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Two aldermen introduce resolution to freeze closings, turnovers, phase outs, and turnarounds in Chicago just as 'Chicago Model' goes national under 'Race To The Top'

George N. Schmidt - February 12, 2010

Two of the five Chicago Aldermen who testified during the recent round of hearings on school closings, phase outs, consolidations, and turnarounds have introduced a resolution in Chicago City Council to freeze all of the processes for at least one year.

More than 400 people protested the latest round of proposed school closings, consolidations, phase outs, and turnarounds in a picket line outside the Chicago Board of Education's headquarters at 125 S. Clark St. on February 10, 2010, the day of the final hearing on this year's Hit List. More than 250 people later went upstairs in support of Bradwell Elementary School. Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman has proposed the "turnaround" of Bradwell. One of those who spoke in support of Bradwell was alderman Sandi Jackson. Substance photo by Garth Liebhaber.The resolution, which was dated February 10, 2010, was introduced by Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd Ward) and Freddrenna Lyle (6th Ward).

If passed by the entire City Council, the resolution would stop this year's round of turnarounds and other major changes just at a time when the Obama administration, through U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is pushing the Chicago Plan, including so-called "turnarounds", as a model for school reform across the USA.

The closings, consolidations, phase outs, and turnarounds were instituted during the more than seven years (July 2001 - December 2008) that Arne Duncan served as Chief Executive Officer of Chicago's public schools. Duncan was appointed CEO of CPS in July 2001 despite the fact that he had no teaching or administrative experience in public education and no Illinois credentials to work in any public school in the state. If he had tried to substitute teach in any Chicago suburb, Duncan would have been arrested. But under Chicago's peculiar rules since the institution of mayoral control — in fact, a radical form of deregulation and privatization of the city's public schools — Duncan needed only one vote to become the chief of the third largest public school system in the USA: that of Richard M. Daley.

On February 10, 2010, Alderman Sandi Jackson (7th Ward) told the hearing on the proposed "turnaround" of Bradwell Elementary School that the problems confronting the children, parents, and teachers at Bradwell were heart breaking, and that it was unfair for CPS to penalize Bradwell for conditions outside the schools. Alderman Jackson also noted that Bradwell's new principal had only been in office since September 2009, and that the chance for the school to make things better had not been given to Bradwell. Like many of those who spoke during the two weeks of hearings on the 2010 Hit List, Alderman Jackson became emotional at one point, removing her glasses as Bradwell parents, children, teachers and administrators looked on. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.During the controversial years Duncan served as CEO of CPS, Duncan destroyed more than 60 public schools. Most of those were turned over to charter school operators — most of the time after extensive and expensive rehabilitation, usually costing more than $10 million per building.

Duncan's closing of public schools began in April 2002, less than one year after his appointment by Daley, with the announcement that he was closing Dodge, Terrell and Williams elementary schools in order to promote a so-called "renaissance" that would supposedly save the children of those schools from what Duncan began calling "underperformance."

The list of 14 schools to be subjected to closings in 2010 has caused the greatest outburst of community opposition in history. During a total of 16 public hearings between January 28 and February 10, more than 3,000 people — most of them African American principals, teachers, parents, students and community members — spoke out against the proposals that had been released by Huberman on January 19 (the latest release date ever).

Former UPC member Ted Hajaharis (background, hand showing) eyes CORE's Karen Lewis (King High School, left) and Liz Brown (foreground) during the February 10 march in front of CPS headquarters prior to the last hearing on this year's Hit List. Lewis is CORE's candidate for President of the Chicago Teachers Union; Liz Brown works on CORE's media publicity. Hajiharis has been active with the SEA caucus for the past several months and was recently suspended from his field rep job at CTU by Marilyn Stewart, in Stewart's latest purge of the union's officer and staff. Substance photo by Garth Liebhaber. The hearings, which have been taking place for six years, follow a careful quasi-legal script. During the hearings, representatives of the Board of Education presented a narrow version of the reality of each of the schools on the Hit List. The hearings do not allow questions and are limited to two hours in length. Even the qualifications of the Board of Education's witnesses, who often testify about complex and detailed statistical realities resulting from the lives of hundreds of children, are not allowed to be vetted as to their professional qualifications.

Some of the "hearing officers", all of whom claim to be "independent," stall to allow the maximum amount of time for the Board's presentations and run out the clock when the school and community are trying to present their sides of the story. Each person who asked to speak is limited to two minutes. The hearings last only two hours, and have all been adjourned abruptly at the end of two hours, often with half the people who wanted to speak still waiting.

The structure then goes like this: The hearing officer is supposed to present a "report" to the next meeting of the Board of Education, which can act in favor of the recommendation of teh CEO whether or not the report recommends that the school be closed.

In every year since Duncan began these show trials, the report of the hearing officer was incomplete at the time the Board actually voted to affirm the recommendation of the Chief Executive Officer. The transcripts of the hearings, which often include impassioned descriptions of terrible poverty faced by the children served by the schools under attack, have never been provided to the seven members of the Board of Education by the time they vote.

Nor have the Board members had the enormous number of exhibits and documents which the people have turned in to the hearing officer, despite the narrowest of time lines. The materials are simply not prepared in time for the vote. In one instance three years ago, parents, community supporters, students, and faculty presented the Board with more than 1,000 pages of materials in opposition to the Board's plan to move Edison Regional Gifted Center from a location in Edison Park into the overcrowded corner where two schools were already in operation. At the time the Board members voted to approve the recommendation by Arne Duncan to move Edison, the only materials the Board members had in front of them was a brief five-page report from the hearing officer. Hundreds of pages of letters and petitions from children, teachers and parents were simply ignored, as we more than 30 videos of people testifying at the hearings on the proposal. Typically in that year, not one member of the Board of Education was at the hearing.

When CPS was asked by Substance for an interview with each of the seven members of the Board who voted in favor of the Edison move, the Board's reply, from a spokesman in the Office of Communications, was that members of the Board were too busy to discuss such things.

At every hearing in January and February 2010, representatives of the Huberman administration have presented a quasi-legal "case" against the school in question, only to be immediately corrected by members of the schools' staffs, or by the aldermen who spoke against the plans. In most cases, the shallowness of the Board's "case" against the school was refuted within a half hour of its having been presented at the hearing. But if history is any guide, the Board members will simply read the report of the hearing officer and vote to approve the recommendation of the Chief Executive Officer. The compete "record" of the hearing (with exhibits provided by many people) will finally be assembled a month or longer following the decision of the Board of Education. Over several years, Substance has obtained these records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Not once has the complete record of the hearing been provided to the Board members before they voted.

Like the Chief Executive Officer, the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley. Not one of them is an educator, and most are financiers or attorneys with ties to Chicago's largest banks and other corporations. As in most things Chicago, the Board has "diversity" in terms of racial and ethnic makeup, but is homogeneous in terms of social class. All of the Board members are wealthy, while the people pleading for the survival of the schools represent the most impoverished children in the largest ghetto in North America, Chicago's African American community, which stretches from the city's western border through the far South Side in a contiguous black community that constitutes the greatest example of racial segregation in the Northern Hemisphere.

Although there was major opposition to every move taken by Duncan beginning in 2002, the Chicago Board of Education approved all of the recommendations of Duncan's administration until 2009. Part of this was because the Chicago news media was in a radical transformation that resulted in the bankruptcy of both of the city's daily newspapers (the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times) after years of ruthless cutbacks in news coverage of essential city government activities. During most of the years of the closing hearings, Substance has been the only news service to report on all of the hearings. In 2010, the Chicago Tribune boycotted all 18 of the hearings held between January 28 and February 10, while the Chicago Sun-Times sent a reporter to only one day of the hearings (two schools). Neither paper has mentioned the vast outpouring of discontent with the Huberman proposals, although both newspapers provided fatuous coverage of Huberman's January 19 announcement of the supposed "Performance Management" criteria for the compilation of this year's Hit List.

The opposition has been building across the city, but mainly in Chicago's black and Latino communities, since each year only one school that is somewhat white is included, almost as a token afterthough, on the Hit List.

In January 2009, in the face of growing political and community pressure, newly installed CEO Ron Huberman (as qualified for the job of running a major school system as Arne Duncan had been) published a list of 22 school he recommended for closing, consolidation, phase out, or turnaround, but ended up removing six schools from the list. The Chicago Board of Education unanimously approved Huberman's 'Hit List' of the remaining 16 schools at its meeting of February 25, 2009.

