Today, the high-rise public housing has been wiped away, leaving the area with a smattering of row houses, townhouses and some stretches of still-empty lots.

Over the past decade, three of the schools that served the area’s children have been closed and reopened—one as a charter school, one as a selective enrollment school and the third as a lease by a private Catholic school that costs about $8,000 a year.

Miranda and other parents are now fighting furiously to save one of two neighborhood schools left. A parent volunteer who calls all the students at Manierre Elementary “her children,” she is emphatic that she won’t give up. The School Board is scheduled to vote on the closings on Wednesday.

“My son is upset,” she says. Miranda’s son has a disability that includes learning and speech difficulties and she’s afraid that he will simply “shut down” if he has to transfer to a new school.

But there’s something more that is eating at her. Even though Manierre is surrounded by high-performing schools, the school that her children are now supposed to attend is a Level 3 school with almost identical test scores.

Like Manierre, the receiving school, Jenner, has mostly black, low-income students. The other area schools are more diverse with far fewer poor children.

“I don’t want my children to go from a Level 3 school to a Level 3 school,” Miranda says. “I don’t want that for my children. They are good kids. They don’t bother nobody. They respect their elders.”

In some ways, Manierre is unique compared to the vast majority of schools slated to close on the South Side and West Side. Manierre is on the Near North Side, nestled next to some of the wealthiest areas in the city.

But in other ways, it is not different. Two months ago, CPS leaders announced their intention to close 54 schools, co-locate 11 and hand over six to the Academy of Urban School Leadership to be turned around. The end result of the school actions is that traditional, district-run neighborhood schools will become scarcer. Schools to which students have to apply and those run by private organizations will continue to take over, casting an ever-bigger shadow over the district.

The mayor and CPS officials have cast the move much differently, repeatedly saying that closings and consolidations will allow the district to redirect resources to fewer schools. And with the district facing a $1 billion budget shortfall, officials say closings will save $43 million a year in operating costs (starting in two years) and another $437 million in capital costs over the next decade. 

“What we must do is to ensure that the resources some kids get, all kids get,” said Byrd-Bennett in a videotaped message on the CPS website. “With our consolidations, children are guaranteed to get what they need.”

Yet many of the district’s claims have drawn intense scrutiny and raised questions that undercut the rationale for closings as either a cost-savings or school improvement strategy.

Going to “better” schools

The first claim to face scrutiny is that students at closing schools will end up in higher- performing ones. According to state law, Byrd-Bennett has the authority to define “higher-performing,” and she determined that even when a school has the same performance rating, it can be considered higher- performing if it does better on a majority of the metrics, such as attendance and test scores.

Yet researchers note an important point: A move to a school that is only slightly better, at most, likely won’t mean much to students. The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research found that, in previous rounds of closings, displaced students only reaped an academic benefit if they were sent to markedly better schools, defined as those in the top quartile.  

In this case, just six receiving schools out of 55 are in the top quartile of all CPS schools. And in only three cases—3 out of 53 closings—are kids being sent from a school in the lowest quartile to a school in the highest, according to an analysis by WBEZ. Two-thirds of the closing schools are among the lowest rated in CPS, but in 18 cases students will be sent to schools that are equally low-rated. 

Even among the 12 receiving schools that have the highest CPS rating, there is a broad range in terms of performance. Chopin, on the Near North Side, has nearly 96 percent of students meeting standards on the ISAT and nearly 70 percent exceeding standards, while Faraday, on the West Side, has 73 percent meeting standards and about 13 percent exceeding them. Research has shown that students need to exceed standards to perform well in high school.

Furthermore, no one knows exactly how many students will end up at the designated “receiving school”---the one that by some measure is higher performing. Last year, less than half of students went to the designated receiving school with many parents choosing closer or more convenient schools that performed no better than the school they left, shows a Catalyst analysis. 

CPS officials counter that the money invested into the receiving schools will improve technology and other resources. The schools will be air-conditioned, with iPads, playgrounds and libraries. The district is also designating 19 schools as specialty schools, with International Baccalaureate, STEM and fine arts programs. This year, the new specialty schools will receive $250,000 to $360,000 in extra money to pay for positions and training.

While leaders may have meant for this to sweeten the deal, parents and activists have been incredulous that their schools must close in order to get resources that are common place in other schools.

