catalyst-chicago.org

As CPS prepares to close dozens of schools, CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has promised that none of the keys to the shuttered schools would be handed over to private charter operators.

But the district is proposing 11 co-locations, eight of which involve charters moving into buildings with traditional neighborhood schools. The proposals have reignited fears among some activists, parents and even school staff--not only about the logistics of space-sharing but that the co-locations are just a back-door way of kicking out a traditional school.

In January 2012, CPS officials and visiting dignitaries from Target Corp. swarmed into Cardenas Elementary in Little Village – one of eight schools that became part of the Children’s Literacy Initiative through an Investing in Innovation grant awarded in 2010.

With the program set to expand to three more schools with funding from Target, classrooms were on display. One visitor, Stephen Zrike Jr., chief of schools for the Pilsen-Little Village Elementary Network, noted the impact of the initiative. He called the amount of reading and writing being done by Cardenas students “unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

Even though CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has pledged that no charter schools will go into school buildings vacated this year, the concern over the possibility has been raised so much in some quarters that it has risen to the level of a conspiracy theory.