One of the school turned over to so-called "turnaround" (actually, legally the process called "reconstitution" under Illinois law; "turnaround" is a corporate term that is not legally in practice in Illinois, although it is now being pushed by the Obama administration's Education Department under "Race To The Top") was Chicago's Christian Fenger High School, located at 113th and Wallace on Chicago's South side. When Huberman's turnaround team replaced virtually all the teachers and other staff and Fenger and replace them in August and September 2009, chaos quickly followed. The dramatic murder of Fenger High School junior Derrion Albert on September 24, 2009, brought international attention to the problems caused by the "turnaround" at Chicago's Fenger High School. Duncan has proposed that Fenger be subjected to "turnaround" prior to his departure for Washington, D.C. The turnaround of Fenger was implemented by Duncan's successor, Ron Huberman.

For the second time in a week, Alderman Freddrenna Lyle (6th Ward), on February 8, 2010, testified in opposition to the proposal by COE Ron Huberman that a school in heard ward be subjected to "Turnaround" under the Academy for Urban School Leadership. On February 8, she defended Deneen Elementary School from Huberman's "data driven" charges. Earlier, on February 4, Lyle had challenged the data used to claim that Gillespie Elementary School was in need of an AUSL "Turnaround." Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.The other aldermen who have spoken against this year’s round of closings, turnarounds, phase outs and consolidations have been Scott Waugespauk, Sandi Jackson, and Thomas. Parents from Marshall High School (which is scheduled for turnaround) told Substance on February 10 that Alderman Ed Smith has also joined the effort, but Substance has not been able to reach Smith for comment. The text of the resolution follows:

A Resolution to be Adopted by the City of Chicago

WHEREAS, School closings, consolidations, phase-outs, and turnarounds have a profound impact on entire communities, and

WHEREAS, Community members have an acute knowledge of where the resources and dangers are in the neighborhoods where their children attend school and can provide valuable insight into the potential issues that may result from these decisions, specifically regarding safe passage, and

WHEREAS, Chicago Public Schools has made these decisions without sufficient amounts of input from the affected communities, and

On February 8, 2010, Third Ward Alderman Pat Dowell (above) testified forcefully in opposition to a proposal by Chicago School Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman that Mollison Elementary School be closed and then consolidated into Wells Prep, which is supposed to be moved into the Mollison building. Behind the plan proposed by Huberman, according to critics, was the plan to subject Phillips High School to "turnaround" and give the historical Phillips High School building to the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL). Large scale community opposition to the proposals to radically change the schools in Dowell's ward. The proposals by Huberman would result in the loss of teaching and other jobs to the current staffs at both Mollison and Phillips. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. WHEREAS, the decisions made by CPS are often based on outdated or inaccurate data that does not fully consider recent improvements, and

WHEREAS, Many of the schools that are slated for reconstitution or closing have experienced years of significant academic and capital disinvestment; and

WHEREAS, Chicago Public Schools needs to examine its own policies regarding the distribution of resources for academic and capital needs before making drastic decisions such as replacing the school’s staff or closing the school altogether, and

Pickets on February 10, 2010 outside Chicago Board of Education headquarters included CTU Treasurer Linda Porter (above left) and signs reflected the tumult within the union itself. Substance photo by Garth Liebhaber.WHEREAS, Chicago Public Schools has demonstrated they do not have a comprehensive long-term plan by not fully considering development and the consequential need for accessible neighborhood schools; and

WHEREAS, In recognizing the need for greater community involvement and the inequalities that have resulted from CPS’s facility planning, Illinois House Bill 363 calls for “Establishing an equitable and effective school facility development process” via the creation of the Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force, which will release its findings in March 2010; and

WHEREAS, Through school reconstitutions, many good teachers and principals who had positive relationships with their students are being forced to seek employment in a difficult economy and job market; and

WHEREAS, Studies and reports have shown the negative academic and safety-related impact of student mobility, some of which have made national headlines; and

WHEREAS, Due to the lack of transparency and community involvement, there is a growing distrust regarding CPS’s decisions; and

WHEREAS, Many of the new schools that have been created or schools that have been reconstituted are not performing better or are performing worse than the schools that were closed; now therefore

BE IT RESOLVED, That we the members of the City Council of Chicago gathered here this tenth day of February, 2010, A.D. do hereby requite that a moratorium of at least one year be place on current and future school closings, consolidations, turnaround, and phase outs until a comprehensive strategy of transparency, community involvement, and public accountability can be developed, which will include the recommendations from the Chicago Educatonal Facilities Task Force.

Alderman Pat Dowell, 3rd Ward

Alderman Freddrenna Lyle, 6th Ward

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