Parents also aren’t convinced that the new turnaround schools will be better for their children. CPS plans to hand over six schools to the Academy for Urban School Leadership for turnaround, which entails firing all or most of the staff, including the principal and the lunch ladies. For each turnaround, AUSL gets $300,000 in upfront costs, plus $420 per student for each student for at least five years.

Contracts with AUSL are for five years, but for several turnarounds they have been extended.

In her letter to parents, Byrd-Bennett said that turnaround schools have improved twice as fast as the CPS district-average.

“We want to provide your child with access to the same opportunities to boost their chance of academic success, which they will receive next school year if this proposal is approved,” she wrote.

Yet parents point out that many of the schools run by AUSL are not high-performers. Only one turnaround school, Morton, is a Level 1 school. And one of the closing schools, Bethune, is a turnaround.

Mathew Johnson, a parent at Dewey Elementary, says 98 percent of parents signed a petition saying they did not want their school given to AUSL. He says the school’s new administration seems to be on the right track and is doing a turnaround of its own.

“We are not afraid to hold the administration accountable,” says Johnson, who serves on the local school council.

Costs and savings

Because so many of the so-called “welcoming,” turnaround and co-locating schools lack resources, CPS officials will spend big money to get them up to par. In April, the Board of Education approved a supplemental capital budget that the district plans to finance with a $329 million bond.

About $155 million of that will go toward improvements at the receiving schools and another $60 million will fix up schools that are slated to be turned around or co- located with another school.

For the next 30 years, CPS will have to pay $25 million in interest and principal on the bond. This expense was not factored into the $43 million that CPS officials say they will save by undertaking these school actions. 

CPS leaders have repeatedly cited budget problems as a rationale for closings--yet one reason CPS is facing perpetual large deficits is its already-existing debt. In the upcoming fiscal year, the district’s payment on principal and interest is scheduled to rise by about $100 million to $475 million.

Capital cost savings are also not likely to be higher than estimated. CPS officials lowered their original capital savings estimate and say the district will save $437 million over the next decade by not having to repair or maintain the 50-some buildings they are shuttering.

But only six of the closing schools have had recent assessments to determine their capital needs.  In all of these cases, the updated assessments caused CPS to lower its savings estimate.  

In order for the district to save real money from closing schools, it would have sell off shuttered schools and lay off a lot of teachers, said Emily Dowdall, a senior associate for the Philadelphia Research Institute, which is part of the Pew Charitable Trust. 

CPS officials say they are going to work with city department heads to figure out what to do with vacant buildings, but there is no specific plan in place.

CPS has sought to steer the discussion away from teacher layoffs, though the closing schools have about 1,100 teachers.

“Many of these teachers will follow their students to welcoming schools per the joint CTU-CPS agreement included in last year’s teachers’ contract, which allows tenured teachers with Superior or Excellent ratings to follow students if their position is open at the welcoming school,” according to a CPS fact sheet.

But school closings will likely mean that class sizes will be bigger in the welcoming schools than in the closing ones, meaning that fewer teachers will be needed for the same number of students.  A quarter of class sizes at closing and welcoming schools have fewer than 20 students—way below recommended sizes of 28 for primary grades and 31 for intermediate grades.

Not including these affected schools, only 9 percent of schools have such small class sizes. 

Changing demographics, changing landscape

CPS officials have stressed that the main reason schools need to close is that 145,000 fewer school-age children live in the city than in 2000. But, as many have pointed out, enrollment in CPS has declined by much less: In September of 2013, CPS had 32,000 fewer students than in September of 2000.

Neighborhood schools have been hit hard by the district’s opening of new “schools of choice,” whether magnet schools, charter schools or selective enrollment schools. A Catalyst Chicago analysis of CPS data found that in 14 predominantly black South Side and West Side communities that CPS defines as “underutilized,” an average of 54 percent of elementary students attend their neighborhood school. In other communities, two-thirds of elementary students attend their neighborhood school. 

If all of the school actions are approved on Wednesday, the landscape of public education will continue to change--especially for students in particular neighborhoods,

Next fall, CPS will run about 84 percent of public elementary schools in Chicago, down from 86 percent this year. The rest will be run by private entities, most by charter operators or AUSL.

