The new Westinghouse High School is being built on Franklin Blvd. east of the site of the old Westinghouse (above, being demolished). The new Westinghouse will cost Chicago an estimated $100 million. While the school is being built adjacent to the site of the old school (demolition photograph from June 2008 above), the Chicago Board of Education has deprived the high school students of the community (Austin) of a general public high school for the past three years. After closing Austin High School as a general public high school, the Daley administration began slowly to privatize the Austin building. First came a charter schools ("Austin Entrepreneurship") whose clout was former Illinois State Schools Superintendent Michael Bakalis. A year after Bakalis was given a large part of the Austin building, a "polytechnic" contract high school was placed inside Austin. At the end of the 2007-2008 school year, high school age students from the Austin community were barred from attending the two small schools within the Austin building. Meanwhile, the Board of Education was spending $100 million (or more) on the new Westinghouse Vocational High School (above) while telling residents of Austin that there was no money to provide their children with a general public high school. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt
