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.

In a complaint to the CPS Inspector General and cc’d to the Illinois Attorney General, Parents 4 Teachers (a group that CPS says has been organized by the Chicago Teachers Union, which is adamantly opposed to closings) charged that the school closing process is wrought with “employee misconduct,” conflicts of interest and misinformation.

“We want CPS to be held [accountable by] an independent body, to shine a light on what is going on,” said Erica Clark, a member of the coalition. It is unclear whether the Inspector General would launch an investigation.

CPS has said that school closings are necessary because the district “has too many empty classrooms and too few students to fill them,” spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler said in a statement.  “This is stretching our limited resources too thin and depriving children of critical investments such as air conditioning, playgrounds, technology and computers, library, art and music.” Closing schools would give the district more resources to provide a better education at the remaining schools, CPS says.

The complaint charges that CPS is closing traditional neighborhood schools in order to privatize public education by expanding charter schools. “We have come to the conclusion that it is the motive,” Clark said.

At a press conference on Tuesday, parents and community activists from several organizations stood together to announce the filing of the complaint. Clark pointed out that many came from schools that are not in danger of being closed. “Everyone understands that what everyone wants is a good neighborhood school,” she said.

CPS recently approved four charters, but CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has sought to separate the two issues. She promised that this year, unlike previous years, vacant CPS buildings would not be converted to charter schools.

Nationally, a new Pew Charitable Trust study found that about 40 percent of closed schools in 12 cities were later converted to charters. 

On Wednesday, Byrd-Bennett is expected to release a more finite list of schools she is looking at closing. Her final recommendations must be published by March 31, after which official public hearings will be held. Then, at the April Board of Education meeting, members will vote on Byrd-Bennett’s recommendations.

Suspicions of political, charter ties

CPS has embarked on a community engagement process that entails meetings held by the district’s hand-picked School Utilization Commission; 28 more will be conducted by CPS. At meetings already held, hundreds, and sometimes close to a thousand, parents and community activists have shown up to voice their opposition to closing neighborhood schools. Meetings have been moved to bigger venues and CPS officials have in some cases abandoned their agenda so that everyone could speak.

Some activists are suspicious of the School Utilization Commission because it is staffed by the Civic Consulting Alliance, a politically-connected group that brings business expertise to government and is housed in the same office as New Schools for Chicago, which provides start-up funds for charter schools and has some of the same board members as the Alliance.

Also, CPS got a $478,000 grant from the pro-charter Walton Family Foundation to undertake the community engagement process—a move that CPS is quick to note was meant to save costs.

According to Ziegler, the Walton grant “allowed CPS to avoid using any taxpayer dollars in order to engage parents in this conversation at the front end of this process and allow them to have a voice in the critical decisions that need to be made to address this crisis.” 

The complaint also makes note of the district’s school utilization formula, which has come under fire from schools and parents. In the fall, Raise Your Hand, a parent organization, came out with a study that claimed the district’s utilization formula is inaccurate and exaggerates the number of empty schools.

According to CPS, some 330 schools are underutilized and about 140 are half empty.

The complaint says that Byrd-Bennett and School Utilization Commission Chairman Frank Clark have acknowledged that the CPS formula is faulty. “At recent CPS public hearings, district personnel have distributed charts, by network area, reporting the utilization rates of each school based on the original, unchanged CPS formula, which the CEO noted was flawed nearly three months ago,” according to the complaint.

At the community meetings, CPS officials emphasize that CPS is facing a projected $1 billion budget deficit, implying that the shortfall is the reason schools must be closed. Yet, the complaint says that an internal memo proves that district officials know that cost savings could be minimal, if any. Another national Pew study found minimal savings for closing schools.

The parents and other supporters, including Chicago Teachers Union members, rallied against school closings at Logan Square Auditorium and then marched to the Fullerton Network meeting on closings at Armitage Baptist Church. 

They represented schools from Logan Square and Belmont Cragin, as well as Near North Side schools like Jenner and Manierre. Some grew agitated when security guards would only let in meeting attendees a handful at a time, but all were eventually let inside.

On Wednesday, CPS is expected to release a list of schools that could potentially be targeted for closure.

Photos by Jonathan Gibby

They’re demanding an end to testing in preschool through 2^nd grade, and fewer tests for older students. They also want the district to offer an accounting of the instruction time and money that is spent on test prep and test-taking.

The petition gathering was organized by the anti-testing More than a Score campaign, a coalition of the Chicago Teachers Union, Parents United for Responsible Education, Raise Your Hand, and Parents 4 Teachers. The union has long been opposed to the use of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations, but new teacher evaluations incorporate a test-score component.

It is part of a national day of action to support teachers in Seattle who are boycotting the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test, which CPS also uses. The test has recently been criticized because a U.S. Department of Education study found that its use had no effect on 4^th- and 5^th-grade students’ reading achievement.

CPS schools use the test two to three times a year, and it is one that has come in for criticism. At the January board meeting, teacher Anne Carlson, who teaches 4^th- through 6^th-grade at Drummond Montessori, cited the research and said testing in Chicago amounted to child abuse. Kindergarteners, she said, take as many as 14 district-mandated tests a year.

Dramatic changes are coming to the testing landscape in Chicago and Illinois. The Illinois State Board of Education plans to raise the cut-off scores on the ISAT test  and test scores are virtually certain to plummet across the board as a result. In 2014, new tests based on the Common Core Standards are expected to replace the ISAT, and scores on these tests are also expected, at least initially, to paint a dim picture of student achievement.

“Let’s play school…let’s play DIBELS”

Parent Rhoda Rae Gutierrez, who helped organize the petition gathering at Coonley, complains that her children even take tests when they are playing. “My older daughter, who is 8, said to my 5-year-old, ‘Hey, let’s play school… let’s play DIBELS,” Gutierrez said (DIBELS is an early literacy test.) “Teachers are put in a really awkward position of having to balance the district mandates with trying to provide a quality education.”

Julie Greenberg, whose son is in 2^nd grade at Coonley, said that now that winter break has passed and the ISAT is approaching, “You can see the content of the homework is changing. It’s fill-in-the-bubble homework. I think we all know that’s not the best way our children learn.”

Others complain that for gifted students, testing takes away from the accelerated program. “They are re-hashing what they did a year ago,” said Coonley parent Steve Johnson, also a local school council member at Amundsen High School, who signed the petition. Johnson has one child in the school’s gifted program and another in the neighborhood program.