The shifting landscape will result in fewer neighborhood schools—schools where students are guaranteed a spot if they live within the attendance boundaries. In 2000, nearly 98 percent of elementary school students attended neighborhood schools.

Also next fall, the percentage of elementary schools with attendance boundaries will drop to 70 percent, down from 75 percent this year (should all closings be approved and with the planned opening of 10 more elementary charter schools).  

CPS officials say this might be the wave of the future as they try to increase choices, without increasing the number of buildings in the district’s portfolio.

For parents like Miranda, the shift means one of two things:  taking their children further from home to get to the new neighborhood school, or filling out several applications to a ‘school of choice,’ then hoping and praying that they win a spot.

Like so many parents in the past few months, Miranda says going further away from home poses increased danger. Miranda is worried about a busy street that her children would have to cross to get to Jenner. Other parents in her school say that there’s an entrenched rivalry between Jenner and Manierre students, so much so that teams from the two schools aren’t even allowed to play each other in sports. They worry about fights and point to nasty posts on Facebook by Jenner students threatening those at Manierre.

Miranda says she doesn’t think this would be a problem at Newberry, LaSalle, Skinner North or Franklin—all of which are closer to Manierre than Jenner.

But these are all magnet or selective schools and assigning children to them is not the way CPS works these days.

Below is a slideshow of Monday's marches against school closings. The CTU organized three days of marches, which ended downtown. (Slideshow by Lucio Villa)

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

ACADEMIC BENEFIT DOUBTED: Only three of the 53 proposed grammar school closings to be voted on Wednesday by Chicago's School Board would move students from the lowest performing quartile of schools to the highest. Studies show that unless students move to top schools, they see no academic benefits. (WBEZ)

LEWIS WINS: Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis was easily re-elected to a second three-year term Friday, according to unofficial results released by the union.

TRIMMED CLOSING LIST POSSIBLE: At least a few of the 54 Chicago Public Schools targeted for closing could be dropped from the list before Wednesday’s final school board vote, under pressure from black aldermen to follow hearing officers’ recommendations, City Hall sources said Friday, the Sun-Times reported. The chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus has demanded that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked school board follow retired judges’ recommendations to keep open 13 of the 54 schools.

IN THE NATION
SUSPENDING THE YOUNGEST: At least 1,967 students age 6 and under were suspended last school year -- almost all of them black or Hispanic, according to a report from the Connecticut Department of Education, The number of students suspended is actually higher, but privacy issues restrict the state agency from releasing information that could identify unique student information. (CT Mirror)

The election was a referendum on how well Lewis' leadership and the Caucus of Rank and File Educators handled the fall's teacher strike and contract negotiations.

The opposition caucus, Coalition to Save Our Union, charged that Lewis put style and big-picture promises over substance and results.

But many teachers said that Lewis' leadership during the strike, when she went head-to-head with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, proved decisive in their decisions to vote for her.

“You need a force like Karen Lewis to get in the face of the mayor,” said Emily Rosenberg, director of DePaul University's Labor Education Center and a supporter of Lewis. “She can't be bullied.”

As the union's biggest battle yet over school closings drags on, Rosenberg says the election “gives a signal to the whole city that (teachers are) solidly behind her, and that there's going to be a struggle.”

Voting kicked off today, and early results may be released as soon as this evening.

Saunders-Wolffe, a guidance counselor at Jesse Owens Elementary on the Far South Side, is waging an uphill battle to unseat Lewis, harnessing dissatisfaction among many teachers with the latest union contract.

Saunders-Wolffe has also criticized Lewis and the current leadership team for their tactics against the district and City Hall.

“We have to give [teachers] a voice from the table. We can’t just keep screaming from the streets,” Saunders-Wolffe told Catalyst Chicago in March. 

“We have done so many school visits. Teachers are really unhappy with the contract,” said Mary Ellen Sanchez, opposition candidate for recording secretary, who was outside Byrne Elementary in Garfield Ridge this morning. Sanchez teaches 3^rd grade at Byrne.

Candidates on Saunders-Wolffe’s opposition slate, the Coalition to Save Our Union, are pledging to focus more on member services, which they charge have fallen by the wayside as Lewis’ team, the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, focuses on organizing. Organizing is a major component of CORE’s strategy, as Lewis’ team led the CTU through a week-long teachers’ strike last fall, Chicago’s first in 25 years. Immediately after the strike, CORE switched gears to fight school closings through protests and partnerships forged with community and parent groups.

