Communities across Chicago urged to 'Vote No' on charter expansion ballot referendum...
Sara Echevarria, coorrdinator of the Chicago Teachers Union's grievance department, chaired the forum on charter schools on October 22, 2016. Substance photo by Jean Schwab. On Saturday October 22, 2016, Grassroots Illinois Action along with others had a meeting at San Lucas United Church of Christ, 2914 W. North Ave. The meeting, a forum, was entitled: Save Our Neighborhood Schools, VOTE NO to Charter School Expansion. The meeting was to promote the ballot referendum, which is on the ballot in 14 of Chicago's 50 wards and gives voters the right to vote against any expansion of charter schools in their wards.
My Grandchildren go to a neighborhood school in Humboldt Park, so I was personally interested in the forum, as well as attending as a Substance staff member and reporter. We were given a flyer when we first walked in, and like many residents and parents I was surprised how many charter schools there are in Humboldt Park -- 12, in all!
Many of us had no idea! The flyer also listed school closings in Humboldt Park, all neighborhood schools -- Von Humboldt, DuPrey, Lafayette, and Ryerson. All of them were closed in part because charter schools took away their "best" students (and then later dumped the ones who wouldn't score well back into the real public schools).
Many of us remembered the attacks on each school and the anger, tears and sadness that came with the closings. It's also been claimed that there has been an overall drop-in enrollment in all Chicago Public Schools this year, supposedly causing a loss in funding.
Some of the points given on the flyer and during the meeting were:
!. Charter schools are concentrated in low income communities and therefore attack the neighborhood schools in those communities. “The policies of CPS only further the destabilization of neighborhoods already disrupted by housing and employment crisis, poverty and racial segregation.”
2. We don’t need more public schools, but charter expansion has been taking place during a time when CPS schools have been losing students across the city. “In 2015, Chicago Public Schools operated 678 schools for 392,285 students. Even though CPS lost over 28,000 students, CPS still opened 50 more schools.”
3. School Choice Already Exists- There are over 100 charter schools (and so-called "campuses") in Chicago, despite there being a legal cap of 70 charter schools.”
4. More Schools- less Resources
5. Charter Schools Don’t perform better.
6. Charter Schools are operated like a Business. “For every student who achieved success at a charter school, there is a student that suffered or was negatively impacted by a charter school.” CEOS are well compensated for running small operations.”
7. Charter Schools are not transparent. 8.
Charter Schools cherry-pick their students, taking in children whose families are more likely to apply -- and then kicking out "bad" students, sending them back to the real public schools.
9. Charter schools have steered away from their original purpose, which was supposedly to promote educational innovation in classrooms -- not to provide a so-called "business model" based on for-profit versions of reality.
10. Charter schools have a higher teacher turnover.
Sara Echevarria, a former CPS teacher and Chicago Teachers Union Director of the Grievance Department, was the moderator.
The first speaker was Jesus Ayala, a graduate of the "Noble Network of Charter Schools". Ayala described his Nobel high school experience as constant test taking preparing for the SAT and other tests. Every quarter, he said, he took tests to see if there was any improvement and between testing, students worked on their low score areas.
Ayala said that students were rewarded for raising scores by earning $20. Some students purposely failed the first test so they could earn the $20 later. Rankings were given every quarter. If students did poorly, they had to take a summer "development class" which was very expensive. Parents couldn’t afford it, and so they would transfer their children to other charter schools-- or the neighborhood school. It was unethical to promote the school as a "100% graduation school and 100% college acceptance when it wasn’t really true,” he told the crowd.
Next speaker was Mari Martinez, teacher at Aspira Charter Schools. Aspira, a Puerto Rican organization, operates a "network" of charter school "campuses" primarily on Chicago's North Side.
Martinez said that she loves her school, but she knows that a lot of charter schools are not regulated -- and "money disappears."
“An example of an unregulated charter school is Magic Johnson, located at 2421 W. Division, she said. It is an "alternative school" that is just a basement filled with computers. The students are not learning any skills.
Chicago is not the only place with bad charters. Another example is the severe problems in Detroit where seven charter schools had money disappear. The city has no control of what the buildings were used for and the owners often hire relatives to work there. This is what happens when schools are treated like a business.“
Aspira is now a unionized school, and that is a great thing, she said, because the teachers are not afraid to speak up when they have a concern. Martinez repeated that she loves her school and the teachers work hard.
“Unionized charter schools are a step up because you have teachers with the power to say something. Our contract issue at UNO was that we have a student cap (32) for each class. She noted that at the UNO Network of Charter Schools (most of which are on the South Side), the pressure was on to increase class sizes. They wanted to raise the cap, she noted. They did not raise the cap because of the union.
She noted that some schools are "alternative" schools for students who have dropped out of regular or charter schools.
"Our students become anxious when we mention testing because they have had bad experiences with testing before," she said. She charted that parents mention that they are putting their students here because the last school was too expensive.”
Chris Beahrend, President of CHIACTS Local 3434 (the Chicago charter schools unit of the Illinois Federation of Teachers), stated that schools -- whether regular or charter schools -- are not the problem. For charter schools, he said, it is the school operators that are the problem.
Beahrend states, “that we don’t have an education problem, we have a poverty problem.” Behrens agrees with many of the flyer’s reasons for a moratorium on charter school expansion and mentioned that there are plenty of school choices for parents in Chicago.
“Even though there is a 70 school cap on Charter schools, there are more than 100 Charter schools in Chicago while overall enrollment is decreasing. CPS has a policy to close charter schools that they say are bad. We need to stop closing all schools because it affects the stability of neighborhoods.”
A question was asked Baehrend: Whether teacher turnover impacts you or your teachers? Bearhend answered that, “teacher turnover creates instability. There is no turnover when there is a union. We need to fight for democratic schools where teachers can fight for their students.”