Parent Joy Clendenning had little luck getting signatures at Kenwood Academy High School, where few parents got out of their cars. But at Ray Elementary, she found more signers including Aisha Mays, who was dropping off a 1^st-grade student. Mays quickly understood what Clendenning was petitioning against.

“I hate standardized testing,” Mays said. “I think it is stupid.”

Mays went onto say that she never performed well on standardized tests, but that had little bearing on her ability to make it through school and get a good job.

Clendenning, who has two children at Ray and two who have graduated, tells Mays that she knows her son’s 1^st-grade teacher well and that she would trust her, as a professional, to get an accurate read on where her son is without a standardized test. Mays agrees, noting that the teacher comes early every Wednesday to provide extra help in reading for her son.

Not all parents at Ray signed the petition on the spot. Many wanted to take the information and read it. Some of them are concerned that, if they were to opt out of the testing, it would hurt the school and their child’s teacher.

Sabrina Miller, another parent at Ray who stopped to talk to Clendenning, said she never had a problem with testing. “It puts me in a mind frame of where my child is at,” she said. Before talking to Clendenning, Miller said she never thought about the drain that tests have on instructional time or on the district’s money. She decided to sign the petition.

Finally, the crowd would disperse into breakout sessions to share with independent facilitators the strengths and weaknesses of their schools, plus suggestions about how to make the transitions to new schools less painful.

In reality, this is the scenario: A CPS official tells the throngs of people in attendance that public comment will start immediately and that each speaker will only have two minutes to speak. Then, for the next hour, parents, teachers, principals and even some children make impassioned pleas to keep their schools open.

At the end of the meeting at Olive-Harvey College on Wednesday, Chief of Schools Denise Little got up and tried to reassure the suspicious crowd that she was listening. She noted that she wanted the pictures that attendees from DuBois School brought, showing their dilapidated buildings, and said she will remember, among other things, that White Elementary is the only other school located in the area.

Eventually, the attendees reluctantly retreated into breakout sessions. The media is not allowed in these sessions, but, from interviews, it appears that people continued to make the case to keep their schools open and refused to broach the topic of transition.

Taquia Hylton, principal of West Pullman School, says people in her overflow breakout session told facilitators that they don’t see how they will get around safety issues, should they try to move students.

[View the story "CPS Community Meetings on School Closings: Week 1" on Storify]

The district is now engaged in a community engagement process intended to provide feedback to the district as it contemplates what schools to close. That process is being underwritten by the Walton Family Foundation (a foundation run by the founders of Wal-Mart). The Walton Foundation has fueled the expansion of charter schools across the country and, in January, announced that CPS was the largest recipient of charter school grants in the country.

The Walton Foundation agreed in November to provide CPS with a grant for the community engagement process around the “utilization crisis,” according to the CPS communications office. The foundation lists a $478,000 grant to the Children First Foundation, a not-for-profit set up by CPS (Spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler confirmed the $478,000 is likely the grant for the community engagement process.)

The district had not budgeted for a “rigorous community engagement effort” and therefore needed to reach out for funding, notes spokeswoman Becky Carroll. CPS is using the grant to pay for the “independent facilitators” from the Loran Marketing Group, which is running the breakout sessions at the community meetings.

The content of these breakout sessions is not clear. CPS has banned the media from attending them.

In addition, the money is paying for robo-calls to tell parents about the meetings, mailings to parents and “other engagement and communication platforms.” Carroll stresses that the community engagement process is happening, but “not at taxpayer expense.”  

“This grant is allowing us to initiate what is probably the most inclusive and rigorous outreach to parents CPS has done to include their voice at the front end of this process,” Carroll says.  

Other charter voices

Other ties have made it difficult for the district to quell suspicions among parents, grassroots activists and the Chicago Teachers Union that CPS plans to replace closed schools with new charters.

The School Utilization Commission that is advising the district on closings is staffed by the Civic Consulting Alliance, a not-for-profit that does business consulting for city government. The Civic Consulting Alliance is housed in the same office as New Schools for Chicago, an organization that funds and advocates for charter schools. New Schools for Chicago also received a $220,000 Walton Family Foundation Grant.

Civic Consulting Alliance CEO Brian Fabes says his organization is doing pro-bono work for the commission. He says that New Schools and the Civic Consulting Alliance are not connected, though they share several of the same board members. 

In the past, most of the closed schools have eventually become charter schools.

At community meetings that have already taken place, attendees have repeatedly accused CPS officials of wanting to close schools in order to make way for charter schools.

CPS officials, however, say that schools need to close in order to “right-size” a school district with shrinking enrollment. CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett has promised not to allow any of the newly-closed schools to become charter schools, yet charter schools could still be located in the same communities as closed schools. 

But the charter schools that were approved might face an uncertain future. Both Foundations College Prep, which will open in Roseland, and Orange Charter, which has not picked a neighborhood yet, were pulled from the December meeting agenda, had their openings delayed by a year, and were given additional conditions they must meet before they are given final approval to open.

“They are to identify the communities in need, and also the communities that support these schools,” Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said. “One of them [Orange Charter] had six communities they were considering, and we recommended that they narrow their scope.”

Board member Andrea Zopp was particularly concerned about Orange Charter’s application. “If they find a site and it is a site I don’t agree with, that’s not in need, do I get to vote again? …Orange doesn’t even have a principal yet.” She continued: “My problem is, our guidelines require us to have people with a proven track record, which Orange does not have except for one person on the board.”

Board member Mahalia Hines also questioned the idea of conditionally approving a charter school. “We are not approving schools that are ready to go.” Board President David Vitale noted that CPS has historically approved charter schools in that way. “But does that mean it’s right?” Hines asked.

Earlier in the meeting, board member Andrea Zopp questioned Foundations College Prep principal Sarah Hunko Baker about the school’s plans. “Have you spoken to either of the aldermen there?” Zopp asked. “We are currently finalizing our support from aldermen,” Baker said.  Zopp asked about the board, and Baker admitted that the school’s board “is an area of growth for us.”

The conditions now imposed on the schools set the agenda for what they must accomplish in order to receive final approval.

Foundations must open only with the middle grades, adding one grade per year until it is a 6^th- through 12^th-grade school. Baker will be required to “participate in a mentorship/training program with a focus on developing high school leaders” and the school’s board “must expand to include member(s) with demonstrated development/fundraising capacity.”

Orange Charter must find a principal candidate who has worked successfully with a similar population of students to those the school will serve. Its budget “must be revised with more realistic fundraising goals” or identified funding sources. It must also choose a community, and be able to demonstrate that the community needs the school and supports it.

Also given a green light on Wednesday were alternative programs that will serve a mixture of dropouts, students who transfer out of their schools because they aren’t on track to graduate, and those who have been expelled.