The Coalition also wants to rebuild the union’s bridges with district management, despite a relationship that has grown increasingly bitter in recent years.

At Byrne, teachers enumerated the issues that swayed them to support the Coalition, many of them boiling down to unhappiness with the contract: longer days and hours that the pay raise didn’t make up for, a cut to paid before-school prep time, and an agreement to drop litigation over the contractually promised 4 percent raises that teachers didn’t get during the 2011-2012 school year.

“People were getting scared [because] the strike was too long,” and thus gave in too much at the negotiating table, said librarian Mary Beth Corbin. She also complained that even though the contract ended up including incentives to participate in a wellness plan, and even teachers who are participating are being charged due to bureaucratic snafus.

Scott Worden, Byrne’s special education teacher, said he was undecided but also felt the contract left much to be desired. “With the strike, I don’t think we gained anything,” Worden said. “No matter who’s in charge, we always lose something as teachers. The board’s going to win, because they’re going to sneak something in.”

At Kenwood Academy High School in Hyde Park, many teachers said they supported CORE and cited Lewis’ handling of the strike.

 “I trust the leaders who led us through the strike to carry us through another year,” said science teacher Barbara Richter. Coreen Uhl, another staff member at the school, said Lewis “did a great job representing us during the strike, so I’ll be taking that into account.”

Added history teacher Shannon League: “I don’t think we could have asked for much more. In negotiations, you have to give a little.”

NO FAN OF MAYOR'S PLAN: In an exclusive interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle broadly criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s education agenda Thursday, saying the Chicago Public Schools teachers’ strike last year had provided the excuse for a sweeping school-closure plan that “weakens our public schools.”

THE LONG WALK: A Tribune analysis of a database used by CPS to calculate the average distance students affected by school closings will have to travel to their reassigned school next year shows the average walk will be almost twice as far as it is now, increasing from about a third of a mile to nearly six-tenths of a mile.

DERAILING STUDENTS: Nearly 100,000 Chicago Public Schools students would have to find a new way to get to class starting next week, once the CTA shuts down the south end of the Red Line for a major track overhaul. According to the CTA, 98,000 students at 370 CPS schools would be affected by the reconstruction of the Dan Ryan branch of the Red Line, which is set to begin on Sunday. (CBS Chicago)

TURNAROUND CONCERNS: Parents and members of the Chicago Teachers Union stormed the steps outside the Academy of Urban School Leadership’s office Thursday and raised concerns over the Chicago Public Schools’ plan to turnaround six schools at the end of the academic year. CPS wants to fire and replace staff members at Clara Barton Elementary, William W Carter Elementary, Dewey Elementary Academy of Fine Arts, and Isabelle C O'Keeffe Elementary schools on the South Side and Thomas Chalmers Specialty Elementary and Leslie Lewis Elementary schools on the West Side as part of its recent round of school actions. AUSL would take over all six schools. The Chicago Board of Education will vote on the possible turnarounds and other school actions May 22. (Progress Illinois)

PODCASTS FOR POLICYMAKERS: The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research is debuting a new podcast series, Ed. Research Matters, which will take a closer look at UChicago CCSR research, focusing on the findings that matter most for policymakers and practitioners. In the premiere episode, UChicago CCSR researcher Eliza Moeller, discusses From High School to the Future: The Challenege of Senior Year, released in February.

LEGAL ACTION: Parents of Chicago public school children filed a pair of lawsuits Wednesday claiming the city's plan to close dozens of schools violates the civil rights of students with disabilities and children who are black. (WBEZ)

In the two lawsuits filed in federal court Wednesday to try to slow down or stop school closings, the central charge is that special education students will be disproportionately hurt by the actions. (Catalyst)

The Washington Post also reports on the lawsuits.

