By Jim Vail
February 24, 2010
The Chicago Board of Education members voted to destroy eight Chicago public schools after massive community outrage forced schools chief Ron Huberman to take six schools off the list to be closed, consolidated, phased out or face turnaround.
“This is a sad day for public education,” said Alderman Pat Dowell, who sponsored a one-year moratorium resolution in the City Council. “I don’t think neighborhood schools should be punished.”
Bradwell, Curtis, and Deneen Elementary schools and Phillips and Marshall High Schools will fire their entire staff and all except Marshall will outsource the AUSL management company to run the schools. Schneider Elementary will be phased out, McCorkle Elementary will be consolidated into Beethoven school and De Las Casas Occupational High School will be closed and the students sent to private operators.
Last year not one Chicago alderman addressed the Board about school closings at the meeting that voted on their fate. This year Alderman Sandi Jackson, Alderman Ed Smith and Alderman Dowell spoke out against a process they say does not include the community and is seriously flawed.
“I’m here because I’m concerned about the posterity of our children,” Alderman Smith told the Board. “Marconi has some problems, but we simply can’t jettison these kids. It seems we have a problem to get together. Just because these people don’t have PhDs and MBAs doesn’t mean we don’t need to bring in these parents. We got to work together to give the children what they need.”
Last year some of the schools that protested strongly were removed, thus avoiding an ugly confrontation on the day the Board was to vote on closing schools. The schools that protested loudly this year, such as Guggenheim Elementary who filled a gymnasium with an outraged community that dared the Board to break up their family, and Prescott Elementary on the northside, which mobilized over 700 people to support their school at two public hearings, were taken off the list and the Board was spared another potentially explosive confrontation.
Marconi Elementary was also removed from the list after Ald. Smith blasted Huberman at a City Hall education committee public hearing on Monday in which he said he was “outraged” at being called the night before that they would close a school in his ward. According to the Board of Education, the hearing officer recommended to close Marconi but Huberman is suspending the decision until officials work with the community on alternative options.
Interestingly enough, the Chicago Teachers Union faxed schools to consider joining an informational picket outside the Board headquarters on Clark Street before the meeting despite warning teachers last year that taking off work to go to the Board to protest could be seen in violation of their contract. Although not many teachers came to picket, CTU President Marilyn Stewart held a press conference and addressed the Board about the school closings.
Karen Lewis, a presidential candidate on the CORE slate spoke during public participation at the meeting. She focused her anger on the turnaround policy and how it is not working. She noted that stability is being sacrificed as a result.
“The turnaround policy is just a layoff policy,” Lewis said. “Of the 31 graduates from AUSL, there are only 5 who are still teaching in their original schools after three years. Please do not turnaround our schools.”
CORE made the most impressive showing as a group of organized teachers who pointed out the problems with Renaissance 2010 and its school closings policy. CORE and UPC were the only two teacher caucuses who attended the Board meeting on Wednesday.
One of CORE’s founding members, Jackson Potter said the Board is doing everything against good school policy, such as eliminating local school councils.
“Can you knock out Ren 2010 instead of us knocking you out, and you know we’re a non-violent people,” Jackson said with a smile.
CORE’s Joe Linehan told the Board it certainly doesn’t feel like a Renaissance. “Only dropouts and violence are increasing,” Linehan said. “You privatize a lot in this city, but these kids aren’t parking meters.”
Carol Caref, who teaches at Chicago Vocational High School and is an original member of CORE, told the Board that they should use her time to give to a Julian student who had earlier received a Democracy award from the Board, but was not allowed to speak, which appeared to be unprecedented. The student who did speak sat next to the Board members and bashed the parents in his speech.
After arguing with Caref, Board member Clare Munana finally relented and allowed the Julian student Chantelle Steve to speak. But Steve was too emotional and started crying as she said this whole school closing business is horrible and should be stopped. She was not able to deliver the speech she had prepared to give.
Liz Brown, a teacher at Kelvyn Park High School and CORE media specialist, made the school closings connection to the Race to the Top, in which President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are using the Chicago model to close or turnaround thousands of urban schools across the nation. Michael Brunson, a displaced teacher who is currently the recording secretary candidate on the CORE slate, said all this data performance criteria is demoralizing to the teachers.
“How do you think the teachers feel when you are bashing them all the time,” Brunson said. “It looks like you’re not only throwing the baby out with the bath water, you’re throwing out the tub.”
One reporter with CBS TV noted that there weren’t many teachers from the closing schools who testified at the Board meeting. Bradwell and Deneen parents and students were forced to sit in the holding room because there was not enough room in the Board chambers. The Board reserved several rows of seats for their employees, thus locking out a significant number of stack holders whose very careers were being decided on in that room.
A couple of high school teachers from Phillips and Marshall who are all slated to be fired did speak out to the Board. Michael Johnson, a teacher at Marshall High School, appealed to Huberman’s police background to understand the harmful effects of turnaround.
“I know you know Mr. Huberman where Marshall High School is,” Johnson said. “It is in the police district’s Area 11, home to one of the highest crime rates in the nation. If we proposed the turnaround model by removing all the police in this area with rookie cops, this would upset everyone.”
Donald Baumgartner, a teacher at Marshall, said despite the school’s problems, his debate team placed 7th in the city, “but I can’t teach them now because I’m somehow a bad teacher.
“I’m not asking for a second chance,” Baumgartner told the Board members. “I’m asking for a fair chance.”
A teacher and an attorney for McCorkle School – which is slated to be closed and consolidated – disputed the Board’s assertions that the cost of repairs would amount to 60% of building a new school for roughly $8 million. They said an engineering firm told them the building could be repaired at a cost of $1.2 million to last another 100 years.
“First you said the building needed repairs,” said Anna Paglia, a lawyer the McCorkle LSC hired to help save their school. “And then you said it’s not safe. Then the children should be out of the building now.”
Huberman said they should sit down with his staff to discuss their findings which are at odds with the school’s estimates.
After the public testimony ended, the Board members voted in favor of the new president Mary Richardson Lowry, an attorney with no educational background, though she told everyone she had many teachers in her family.
“I am by my nature rather exacting,” Richardson said in her acceptance speech, whose stern appearance and exacting style appeared to be the opposite of the late Board president Michael Scott who would have joked and played a bit with his audience.
The only questions Board members asked Huberman during his presentation on which schools to close was how he can better communicate his wishes to close or turnaround schools.
Then after closed session, the Board voted to approve via a string of letter and number codes that signified the closing of eight Chicago public schools and the elimination of hundreds of Chicago teaching and staff jobs, as children continue to be tossed around on a rocky ship the Mayor still leads into an uncertain future.