But the schools’ 950 new seats may be just a drop in the bucket. Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network, says there are currently 15,000 to 20,000 young high school dropouts in Chicago.

*Edison Learning – Magic Johnson Academy, which will have two locations; each will serve 150 students in grades 7 through 12.

*A new Banner Academy program, serving 225 students. Banner currently runs alternative programs at Banner South and Banner West.

*A new Pathways in Education site serving 300 students, plus 100 more students for the program’s existing site that currently serves 200 students.

In addition, the Options Lab School – currently a Youth Connections Charter School campus serving 175 dropouts – will reopen as a 200-student contract school, the Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy. It will still continue to serve dropouts, but Executive Director Monica Haslip says it also plans to enroll younger students – including incoming freshmen who need a small school environment but aren’t yet off track. She describes the school as “a college prep arts and technology training program.”

Several of the other schools will offer a combination of online and classroom instruction.

The two Magic Johnson Academy locations will be based on a model used by 14 Magic Johnson Bridgescape Academy schools around the country, which are a joint venture by the for-profit companies Magic Johnson Enterprises and EdisonLearning.

The 10 schools that were open during the 2011-12 school year – the first year they were in operation – were all in Ohio, says Michael Serpe, a spokesman for EdisonLearning. For students who entered as seniors that year, the schools had a graduation rate of over 70 percent.

Students in the programs spend half their time in on-site online classes, and half in traditional classes. Typically, students can choose whether to attend school from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. or from 2:30 to 6:30 p.m. each day, depending on work and child care schedules. Students also receive job training and job placements at Fortune 500 companies, Andre Johnson of Magic Johnson Enterprises said during the public participation segment of the meeting.

Pathways in Education also operates with a combination of online and classroom instruction. Bill Toomey, the program’s deputy superintendent, says he hopes the additional seats will help alleviate the waiting list.

“We don’t have enough slots for the students that need us,” he says. “Our current site is at 87^th and Kedzie on the Southwest Side. We are looking at Englewood, we are looking at Roseland and the Austin area” for the second location.

Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett also announced at the meeting that she will personally respond to all proposals made by the district’s Community Action Councils. She also pledged that the district will send representatives to the councils’ monthly meetings.

The community action councils were created by former schools CEO Ron Huberman, but some felt their recommendations were ignored in the last round of school actions.

“We have so longed to partner with the Board,” said 29^th Ward Ald. Deborah Graham, who is the chair of the Austin Community Action Council.

In reiterating her response to the Commission on School Utilization’s interim report, Byrd-Bennett said she has grown much more confident in the last month that CPS has the capacity to close schools.

Chief Transformation Officer Todd Babbitz noted that the district plans to offer all students from shuttered schools a space in a “welcoming school” that is higher performing.

But officials noted that in some cases, higher-performing schools might be far from students’ neighborhoods.

“When parents have taken advantage of going to a higher-performing school in the past, the culture shock has been such for the parent and the child, that it has not been a pleasant experience,” board member Mahalia Hines cautioned.  

About 75 people attended a Raise Your Hand forum on testing Thursday night. Also, a Facebook group called Opt Out Chicago now has about 100 members.

Terry Walter, an officer for the district’s Office of Curriculum and Instruction, told the people at the forum that “we are listening” and that the issue of test prep instruction and high stakes accountability “is real.”

“The folks I am working with at Central Office are really trying to think through a rational approach to this,” she said.

A report released by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research in fall 2011 found that a focus on test prep at low-achieving schools may have actually lowered students' scores in those schools during the period when CPS switched from the Iowa Test to the ISAT.

Panelist Noah Sobe, associate professor of cultural and educational policy studies at Loyola University Chicago, said that high-stakes testing is a new occurrence.

“It’s a misconception that we’ve always done it, and that there is no alternative,” Sobe said.

Sobe says assessments have always aimed to help people understand what is going on in schools, going back to the 19^th-century spelling bee and continuing through the science fairs we have today.  But standardized tests began in the early 20^th century, with intelligence tests, and aren’t well geared toward measuring critical thinking skills. “How many of us, in our daily lives, encounter a situation where there is a right answer to a question?” Sobe asked.

Madeline Kobayashi, who teaches 7^th- and 8^th-grade language arts at Rogers Elementary, spoke of watching “kids freak out, panic, cry” because of fear that they would fail the 8^t- grade tests and be held back.

Kobayashi added that even teachers who oppose test prep feel like they must spend some time on it because “no matter if I like it or not, my scores are going to be looked at.”

A teacher’s dilemma

“It is really hard for teachers out there who are trying to do good by our kids, and also realize we will be judged by our test scores,” she said.

Mike Byrley, whose child is in kindergarten at Goethe Elementary, says his main concern about testing is the loss of instruction time for students.

“Their teacher is being occupied for an hour at a time [doing tests rather than teaching] – that’s what we have witnessed firsthand,” says Byrley, who volunteers at the school. “We are interested in seeing some major change in the big picture. We would like our child to opt out if it doesn’t harm the school.”

Some parents were concerned about possible blowback to schools and teachers from missed standardized tests. One asked if it would create more work for her children’s teachers if she opted them out of standardized testing.

“If I had students that were opting out, I would have them gladly read a book,” replied panelist Anne Carlson, a 4^th- through 6^th-grade teacher at Drummond Montessori.

Kylene Young, a teacher at Pulaski International School and Teach Plus Policy Fellow, asked the group about how opting out of test scores would affect a child’s chance at getting into selective enrollment schools. “We are very serious with our 7^th-grade students” about the importance of those scores, she said. (Results on 7^th-grade test figure into admission to selective-enrollment schools.)

A risky decision for kids

Raise Your Hand Founder Wendy Katten replied that she “would say it’s a bad idea” for a 7^th-grade student who wants to apply to a selective enrollment school to sit out the ISAT.

But Goethe parent Cassie Creswell chimed in, “If enough people stand up and say, `it’s wrong… are we going cut all these people out of applying to selective enrollment?’”

Eben Credit, a community representative on Julian High School’s local school council, said he intended to take information back to parents at his school. He thinks they would be interested in having their students opt out of tests but added that many don’t know it is an option.

“Information like this, they don’t really get,” Credit said.

However, opting out is in a gray area of CPS policy, with the action taking place at the school level. The parent group PURE offers this fact sheet.

Erica Clark, of Parents 4 Teachers, said that “to change course, it’s going to take more than a few of us deciding to opt out.”

“We need to start thinking about what are some ways we can build a broader movement,” Clark said, even floating the possibility of a “mass system-wide boycott.”