APPLIED MATH: A CPS math teacher at Leif Ericson Elementary Scholastic Academy in Garfield Park, one of 53 grammar schools the district wants to shut down, challenges logic of closing an 'average' school. Ericson is the 242nd most underutilized school in Chicago (out of 681). And with 71.8 percent of students meeting standards, Ericson ranks in the middle third of CPS schools, 337th place out of 544 elementary schools. (WBEZ)

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING: Teachers across America believe that social and emotional learning is critical to student success in school, work and life, according to a new national survey released Wednesday. The survey, highlighted in “The Missing Piece,” a report by Civic Enterprises with Hart Research for CASEL: Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, also found that teachers believe social and emotional skills can be taught, and that the development of those skills in all students should take far more priority in U.S. schools and state learning standards than they do today.

MONEY FOR ARTS ED: Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced at the City is committing $1 million toward implementing the first Arts Education Plan for the Chicago Public Schools next school year, ensuring that all students have high-quality arts instruction.

IN THE NATION
THE FUTURE OF FIELD TRIPS: Researchers and educators in a symposium at the American Educational Research Association conference in San Francisco this month suggested the next generation of field trips may use "augmented reality" to make traditional museum or zoo tours more interactive—or even create a field trip in a neighborhood or empty lot for a school that otherwise could not afford one. (Education Week)

This, according to the lawsuits, is a violation of the American Disabilities Act. More than 5,000 students are enrolled in either the 53 schools slated for closure or the ones set to receive them.

“It takes years to build trust with these children,” says attorney Tom Geoghegan. “All that will be lost or destroyed when we send them to new teachers in new schools.”

One lawsuit asks the judge to force CPS to wait a year so that the district can ease the transition for special education students from one school to another. The other wants a judge to halt the closures, questioning whether CPS will save significant money from closing the schools.

Next Wednesday, the CPS Board of Education will vote on the actions, which would represent the largest district restructuring ever.  The lawsuits ask for an emergency injunction, but Geoghegan says he isn’t requesting a hearing prior to the vote next week.

The lawsuits are being paid for, at least partially, by the Chicago Teachers Union. They were filed on behalf of parents at various schools slated for closure.

In years past, lawsuits have unsuccessfully attempted to block the district from shutting schools. It is a difficult task given that the school code allows districts to open and close schools.

In addition to alleging a violation of ADA, one of the lawsuits adds the allegation that closings are in violation of the Civil Rights Act because they single out “poor and marginalized African American children.” Some 88 percent of the students who stand to be affected by this year’s school closings are black, while they represent only 42 percent of students in CPS, according to the lawsuit.

“Since 2001, CPS has found one excuse or another to close schools attended by African American children,” Geoghegan says. “If you have to save money find some other place to save money. It is time to lay off the kids.”

Geoghegan also represented plaintiffs last year in a lawsuit that alleged racial discrimination in school actions. The lawsuit was dismissed, but is being appealed.

In a prepared statement, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett did not address the specific accusations in the lawsuit. She said the lawsuits show that the union leadership is “committed to a status quo that is failing too many of our children. “

"Thousands of children in underutilized schools are being cheated out of the resources they need to succeed,” said Bennett, who has promised extra resources for designated receiving schools. “It's time to give these children the opportunity to attend higher-performing welcoming schools and put them on a path to thrive."

One of the arguments for waiting a year is that CPS put off the decisions until the end of the school year.  Geoghegan points out that usually decisions about school actions are made much earlier in the school year.

This year, Barbara Byrd-Bennett took over CPS in October and promptly asked the state legislature to let her delay the announcement from Dec. 1 to end of March. Because state law calls for 60 days between the announcement and the decision, the vote can’t take place until late May—only a few weeks before the end of school year.

“The late date makes it impossible to conduct the closings without significant disruption to the programs in which these children participate and without adequate provision for the special safety risks faced by children with disabilities,” according to the lawsuit.

Kristine Mayle, a former special education teacher and current financial secretary for the union, says that teachers take time to prepare disabled students for transitions.

“For students with autism and more severe disabilities, for six months, teachers might walk a student over to the classroom and slowly acclimate them to their new class,” she says.

CPS officials still have not said whether the teachers of special education students will follow the students and the students still do not know their teachers for the coming year, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also says that the transition plans around safety lack specificity, which is a particular problem for students with disabilities. The lawsuit points out that several independent hearing officers who reviewed the school closing plans also found problems with the lack of specificity.

