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Two worlds of Chicago clash over Board of Education's plan to destroy Carpenter Elementary School

George N. Schmidt and Substance staff - March 21, 2009

Although separated by less than two miles, two worlds both from Chicago were clashing on Friday night, March 20, 2009, over the Chicago Board of Education's plan to destroy inner city public schools and replace them with semi-privatized charter schools and boutique schools for the privileged. The clash, which began more than seven years ago under then CEO Arne Duncan, continued at public hearings about the future of Carpenter Elementary School and the proposed "Ogden High School" on the night of March 20.

The hearings were held at the City of Chicago center in the old Goldblatt's department store building at 1615 W. Chicago Ave., one mile west of Carpenter Elementary School and two miles from Chicago's Gold Coast, where the Ogden Elementary School is located.

At issue is whether a newly created public school entity called "Ogden High School" should be located in the current Carpenter Elementary School building, instead of at other available public school sites in the area. The location of the "Ogden High School" inside Carpenter would doom Carpenter, a fact which has been pointed out by parents, teachers, students, and community supporters of the school for several months since the full impact of the Board's plan became known.

Carpenter Elementary School students, parents, and their supporters end an evening of meetings and protests following their candlelight vigil and mile-long march to the school (in background) following the March 20 hearings. The sign on the right (End Renaissance 2010) refers to the Chicago Board of Education plan that has been replacing neighborhood schools like Carpenter with boutique schools for the privileged like the proposed "Ogden High School" and also with charter schools like the nearby Noble Street charter school. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.The hearings were preceded and followed by a protest march of more than 50 children and families from Carpenter Elementary School. The march after the hearings was a candlelight procession from the hearing space back to Carpenter, one mile away.

The hearings were about whether the Chicago Board of Education should slowly eliminate Carpenter Elementary School from its building at 1250 W. Erie St. Carpenter is adjacent to the Kennedy Expressway at the Ogden Ave. exit. Eliminating Carpenter, which currently serves 325 mostly working class people from the community west of the expressway, will pave the way for the expensive conversion of the school's building into "Ogden High School." Ogden High School is designed to provide a high school place for the children of Ogden Elementary School to go to high school and avoid the perils of selective enrollment high schools that have too many black students (like Lane Tech, Lincoln Park, and Whitney Young) or neighborhood high schools that the Ogden parents and students have declared "unacceptable" for their families (like Wells High School, which was less than a mile from the site of the hearings).

Parents and teachers from Ogden expressed these concerns explicitly during the hearings, which lasted from 6:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. In some cases, they declared that if their children could not get into Chicago's Northside College Prep Magnet High School or Walter Payton Magnet High School (located four blocks from Ogden), there were no "acceptable" high schools for their children. Several speaker denigrated Wells High School, the general high school for the area, located a few blocks from the site of the hearing, as if it were the equivalent of something from a horror movie.

A small school that doesn't qualify as a "Small School"

Although Carpenter Elementary School has exceeded all of the Chicago Board of Education's goals as far as standardized test scores are concerned, the Board nevertheless voted to "phase out" the school because, according to the way the Board interprets its data, Carpenter is "underutulized."

Students along the line of march from Carpenter to the hearing site and back cheered when neighbors honked in support of Carpenter, which was usually the case. Chicago Board of Education officials were unable to explain why the hearings was held at a City of Chicago facility a mile from Carpenter when the school was available for use on the night of March 20. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Carpenter parents, teachers, students, and principal, however, challenged the Board's manipulation of data. Especially challenged was the claim that the Chicago Board of Education, on the one hand, has a policy to encourage "small schools" but, on the other hand, will close a school like Carpenter -- despite success on test scores -- if it becomes too "small."

What has been pointed out over and over by Carpenter supporters is that Carpenter is a successful small school. But, for reasons that have never been discussed by the Chicago Board of Education, a school can be a small school and not be an official "Small School" by the way Chicago measures things. If Carpenter were a "Small School" (all caps) or a Small High School (such as the one that will exist inside the Carpenter building if the Board's current plan succeeds), then Carpenter would continue to exist. But since Carpenter is a very successful small neighborhood school, it is slated to be destroyed under Mayor Daley's "Renaissance 2010" plan.

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FIRST REPORT ITERATION MARCH 21, 2009, 7:15 AM. TO BE UPDATED BY ADDITIONAL SUBSTANCE NEWS SERVICE REPORTERS BY MARCH 22, 2009. Anyone choosing to duplicate this report and its graphical content is asked to attribute as follows: Reprinted by Permission, Copyright 2009, SubstanceNews service, www.substancenews.net. Those who wish to utilize this material are asked to contact SubstanceNews at Csubstance@aol.com.

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