Calls for a boycott

Near the end of the forum, organizers had the audience break into small groups and discuss possible strategies.

“People seem to think that opting out is like, ‘I don’t want my kids to take this test.’ But I think that if enough people do it, it’s direct action, it’s civil disobedience,” Creswell said.

Carol Caref, the Chicago Teachers Union’s Quest Center coordinator who was sitting across from Creswell, added that “what’s important is that this is a social issue, it’s not an individual issue of my kid taking or not taking the test.”

Increased concern about testing in CPS is not just about multiple-choice, standardized tests, but also the performance tasks in the REACH assessment system, used in part to evaluate teachers.

Performance tasks are viewed as more relevant to coursework than the ISAT. Students show their work, and teachers score the results on a 4-point scale. This kind of assessment is aimed at better capturing content knowledge, critical thinking skills and activities teachers cover in class.

However, the REACH assessments have been hampered by several logistical problems this year, likely because of the short time frame to develop and pilot them.

Diane Munoz, who teaches English and English Language Learner classes at Mather High School, complained that her children sat through many consecutive hours of testing in the same day due to the REACH performance tasks being administered in every class.

“It really saddens me to think there is an 8^th-grade student who has to sit through six [REACH performance tasks],” Walter said. “The REACH performance tasks are for a teacher to give, not necessarily for a student to get in every subject.”

This article has been corrected to indicate the school where Cassie Creswell is a parent.

“My concern is for my 8th-grader. I would like to have a nice high school in my neighborhood. A Whitney Young [or] a Morgan Park. But that’s not possible because I live in Auburn Gresham,” says parent Davetta Williams, who participates in New Schools for Chicago.

Soon after, Spencer Elementary parent and Stand for Children member Darryl Bright lays out that group’s platform: open more high-quality magnet and charter schools; transition students whose schools are closed to a school that is at least at Level 2 in the CPS performance rating system; and if this is not possible, give receiving schools extra resources through turnarounds, changes of academic focus, and magnet cluster programs.

With CPS and parent groups on all sides headed for a lengthy school closing battle – one that may now be headed to the Illinois legislature – both Stand and New Schools for Chicago are mobilizing increasing numbers of parents around issues of school achievement and quality.

Because of their support of charters and ties to wealthy donors, both groups have been viewed with skepticism by some grassroots advocates.

The new outreach parallels the Chicago Teachers Union’s focus on parent organizing this year, as heated contract talks led to a strike.

Another new parent group on the scene, unlike other groups, says it will not do advocacy: CSF Parents, which co-founder Christina Shaver says will only conduct polls. The group changed its name from Chicago Students First to eliminate confusion with Michelle Rhee’s national organization. Shaver hopes that it can become a trusted source of survey data “like the Nielsen ratings, or Gallup.”

“We are currently surveying parents to ask why they chose CPS and whether CPS is meeting their expectations,” she said at the Oct.  24 school board meeting.

She asked CPS to promote the survey, and help the organization verify whether survey respondents are actually CPS parents to make sure the data is valid.

“We really are interested in parental feedback, and we want to work with you in every way we legally can,” said David Vitale, chair of the Chicago Board of Education. Shaver and fellow co-founder Kimberly Sledgister said that since this fall’s teacher strike, when the group was founded, they have had several dozen meetings with officials in the Family and Community Engagement office.

Existing groups gain steam

This year, Stand for Children Illinois, which first made waves with its substantial contributions to candidates in the state’s fall 2010 political races, has dramatically expanded two parent training and leadership development programs.

One is Stand University for Parents. A total of 135 parents have participated in the program since the spring and Bright, who spoke at Wednesday’s press conference, is a graduate.

“It’s a 10-week program focused on the home environment and how that complements the school environment,” says Juan Jose Gonzalez, the Chicago director of Stand for Children. “This is a program that meets parents where they are at, for parents who are not ready for the full-fledged advocacy – but [aims] to get them more engaged in their local school.”

During a recent class at Bradwell Elementary, parent Mary Dale, a spokesperson for the 15 parents in attendance, asks a tough question for Principal Staci Bennett.

“At 79^th and Burnham, as well as Marquette, there are no school zone signs,” Dale, whose son is in pre-kindergarten at the school. Drivers speed by, making it difficult for students and even crossing guards to cross 79^th Street.

Bennett replies that she will call the Office of Safety and Security and try to get some put up.

“Did everybody hear that? We already got one of our issues addressed. It’s that easy,” chimes in parent educator Sharifa Townsend.

In schools that host the program, principals and teachers are asked to commit to attending trainings on best practices for family engagement. Principals must also attend a class session where, as at Bradwell, they are put on the hot seat. One key component is helping parents practice advocacy skills in a low-stakes situation.

The group has also organized study circles, and since June, more than 323 parents have participated. The circles are aimed toward helping participants learn about the state of public education in Chicago, and what individuals and the community can do “to raise expectations and improve our schools.”

Individual sessions are held on understanding school report cards; how schools are funded and the different types of schools, including inequities in school funding among different types of schools; and how to participate in education advocacy. In one session, which is particularly timely, participants create their own version of school proposals and actions, and take them to CPS decision-makers.

Stand is also bringing together parent leaders – 24, at a recent meeting – to strategize around school actions.

“We are one of the few organizations from the city that has parents from all school types -- selective enrollment, traditional, charter and even turnaround,” Gonzalez says. “We had a leader meeting where we brought all these people together and they really started to educate each other.”

The organization presented the legally required school closings process, information about what CPS might do, and asked the parents to figure out what the group should advocate for.

“From that meeting we started to see a consensus around improving student performance,” Gonzalez says. “We know CPS is going to be doing a lot of actions and interventions. [But] is a student moving from a low-quality seat to a high-quality seat? We are going to be kind of a watchdog of CPS through the school actions process. We are going to be keeping an eye on that.”

Providing information to spark involvement

At the start of class, Sharifa Townsend began by reviewing the topic of data. “Why do you think it’s important? Why is it important to get this information?” she asked the group.

“It tells you the progress of the kid,” a man says. “The more data you collect, you can get a sense of what they’re understanding, comprehending.”

Townsend nods. “Exactly,” she says, then expands on his answer. “You know if the teachers are actually doing their job. Are they instructing the students?”

Alicia James, whose nephew attends the school, says she’s learned that she can help her nephew, who was just diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder), by coming to meetings at school and listening to teachers’ recommendations for how to help him at home. “If you don’t attend meetings, you don’t understand anything,” she says.