“Plantiff children and all children in special education risk even greater harm than children who are not in special education to the extent that they are forced to walk through new, unfamiliar and dangerous neighborhoods, an experience that exacerbates the effects of their condition,” according to the lawsuit.

The other lawsuit charges that the school closings will cause special education students irreparable harm and that it outweighs any financial benefit to the school district. Among other issues, it says that class sizes in receiving schools will be bigger than those in closing schools. Big class sizes hurt special education students more than other students, according to the lawsuit.

Rod Estvan, education organizer for the disability rights group called Access Living, noted that it might be hard for attorneys to prove their case, even if it might have merit.

Estvan has been attending a CPS subcommittee on school actions and says CPS officials are methodically going through a checklist of steps to make sure they can defend the treatment of special education students. While he is not sure of the quality of what they are doing, Estvan says CPS will be able to show they are making an effort.

Yet he notes if CPS lawyers bring generic plans to the federal judge they may have problems. The independent hearing officers launched into CPS for providing general material.

“What they brought to the hearing officers was pathetic,” he says.

CPS officials tried to veer away from that discussion, as parents intuitively believe that smaller class sizes are better. Yet it is clear that larger class sizes will be one impact of closing schools that the district considers underutilized. Adding a student or two to classes in receiving schools frees up money, since fewer teachers will be needed and teacher salaries are the district’s biggest expense.

Though the capital cost savings for school closings are unclear and CPS has lowered its initial savings estimates on that front, officials have also estimated that increasing class sizes by just one student would save as much as $26 million per year.  

Wendy Katten, the board president of Raise Your Hand, says that allowing class sizes to go up is the opposite of what most people want. Katten’s organization was started after former CEO Ron Huberman threated to raise class sizes to 35 students to close a budget deficit.

“Parents and teachers, people who are actually in the schools, know class size matters.[Class sizes going up] is certainly not what the stakeholders want,” Katten says.

Research suggests that class size does not have a major impact on achievement unless classes are 15 students or smaller. But the issue resonates with many teachers and parents, who note that classes in some schools are routinely 30 to 40 students, above the district’s own guidelines. They point out that suburban and elite private schools have much lower class sizes, especially in the lower grades.

After CPS leaders took pains to counter Raise Your Hand’s criticism, Catalyst Chicago asked CPS for class size data in December 2012 and then submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the data in February. The information was provided in late April and shows that:

• Schools that are underutilized according to the district’s formula have, on average, two fewer students than in schools deemed to be at capacity. Only 4 percent of classrooms in closing schools are above recommended class sizes and 12 percent of classrooms in underutilized schools.

• About 850-more than 25 percent-of primary classrooms have more than 28 students, the amount recommended under the district’s contract with the teachers union.  Class size has the most impact on young students, according to research.

• Another 713 3^rd thru 8^th-grade classes have more than 31 students.

• CPS officials have emphasized that closing schools will help get rid of split-grade classrooms, which are viewed as bad because teachers must teach to a wider range of ability levels. Schools slated for closure do have significantly more split-grade classes than other schools—but even in these schools, split grades are only 14 percent of the total.

Katten notes that in a lot of schools that are slated to close, the principal is using discretionary funds to keep class size low. Yet when schools are combined, it will be more difficult for principals to find the space to spread classes out, she says.

Making choices

The issue of class size is constantly mentioned at rallies and marches against the planned closings. Margaret Cooley, at a march with her grandson from Overton to Mollison on Tuesday, says CPS “just wants to put them all in there and bunch them up.”

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll says that principals often choose to add a student or two over the limit to classes, and that board policy only provides guidelines.

Carroll says it is “simply not true” that closing schools will lead to a larger number of over-sized classes.

“Principals will make decisions around class size that they believe are in the best interest of their students,” Carroll says. “All welcoming schools, which are also underutilized, will be within their appropriate utilization range.”

Kristine Mayle from the CTU says principals have a “false” choice. Sometimes they decide to increase class size by one or two students so they can hire a full-time art or music teacher.

“They are supposed to do what is best for students and sometimes that means hiring an extra security guard because they are in an unsafe neighborhood,” Mayle says.

The union has a committee to which teachers in overcrowded classrooms can complain, but Mayle says it has limited staff to investigate and limited access to resources to provide the teacher with relief.

