett student: poor performing school (Phillips) will Instead of helping us, they set us change students‘ lives. Rather, the up for failure. Our LSC requested substantial resources and support given the Read 180 Program to help to Phillips AUSL turnaround could be students when they are behind, but given to the Dyett school community CPS said no. Instead of sending and CPS should support the Bronzeville future students to Phillips, why don‘t Global Achievers Village plan, as a you put the money back into Dyett? viable, community-driven alternative.

A third student cited research: ―We still deserve a quality education…The University of Chicago did a study that shows that closing schools does not improve student achievement.‖ Another said, ―CPS is showing students that giving up is ok,‖ and, another: ―We don‘t want another Fenger!‖

Special education disparity Dyett has one of the highest percentages of special needs students in the city: 25.6% for 2012. This figure is 80 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-farmer/one- roughly twice the average of CPS public-schools-death-_b_1124719.html

Crane High School Case Study

At the first community hearing that CPS Background organized to hear comments on its CPS is proposing to phase out Crane proposal to phase-out Crane HS, the High School starting with the incoming auditorium at Malcolm X College was freshman in September 2012. Students packed – many supporters but also will be sent to Wells, Marshall, Manley quite a few ―rent-a-protestors.‖ Crane‘s and Farragut high schools, and a supporters lined up to share one charter school, Talent Development, will heartfelt story about their school after move into Crane as a ―co-location.‖ another. An historic turnout of Talent Development currently has 200 politicians gave impassioned speeches. students but plans on expanding to 600 next year, its enrollment maximum. CPS The Crane Coalition presented an proposes to close Crane ―based on the impressive slideshow of their academic school‘s chronic academic failure.‖81 The gains and uncovered how CPS‘ argument is that the school has been on numbers are misleading and taken out probation for a number of years, has a of context. low graduation rate, and there are ―…The school creates a shelter for ―better options‖ for the students at children…Crane is a home to its neighboring high schools. students because of the love, honesty, and wisdom of the faculty that never Demographics gives up on students.‖ Crane students are 98.8% Black and ―Crane is the hand that puts the kids 0.6% Latino. Eighty seven percent of the over the broken bridge.‖ students qualify for Free and Reduced ―Crane has opened up many doors and Lunch and 25.8% are classified as created opportunities…people at Crane special education, almost twice the are like a family…the school is an district average of 12.2%.82 Crane also historical asset for students and the has a homeless student population of community.‖ 7.7%, more than triple the district ―…the Crane teachers are ‗there for you‘ average of 2.2%. Given the extensive and do more than just teach in the research base supporting the fact that classroom.‖ poverty, disability, and lack of housing ―If Crane has been on probation for ten stability strongly impact students‘ years, then an academic advisor should academic performance, it is clear that have been implemented to support the Crane students need extra support to school,‖ Constance Ramsey, Crane HS succeed in school. Clerk. ―What is the [CPS] CEO trying to Community Area/Neighborhood accomplish by moving students out of Conditions Crane?‖ Dr. Grady Jordan, retired Crane is a neighborhood high school on principal and superintendent. Chicago‘s near West side, close to the ―Are the Crane students not good United Center, expressway, the enough for the new building?‖ Sherrea University of Illinois at Chicago, the Washington, parent. Illinois Medical District, and downtown.

81 http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_guideli nes/documents/TransitionPlan/Crane_TransitionPlan.p df 82 http://iirc.niu.edu/