The class has also covered things she already knew, like the importance of setting aside a specific time and place for homework every night.

Later in the class, Bennett takes the reins to present the school’s data and answer questions the parents have decided on in advance.

Bennett explains that with 800 students and 24 new teachers, she often has deans and assistant principals deal with issues that come up, sharing the “chain of command” with parents so they know how to effectively get issues addressed.

She shows parents that the percentage of students meeting and exceeding standards on the ISAT composite has increased from 52.5 percent two years ago to 58.2 percent last year, and her goal for next year is 66 percent.

One reason the numbers are so low, she notes, is because when she arrived many students were reading – and still are reading – far below grade level.  And, she says, parents can ask teachers for recommendations of reading-level appropriate books for their children to read, even books that “look like the books everyone else is reading” so students who are behind won’t be stuck with embarrassing books.

She also shares goals for student attendance – noting that she is organizing a bus trip to help students get required physicals and immunizations done – as well as teacher attendance, report card pick-up attendance, positive parent survey results, MAP scores (which she explains are “like a dip stick to see if we are moving toward our target”), and the percentage of students who use online learning software outside of school.

Next, Bennett hands out a copy of Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, which she uses to observe teachers. “When we go into classrooms, if I have students sitting there off-task… I’m not looking at the kid, I’m looking at the teacher,” she explains.  And she notes a key change in instructional expectations. “Distinguished teachers are those that can push the learning on the students, where the students can run the classroom and the teacher can be off on the side,” she says.

Close to the end, she hands out a sheet of the “Teach Like a Champion” behavior strategies that teachers use, and tells parents they can support the school by using the same strategies - like refusing to argue with children, and not accepting a task until directions are followed to the letter – at home.

At the end, Bennett answers more questions. The parents complain that the kindergarten pickup area is unsupervised, and Bennett explains that she has hired more safety and security staff who will begin covering the area.  Some complain that events are not publicized far enough in advance, and Bennett explains that everything is noted ahead of time in the school newsletter. One parent offers the idea of a hotline that parents can call to hear about upcoming events, and another suggests text reminders.

On the issue of students being disrespected by teachers – a hot-button – Bennett explains that she trained new teachers just the day before in an effort to stop the yelling. “I have 24 new teachers, many of whom are new to the teaching profession," she says.  “Know that we know that, and that we’re working on it.”

At the end of the class, Townsend pulls up a slide showing the spectrum of places parents can advocate: teacher, principal, district, superintendent, school board.

“Keep in mind, it starts in the classroom, but there is one thing missing on here. Where does it really start? At home,” she says.

As homework, the parents are assigned to find out how to join their school’s improvement plan team; ask their children what they like about school, if they were president what would they do to fix the world, and also who is a good teacher and why.

“We talked about affective learning,” Townsend says. “Children can’t learn if they feel like the teacher doesn’t like them. They shut down.”

One parent shares that she used to think Bennett was “the worst principal” but that now she understood why Bennett was so often busy working with teachers and improving instruction. “At first we were all upset and disgusted with how things were being handled,” Dale says, but now she sees the principal’s perspective.

“Running this building is like running the country,” Bennett says. “I have people pulling on me from every direction.”

Evaluating schools, navigating choice, teaching advocacy

New Schools for Chicago, a longstanding charter advocacy group previously known as the Renaissance Schools Fund, began its own set of broader parent outreach efforts this spring and has offered leadership trainings to over 200 parents since February.

The first part of the two-part training aims to help parents understand how to evaluate school culture and academic performance in relation to their children’s needs. The second is focused on advocacy.

In addition, dozens of parent volunteers and 867 families – representing 1,400 students – participated in the group’s Increase Your Odds program in 2011-12. “We work with parents to try to simplify the [school choice] process, to help them try to stay on top of deadlines,” says Chris Butler, director of advocacy and outreach for the group. “Once the lotteries are over, we have worked with the charter schools and with parents to try to connect parents and schools to one another.”

From what parents report back to the organization, about a quarter of participating students are able to get into charters.

But perhaps the group’s biggest organizing effort is still going on. Starting in late September, New Schools for Chicago launched 123 consecutive days of events, a number inspired by what CPS claims are 123,000 students in underperforming schools.

The group is also trying to get people to observe 123 seconds of silence every day at 1:23 p.m. to raise awareness of the issue. Over 2,000 people have signed a pledge to support high-quality schools, which a gathering of 200 parents in April defined as those with strong academics, respect and high expectations for students, meaningful assessments, quality instruction and supported teachers, and community involvement.

“The pledge says all schools must deliver these things or they must change,” Butler says. “It calls on city leadership and the education community to bring these high-quality schools to substantially more students.”

Butler says that as part of the 123 days of action, the group has created a variety of platforms for pledge signers to express this demand, including a vigil and press conference in late October outside the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. “We have had rallies, we’ve had information days where we go out and try to educate the community around the need,” he says. “We have done events with churches on Sundays... We are working really closely with parent leaders, and encourage folks to be creative.”

Claudia Herrera, a mother of four with three children in private schools (the fourth has already graduated), is one parent who took advantage of Increase Your Odds.

When paying the $10,000 high school tuition for her second-oldest son at Mount Carmel Academy became a challenge this year, Herrera looked into Benito Juarez High School, her neighborhood option.

“It’s a really, really, really bad school right now,” she says. “There’s like a 50 percent dropout rate. A lot of gang violence. There was no way I was going to put him in that school.”

Herrera started looking at charter schools, but found that those in her area had long waiting lists. Through Increase Your Odds, she was able to connect with two charter schools on the North Side, but they were too far away for her to get her son to.

“There’s not enough schools like that here in my neighborhood,” Herrera says. Her son remains on the waiting list for several charter schools but is unlikely to transfer in at this point. “It is his junior year and he will be taking his important tests this year. I believe a lot of [charter] schools don’t take seniors, so we are going to be stuck with this $10,000 tuition for another two years,” Herrera says.

Now, she is attending leadership classes run by New Schools for Chicago.

Before the class, “I knew there was a report card for the schools [but] it was so difficult for me to find the website,” Herrera says. “Now that I have this information I am passing it out to my nieces and nephews so their parents can find the right school for them.”

Her oldest two children attended Irma Ruiz Elementary, which is overcrowded, she says. “I don’t want to make the same mistake with my other two,” she says. “My son that’s in private school used to be an A student here at Irma Ruiz and when I put him into this private school he was like, ‘Mom, I don’t understand anything.’ He would come home crying.”

The same thing, she notes, happened to her oldest son, a graduate of Rauner College Prep.

