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4 City Schools to Be Closed: District Plan Will Convert 2 Others

Posted on: Thursday, 26 January 2006, 15:00 CST

By David Mendell, Chicago Tribune

Jan. 26--Chicago Public Schools will close four schools and "reconstitute" two others this June in a continuing drive to reshape the city school system by shuttering or restructuring the lowest-performing institutions each year.

Three elementary schools will close, and one high school will cease accepting freshmen and be phased out over the next three years, a school spokesman said Wednesday.

Two more schools will be converted or reconstituted, the spokesman said. In one case, the school's staff will be replaced and in the other, the staff will remain, but the curriculum and school name will change. The students will stay in those schools.

The district is scheduled to inform the affected school principals, staffs and students on Thursday morning and release the names of the schools publicly at an 11 a.m. news conference at district headquarters in the Loop.

As information leaked out Wednesday about the number of school closures, and the schools that are potentially being targeted, the Chicago Teachers Union and others harshly criticized the district's sweeping reform efforts. Union officials said the notification process, in particular, was poorly handled.

Union Vice President Ted Dallas addressed the Board of Education on Wednesday morning and said it was his understanding that 11 schools would be shuttered, converted or consolidated. Later in the day, union President Marilyn Stewart said the list of school closures provided to the union was changing and she excoriated the administration for "confusion" surrounding the process.

The union and other critics have opposed the district's reform plans, saying that shuttering schools only disrupts neighborhoods and stymies the education of students in those schools.

"The problem with the Board of Education is they have a lot of bean counters down there, and they don't have enough educators who know how to deal with human beings," Stewart said. "They are not considering the social implications of this. You are not working with inanimate objects. People's lives are being disrupted."

In explaining Thursday's announcement, officials have said that the district is closing schools deemed to be "chronically underperforming" academically under guidelines found in the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Schools Chief Arne Duncan has pointed to academic successes in other schools, particularly in newly opened charter and magnet schools, as evidence that the district's reform efforts are paying huge dividends.

"We have come so far and we have made so much progress," Duncan told a City Council Education Committee on Tuesday, updating members on the district's Renaissance 2010 initiative to close underperforming schools and open 100 new schools by 2010.

"There is so much momentum," Duncan said. "We don't want to stop. We want to keep going."

dmendell@tribune.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune

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Source: Chicago Tribune

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