LISC Chicago‘s New Community  CPS phased out three nearby high Program spearheaded a new schools: Westinghouse in 2006, neighborhood within the community, and Collins in 2007, and Best Practice in in 2007, Bloomberg News listed the 2009. Enrollment numbers suggest area as one of the nation‘s ―most up and that some of these students coming‖83. Many large warehouse and transferred to Crane because there office buildings have been redeveloped was a spike in enrollment at Crane into condos, making the community an between 2006 and 2007. extension of the West Loop. Nearby is  Crane‘s enrollment has varied the Tri-Taylor area, home to many substantially since 2005. From then doctors and medical students. until 2007, enrollment increased by 13% then steadily and precipitously For about fifty years, two CHA dropped until the present, by 48%. complexes fed into the school: Henry This is due partly to gentrification Horner Homes and Rockwell Gardens. and partly to new schools in the Henry Horner Homes was the setting for area.86 Alex Kotlowitz‘s book about urban  Family mobility in the area as a problems caused by municipal whole is high due to the destruction disinvestment, neglect, racism, and of CHA buildings and the influx of 84 disenfranchisement . These factors new, upscale housing (somewhat contribute to violence in the community. abated due to the current A recent Chicago Reporter article on economy). Total attendance of area youth homicide in Chicago reports: high schools in 2005 was just under Studies strongly suggest that when 4,000. It dropped to about 2,700 by young people live in neighborhoods 2008 but is now over 5,000. plagued by violence, even when  The influx of well-resourced schools they don‘t directly suffer violence, with no commitment to take all they are considerably more likely to neighborhood students—an AUSL suffer from post-traumatic stress, turnaround, three selective depression and anxiety, and are enrollment schools (two military), more prone to behavioral problems and several charter schools—have 85 and academic underachievement. drawn higher-performing students but all have significantly lower Destabilization—School and percentages of special needs Community students than Crane.87 Both Crane High School itself and its  There has been a revolving neighborhood have suffered from door of ―area instructional marked destabilization. Gentrification, officers‖ and ―network school closings and openings, and the chiefs‖—five in the past five destruction of public housing combine to years. create much mobility and dislocation in the near West side. From 2005 until the Disinvestment present: Crane has lost a number of important programs and staff over the last few 83 years, and CPS has not adequately http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/03/0307_nabes/ maintained the facility nor provided index_01.htm Retrieved on December 30, 2011. sufficient resources. According to a 84 http://alexkotlowitz.com/02_03.html Crane administrator who spoke at the 85 http://www.chicagoreporter.com/news/2012/01/more- 86 young-people-are-killed-chicago-any-other-american- http://iirc.niu.edu/ city?tr=y&auid=10187882 87 http://iirc.niu.edu/

January 6, 2012 public hearing on the support the school and to plead with CPS proposal, CPS has cut Crane CPS to maintain it as a neighborhood funding, staffing, and programs. Other school. Alumni, community members, members of the Crane school students, teachers, and parents came to community also spoke about the lack of the community hearings to protest investment in Crane. Several who Crane‘s closing or spoke out in other testified asked why had CPS not forums (e.g., through the media89). provided sufficient support to Crane Three city council members, State since it has been on probation for so Representative Annazette Collins, and many years and asked CPS Congressman Danny Davis spoke in representatives to tell the community favor of keeping Crane open and specifically what the district has done to providing it with the resources and help the school get off probation. support given to turnarounds and charter schools. Students argued Although Westside High School Network against closing the school, citing their Chief, Theresa Plasencia, testified at the strong relationships with their teachers. January 6 hearing that Crane received Many said that Crane is a ―home away $7.5 million over the past five years to from home‖ and they strongly believe improve school performance.88 Crane that the faculty does an excellent job of teachers documented a lack of supporting them academically and resources since 2007. For example, emotionally. Several alumni who have been successful in college gave  In 2007, CPS cut the Metro heartfelt testimony at the community program, which allowed students to hearings and commented how they take classes at locations around the keep in touch long after they graduate. city.  In 2009, CPS reduced the Small Learning Community (SLC) funding for Crane.  In Spring 2011, CPS cut SLC funding to Crane entirely.  Several classrooms had ceiling leaks, moldy walls, and cracked tiles with asbestos, but major repairs did not take place until summer 2011, a few months prior to the proposed phase out.  There are not enough computers in The January 6, 2012 hearing on the the computer lab for a full class. proposed phase-out of Crane HS.

Community Response and Support Problem w/ CPS Rationale for the Crane Coalition As the CCSR study on school closings Crane has an important place in the documents, close to half the students history of Chicago‘s Westside who transfer due to closures attend community. Many individuals have schools with no better performance, and stepped forward in various ways to