“I thought they were learning, I thought they were getting the right education, but unfortunately that’s not the way it happened,” Herrera says. “When they went to high school they were just lost.”

A parent trigger?

The momentum for both Stand and New Schools for Chicago comes in the wake of the release of the movie “Won’t Back Down,” about parents who fight to improve a failing school through a “parent trigger” policy, where parents can vote on whether to have a failing school taken over by a charter.

Several local groups, including Democrats for Education Reform, organized screenings. Rebeca Nieves Huffman, Illinois state director of Democrats for Education Reform, said at the Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options legislative summit that the group has talked to aldermen about a potential parent trigger policy – though it’s not clear what jurisdiction aldermen would have over the issue.

Aldermen suggested that “if you want a parent trigger, make it a community trigger” so the neighborhood has a voice in education reform, Huffman told the group.

But New Schools for Chicago, which also held screenings, says it isn’t exploring the possibility of a parent trigger law. Butler says the group held screenings because the movie is about “what can happen when parents get really engaged in demanding quality schools for their kids.”

He says the group’s organizing work at Wendell Smith Elementary, which led to its local school council voting to have the school turned into a charter, was not an effort to support the parent trigger.

“If there are parents who want to get real specific about bringing a specific kind of transformation to a school, that is something we would be supportive of, but there is nothing like that (going on) right now that I can really point out,” Butler says.

Stand for Children is not working on a parent trigger, either. Gonzalez says that with the local school council model of governance in place at most CPS schools, he doesn’t see the need.

“To me, through the LSC system, that is an existing parent trigger type model,” he says.

He adds that the timing of CPS’ decision to turn around Smith, following an LSC vote asking the district to turn it into a charter school, shows that perhaps “parent trigger is in full effect already.”

By the age of 25, just 6% of students who enter CPS high schools as freshmen will have a bachelors’ degree.  For African-American and Latino students, that number drops to just 3% who will hold a four-year degree.  This is a systemic problem that starts at birth, but is exacerbated by inequities in a school system. There is a 28-point gap between the percentage of Caucasian and African-American students who meet and exceed reading standards in 3rd grade. In 11^th grade, the gap is 40 points.

As parents and citizens we will not stand by and let generations of children become a statistic. That is why we have become parent leaders of Stand for Children.

Stand for Children’s mission as an organization is to ensure that all children, regardless of their background, graduate from high school prepared for, and with access to, a college education.

We believe ALL children deserve an equal opportunity to succeed in life. Public education is the key that unlocks the door to success. Far too many children, through no fault of their own, aren’t getting the education they need to make it in life. We are passionately committed to righting this wrong.

What does this mean for us on the ground in Chicago? 

It means that 150+ public school parents (and quickly growing) are currently enrolled or have graduated from Stand University for Parents (Stand UP) in the past six months.  Stand UP is a 10-week course that is a research-based, family engagement curriculum for parents of elementary school children focused on actionable steps parents can take immediately to get involved in their children’s academics and to ensure their children are on track for college. 

It means that hundreds of public school parents are learning how to be advocates for change through ‘study circles’ and trainings to understand how CPS operates, how schools are funded, how they can advocate for their children and communities.

It means we have a team in Springfield that is fighting for equitable funding for our classrooms, focused on our most at-risk students, and for policies focused on the highest leverage strategies available to stop this negative trend of statistics. 

It means that we challenge a system that has been failing our children for too long, regardless of how challenging those conversations can be. 

We view CPS as a three legged stool: the administration, the teachers, and the parents.  You cannot have one without the other.  You need all three to be engaged, informed, and bought in for true change to occur.  Unfortunately, we live in a city where all three sides are in conflict with each other and our children are caught in the middle. 

Stand for Children is unique in Chicago. We are one of the few parent organizations with representation from the North, West and South Side, with all races, ethnicities, and socio-economic levels included.  We work with parents in traditional public schools, public charter schools, turnaround schools, magnets, and selective enrollment schools. Bottom line, we believe in quality public schools and parent involvement.  Simple as that. 

For those in the education community who would belittle parent involvement from any sector of CPS,  or deem some public schools ‘real’ versus ‘fake,’ we wonder how our district will ever move forward together. 

One thing is clear.  We all want what’s best for our kids and our kids are better for it when we come together and communicate respectfully. These are complex problems and we may have different views on how to solve them. That’s okay. That enriches the debate. But when we attack each other instead of focusing on our shared goals, we all lose. 

(Editor’s note: In recent weeks, Catalyst Chicago has published several op-eds from parents or parent groups. This op-ed from Stand for Children is the latest. Previous op-eds were from Wendy Katten of Raise Your Hand, Rebeca Nieves-Huffman of Democrats for Education Reform and Melissa Lindberg.)

Lisa Kulisek is a parent at Smyth Elementary.

Cheyney Wortham is a parent at Bradwell School of Excellence and a recent Stand UP graduate.

We are now zoned to the school where barely a third of 3^rd-graders are reading at grade level and only 18% of their 8^th graders are proficient in math.

My neighbor is a teacher at this school, so I asked her about it.  Her immediate response was that I should not send my daughter there.  We tried the selective enrollment process, and after having my daughter tested and waiting anxiously for many months, we were informed she didn’t test in but was placed on the 214^th spot on the wait list. 

In Wendy Katten’s opinion piece earlier in the week, she asks real parents to please stand up.  I’m a real parent.  So are the parents who send their children to charter, magnet, and private schools.  We’ve gone beyond just standing up. 

My experience, unfortunately, has become the norm for many throughout our city.  According to the Illinois State Board of Education, there are about 18,000 parents who have been trying to get their children into a public school of their choice and instead are on charter school wait lists. 

My hope is that Ms. Katten wouldn’t discount non-neighborhood school parents and claim that they aren’t real.  She would then have to apply the same criteria to the many Chicago Teachers Union members who, during the strike, were dropping off their children to their charter and private schools.  It wouldn’t be fair to any parent who is exercising their freedom to choose the best school for their child. Just because a parent’s school selection isn’t a neighborhood school doesn’t disqualify them from advocating for excellent public education. 

In Katten’s piece, she describes the efforts of the organization I lead, Education Reform Now—the non-profit arm of our PAC, Democrats for Education Reform—in reaching out to CPS parents during and after the strike. 

We partnered with the Power of Parents, a group that for many years has worked with CPS parents providing workshops, trainings and conferences on equipping them with resources and information that will help them navigate the system and advocate for their children.   Partnerships and coalitions are very important, as Ms. Katten knows from experience.  Power of Parents joined forces in mobilizing the voices of CPS parents who were frustrated with the extension of the strike.  The simple message these parents decided they wanted to send to the CTU was to “educate while they negotiate.”  They weren’t alone. CPS parents were pulling together impromptu protests at CTU headquarters with similar messages.  Many, especially CPS parents and students, wanted the strike to end.   