“We are not talking about a kindergarten teacher with 29 students, but rather the one with 40 students,” she says.

At the same time CPS is closing a record number of schools, it also is implementing per-pupil budgeting in which schools get a set amount of money per student, rather than budgets allocated based on the number of teachers needed in a school. That also could have an impact on class size, Mayle says.

“Principals will have an incentive to pack students in,” she says.

Contributing: Linda Lutton (Chicago Public Radio-WBEZ)

Attached is an Excel spreadsheet with class size data, provided by CPS. It is from the 20th day of school. It includes information about which schools are slated to close and which ones slated to receive them.

UTILIZATION OUT, RESOURCES IN: The rhetoric around school closings is now about focusing resources, writes Curtis Black of Newstips.org. This shift in  communication strategy is dictated by the fact that school closings turn out not to be about deficits or utilization — given they won’t save money for several years, if ever, and since the “utilization crisis,” caused by adding 50,000 charter seats during a decade when CPS lost 30,000 students, is being addressed by adding more charters. CPS chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett now says closing schools will allow CPS to provide libraries, air conditioning, iPads and “learning gardens” at a small group of receiving schools.

DEPAUL DEAL: Word leaking out of City Hall indicates that a big chunk of the financing for a new DePaul arena would come from the pot of cash that robs millions from public schools, WLS is reporting.  This would be very controversial because Emanuel is on the point of closing 54 schools.

ANOTHER WAY: CPS has an alternative to school closings, turnarounds and charters, according to writer Rob Warmowski:  a school improvement approach called Focused Instruction Process that was developed by non-profit Strategic Learning Initiatives and was used successfully in six Chicago schools and is now being used in several high schools outside Chicago. Catalyst has this op-ed about the approach and its success.

TEST TOUTING: In an attempt to slowly change the academic culture of Proviso Township High School District 209, teachers, administrators – even the PTO – have been reminding students of the importance of state testing. The results seem to have paid off with significantly more participation, especially at Proviso East High School. (Forest Park Review)

IN THE NATION
THE FIRE NEXT TIME: In the Atlantic, John Tierney writes that he sees a new revolution taking shape in American K-12 public education.

CORE SUPPORT: Backers of the common core intensify their efforts to tout the standards in the face of high-profile opposition in some states. (Education Week)

A DEMAND FOR EMANUEL: The chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus is demanding that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked school board follow hearing officers recommendations to keep open 13 of 54 Chicago Public Schools targeted for closing. (Sun-Times)

MATH AS PROBLEM SOLVER: Researchers expect a program that combines “math tutoring on steroids” with sports-based mentoring for troubled teens in Chicago to help reduce school misconduct, absenteeism and course failures. About 50 boys at Harper High School in Englewood have taken part in the program since the school year began in fall 2012. The MacArthur Foundation has committed $1 million to expanding the combination of math tutoring and the mentoring program, which is called Becoming a Man — Sports Edition, or BAM, which is run by a Chicago nonprofit agency called Youth Guidance. A private source has pledged another $1 million and additional funding is being sought. (Sun-Times)

UNO FUNDING: As the largest charter-school operator in Illinois, the United Neighborhood Organization depends largely on City Hall and Springfield. It also borrows money — from banks and on Wall Street — to pay its bills. Private fund-raising accounts for under 2 percent of UNO’s charter-school funding. Investors, including banks and Wall Street, which together are owed about $70 million. About $37.5 million of that came through the issuance of bonds in 2011. (Sun-Times)

CHALLENGING THE TEST SYSTEM: Timothy Anderson, a student leader with Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools and Voices of Youth in Chicago Education, explains why he boycotted the Prairie State test. "When the future of a school rests on its test scores, students like me get demoted or pushed out," he writes. (Catalyst)

IN THE NATION
ALL TEACHERS FIRED, SCHOOLS CLOSED: Summer break has started very early for students in one Michigan school district. Buena Vista schools have been closed for five days already, and on Monday, the district's website stated that the school would be closed until further notice. Buena Vista school district, which educates approximately 450 kids, is out of money. All the teachers have been laid off and a financial emergency has been declared. The district has suffered from declining enrollment that has led to a loss of $3 million in state funding since 2010. (Take Part)

OFF THE MAP: The Seattle School District will no longer require MAP tests at