88http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_ 89 http://www.chicagojournal.com/news/02-01- guidelines/documents/TransitionPlan/Communi 2012/Chicago_Bears_owners:_keep_Crane_Hig tyMeeting_TalentCrane.pd h_School_open

only 6% go to high-performing schools.90 Crane students are sent to the This is relevant in Crane‘s case. While designated receiving schools. Crane is a performance level 3 school, as are Manley and Marshall, both Wells The Crane School Community Plan and Farragut are at performance level 2. Responding to the threat of closure, However, all four designated receiving teachers, parents, and community schools have been on probation since members quickly created the Crane probation started in 1996-7, for 16 Coalition. Working with the LSC and consecutive years—outstripping Crane. community partners such as the Near To quote the hearing officer who West Side Community Development presided over the two community Coalition, the Crane Coalition developed hearings on CPS‘ proposal to phase out a comprehensive academic and Crane, programmatic plan to improve student The truth of the matter is that while learning. The plan, summarized below, the receiving schools have better is the working product of the coalition metrics than Crane, most of them and has been submitted to CPS and the are only marginally better and two hearing officer. The plan proposes, are in Level 3. That fact begs the among several other components: question as to whether, in light of the disruption that phase-out will cause,  New high-level programs (e.g., an it makes sense to at least explore International Baccalaureate the feasibility of the proposed [by the program) and career and technical community] turnaround plan.91 programs such as cosmetology, video game programming, culinary Furthermore, the issue of former Crane- arts and trade programs; area students crossing gang lines to  more supports such as mentoring attend the other schools looms large as and tutoring, social services that well. It is particularly ironic that Wells is promote social and emotional one of the designated receiving schools development, and increased because when Austin High School was services for Crane‘s closed and students were sent to Wells, disproportionately high population Wells experienced a spike in violence.92 of special-needs students; CPS has a history of sending students  support services and educational from closed schools across gang and programs for parents—workshops neighborhood lines to other schools and training, a parent resource 93 resulting in spiked violence. At the room, night school, and an adult community hearings, people have GED program; warned about repeating this mistake if  partnership with the Strategic Learning Initiative, a non-profit 90 de la Torre, M. & Gwynn, J. (2009). When schools organization with a proven track close: Effects on displaced students in Chicago public record of working with whole school schools. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School communities on comprehensive Research. school transformation plans; 91http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_guide lines/documents/TransitionPlan/Crane_TalentDev_Pu  academic and athletic summer blicHearing.pdf, p. 27 programs and a transition-to-high- 92 Schmidt, G. N. (December 2006). Bloody days school program for area eighth increase in Chicago’s general high schools. Substance graders entering Crane; XXXII(4), 1, 5-7.  soliciting student input and 93 Parents United for Responsible Education (2006). Violence and R2010: CPS has ignored community participation in a flexible disciplinary warnings. http://pureparents.org/data/files/violencefacts2009.pdf

model and implementing Conclusion Restorative Justice. In the spirit of the many testimonies of The Crane Coalition also proposes parents, teachers, and students who partnerships and vertical curriculum recognized Crane‘s weaknesses but alignment with the feeder elementary expressed commitment to work together schools because the academic for its improvement, we agree with the underpreparation of incoming students hearing officer‘s conclusion. concerns Crane teachers. Crane Instead of phasing-out Crane and teachers and other members of the potentially endangering students by Crane Coalition believe that adding sending them to other low-performing these components will improve Crane‘s schools that are out of their community, enrollment, attendance and dropout CPS should sit down with the Crane rates. staff, teachers, students, parents, alumni, community members, and the The CPS hearing officer, who, although Strategic Learning Initiative and acknowledging Crane‘s ―long collaborate on the Crane Coalition time….evidence of poor performance,‖ Improvement Plan. CPS should work recommended that CPS seriously with them to identify the resources— consider the Crane Coalition plans:94 material and human—that will support Against this evidence of poor all of the components and move toward performance is a great deal of local improving Crane High School in a way support (and opposition to phase- that builds on the school‘s existing out), motivated by a strong belief strengths and history. that Crane continues to serve the community despite many obstacles beyond its control [emphasis added]….the Crane community has put together a well thought-out plan that has the support of many members of the community, local political leaders and the teachers and staff at Crane. This plan was put together with the assistance of credible experts in school turnaround with a track record of success. He concluded his report: ―I would respectfully recommend that the Board order an analysis of the Crane Coalition Improvement Plan before acting on the CEO‘s proposals [to phase-out Crane and co-locate Talent Charter].‖

94 http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_guideli nes/documents/TransitionPlan/Crane_TalentDev_Publ icHearing.pdf, p. 25-27.