There is a lot of work to be done and as I mentioned earlier, partnerships are necessary.  Much of what Ms. Katten mentioned are items we are fighting for as well.  Our intent wasn’t to upset parents from her organization by texting them with the invitation to attend the Power of Parents rally or see an inspiring film for free.  In fact, I would encourage those parents to simply text the response “STOP” and we will remove them from our list. 

Ms. Katten, it is clear to me that our organizations have issues we can work on together.  For instance, I’m certain you agree with us that low-performing charter schools should be closed.  We too want to see CPS authentically engage parents and key stakeholders in the important decisions being made.  It’s not just about policies but the process by which critical changes take place. 

We—Power of Parents included—would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you and discuss ways we can partner to ensure that someday soon, ALL children have access to excellent schools.   

Rebeca Nieves Huffman is executive director of Education Reform Now.

As a parent group in CPS, our members will still be advocating for the same things we were working on before the strike – more funding for classroom resources and staff, smaller class sizes, a dignified school day for all children in Chicago, a system that allows for parent voices to be heard and more democracy in policy-making.

To that end, many parents are newly frustrated by the aggressive tactics employed by outside groups who have come into Chicago to help shape the debate. One group, Education Reform Now, an arm of the group Democrats for Education Reform, somehow got a hold of the personal cell phone numbers of local school council members. During the strike, DFER was texting parents who had never signed up to be part of their group, to ask them to attend a “Power of Parents” rally to tell teachers to end the strike.

After the strike settled, many parents got texts inviting them to a free screening of the movie, “Won’t Back Down,” a thinly-veiled move in favor of so-called “parent trigger” laws. DFER also put out radio ads all summer and commercials during the strike, and paid $1 million to run a television ad for Mayor Rahm Emanuel after the strike.

Where did they get all this money? In researching DFER, we learned that they were started and are funded by hedge-fund managers and charter school operators in New York City.  They arrived in Chicago last spring and quickly partnered with Stand For Children to help work on getting the reforms in SB7 pushed through in CPS. SB7 is the state law that Stand For Children helped marshal through the legislature in the spring of 2011, after coming to town and meeting with lawmakers instead of parents, and making a lot of campaign contributions in the process. They are funded by many wealthy “education reformers” in Chicago.

One of those “reformers” is a gentleman by the name of Bruce Rauner, a venture capitalist who is an adviser to Mayor Emanuel. Rauner was recently on the show Chicago Tonight suggesting that we “blow up” the district and create smaller regions of charter and contract schools. He added that the tragedy in Chicago is that parents don’t know how bad their schools are and they think their teacher being a pleasant person is enough. We have talked to thousands of parents over the last couple of years. There are many tragedies in and relating to our public schools. Bruce Rauner’s version seems to be a bit out of touch.

This begs the question, when will real CPS parents have a voice in this system? Why is a group of hedge- fund managers in New York spending millions to sway public policy in Chicago? What is at stake for these groups?

We are concerned about the weight that these groups have in shaping policy. All parties have a right to their opinions, but those who are disconnected from our schools, have not sent their own children to them --and sometimes don’t even live here—seem to have an awful lot at stake to spend so much money in “reforming” our schools. 

In our perfect world, parents, teachers, community, education professors, business people, and all parties would be at the table making policy.  On Chicago Tonight, Bruce Rauner said, “This is war.” Does the mayor feel this way? We don’t know. We tried to get a meeting with him all year to discuss his plans for the longer day, to no avail.  Meanwhile, Bruce Rauner met with CPS 12 times we are told, and regularly debates the issues with the mayor.

Most parents don’t want a war. They want a district that’s looking out for all children, that is capable of collaboration and able to hear the views and voices of real parents in the system. We would like someone to address the fact that Illinois has cut $800 million from education funding since 2008--perhaps to try and move the state from 50^th in the nation—dead last—for what they kick in to education funding?

While DFER and other “reformers” are spending money on advertising and cooking up plans to “blow up the district”, we will be trying to engage all parents who actually have kids in this system to work on sustainable solutions that will improve the lives and education of our kids.

Wendy Katten is co-founder and director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education.

Officials also have been going out to community action councils—CPS-organized groups of community stakeholders—and giving them lists of under-utilized, low-achieving schools, as if to prepare them for what might happen.

A Catalyst Chicago analysis of CPS data shows that 145 schools are both under-utilized and at Level 3 on the academic rating scale (the lowest rating given by the district). About 80 of the 145—and all but three on the South and West sides of the city—are more than 50 percent under-utilized.

School closings are a factor in the current teacher contract negotiations because one sticking point is the job rights of teachers displaced by closings and other school actions. At the Illinois Facilities Taskforce meeting on Thursday night, the urgency of the issue became clear.

CEO Jean-Claude Brizard was supposed to attend Thursday’s meeting, but, according to CPS spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler, everyone agreed that he could not make an appearance during negotiations.

Still, task force members went ahead with the meeting in preparation for events in the coming months. By late October, CPS is required by law to publish school action guidelines. Then, on Dec. 1, officials must announce which schools they plan to close and, at their February meeting, approve the actions.

Meanwhile, CPS by law must develop a 10-year master facilities plan. A draft of the plan must be published by January 2013 and in place by July 2013.

“They are putting the cart before the horse,” said Nona Burney, a member of the task force who said she would have liked to see the district hold off on school actions until after the master plan is in place. Instead, she says she has been told that CPS will not wait.

Dispute over utilization formula

With the enrollment losses of recent years, CPS has more seats in schools than it has students. But only recently have leaders publicly acknowledged that they plan to do something about it. Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley said at last month’s board meeting that the district will have to be restructured to contain the deficit.

Dwayne Truss, who is the vice chairman of the Austin Community Action Council, said he has decided to resign from the council and fight against the closings. He said 17 of 19 schools in Austin are considered under-utilized.

Truss said he made this decision after CPS maneuvered to put a charter school in place at one school campus with limited community input. “Why would you put a charter school in a community with so many under-utilized schools?” he said. “We are looking at over-saturation.”

Committee members told Truss that community activists need to prepare themselves for the school actions by taking stock of their schools, saying that CPS’ definition for utilization is inadequate: CPS divides the number of students by 30 and adds a certain number of additional classes for programs like art and special education. Burney says other school districts are more specific, with criteria such as designating a certain number of children for each grade level.

CPS’ utilization formula also doesn’t take into account the specific circumstances at schools, such as community health clinics or special programs that are using the buildings.

“You need to survey your schools and see how they are using the space,” Rep. Cynthia Soto told Truss. “You need to be ready.”

Committee members also bemoaned the fact that the district gave the lists of under-utilized schools to the community councils, not to local school councils. The community councils were created under former CEO Ron Huberman to come up with education plans for their neighborhoods.  The plans were completed just as Brizard took over but were never implemented, angering many on the councils.

Since then, CPS has created additional community councils, perhaps to be sounding board for school actions.

Carol Johnson, who is on the Austin council, said she plans to bring the information to the two LSCs she also serves on. “The LSCs are the elected bodies and we need to let them know what is going on,” she said.

Burney is in charge of the subcommittee that will provide recommendations to CPS on how to revise the school action process.

The subcommittee is recommending that CPS guidelines for this year be more transparent. Last year, the guidelines were generic and so many schools met the closings criteria that it was impossible to know why one school was chosen for action over the others, Burney said.

The subcommittee also wants the district to do a better job communicating and responding to the concerns of the community, though CPS has called last year’s process the most transparent the district has had.

Last year, CPS released draft guidelines, but didn’t make any changes to them because they said they didn’t have time. CPS officials also didn’t take any school off of the proposed action list.

As CPS released new details on its strike contingency plan, pastors representing over 100 African-American and Latino churches demanded that CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union come to agreement on a contract, pledged to offer programs for students if teachers strike and charged that CPS has been slow to prepare for a possible walkout.

Cy  Fields, pastor of New Landmark Missionary Baptist Church in West Garfield Park, called for a “24-hour lock-in of all negotiators. No one should rest and no one should sleep until a deal is done.”

The lack of preparation, said Bishop James Dukes of Liberation Christian Center, makes it harder for any contingency plan to be effective.

As of Thursday morning, the pastors said they still had not received word about whether they would be included in CPS plans. But later on Thursday, CPS released a list of Safe Haven sites that included the churches in question.  

Of the more than 100 churches opening up their doors, 59 are Safe Haven sites and will get some CPS funding. The rest of the churches will pay for programs with church funds and assistance from Catholic Charities. The district also released a list of schools that will offer its Children First program.

Dukes predicts the first day of a strike would be spent with churches doing “foot patrol” and knocking on doors to find children rather than actually offering activities.

That happened during the summer, he noted, when his church had jobs for Harper High School students but had to knock on doors to find takers.

Dukes says the group of churches approached CPS a month ago to try to prepare and enroll students for programs if teachers went on strike, but the district told them to wait. “They do not want to completely acquiesce to the reality that a strike may be imminent,” Dukes said.

Those that operate Safe Haven programs have space for at least 9,800 students, but far more churches are participating and “signing up as we speak,” said Pastor Walter Turner of New Spiritual Light Missionary Baptist Church.

The pastors prayed for a resolution and urged CPS and CTU to come together to avoid a strike. “Families are going to be disrupted, homes are going to be put into confusion,” Turner said, predicting that parents would be forced to choose between going to work and caring for their children. “We are here to tell CPS and CTU, just as much as they have their special interests, at the end of the day our children ought to be our special interests.”

The churches are seeking volunteers who have backgrounds in education and youth work, even including current teachers. They will be open from 8:30am until 2pm and will offer conflict resolution and anger management programming, arts and crafts, and help with the college application process as well as two meals a day.

Several pastors voiced concern that a strike could lead to more violence in neighborhoods already ravaged by shootings and homicides.

“We cannot afford to have another child on the street with nothing to do, to be shot down and added to the statistics,” said Bishop Larry Trotter, pastor of Sweet Holy Spirit Church. “We cannot afford an extended summer of killing.” And Robert Belfort, the senior pastor of New Life Pilsen Church, charged that a strike would send children into “a battlefield.”

CPS opens schools as last resort

CPS said Thursday that it “is strongly encouraging all parents to first explore alternative options for their children” such as private child care, before parents enroll students in the district’s “Children First” program. A list of schools offering the program is available here.

“For families that are not able to access alternative options for their children, the Children First plan is a safety net to provide a safe environment, food and engaging activities for these students,” the district said in a news release. The programs will offer reading and writing, arts, sports and computer activities.

The 144 schools that will participate in the program will be open from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm each day, and will serve breakfast and lunch. Parents can sign up students, using the student’s ID number, at www.cps.edu/childrenfirst or by calling 311.

Preference was given to sites with air-conditioning, gyms, cafeterias and computer labs as well as those accessible by public transportation. They will be staffed by non-CTU school employees and Central Office staff, as well as staff from vendor companies or nonprofits that responded to CPS’ request for proposals.

(The lack of air-conditioning in schools has long been an area of concern among teachers. In a Catalyst Chicago survey, 38 of 76 schools that responded had air-conditioning, 24 had air-conditioning in some or most of their classrooms and 14 had no air conditioning, and but not all of them.)

Belfort said CPS and CTU would have to be creative in order to find a resolution. “We, as pastors, have dealt with (having to make) budgets out of nothing,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for over 2,000 years.”

Catalyst Chicago intern Nicki Koetting contributed to this report.

On Thursday, CPS released some details of its strike contingency plan. (A copy of the CPS press release is at the bottom of this article.) The Board of Education gave district officials the go-ahead at their August meeting to spend $25 million to provide programming for children.

CPS also is working with the Chicago Park District and Chicago Public Library to provide other opportunities for students. For one, about 70 summer camps will be extended.

District officials are asking central office staff and non-CTU employees to submit proposals to run activities in the schools. State law prohibits instruction from taking place, but children will be encouraged to do independent reading and writing and work on the computer, according to the CPS press release.

Sports are another possibility, with CPS announcing that the district has applied for a waiver from the Illinois High School Sports Association to allow fall athletics to go on, even if the strike happens. Strikes are supposed to halt games and practices, but if teams miss too many games, they can be taken out of playoff contention.

Wendy Katten, who runs the parent group Raise Your Hand, said she was surprised at the proposed hours of CPS’ programming: 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “Parents work a full day. I would rather coordinate a day that helps working families.”

Katten says that over the next weekend, she will be working with parent leaders to identify churches and other places that could be open. Also, some stay-at-home parents might be able to care for some extra children.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when teachers’ strikes took place almost on a regular basis, churches and other organizations opened their doors and provided some activities.

But the last strike was 25 years ago, and many say that only when the 10-day strike notice was issued did they realize they should be developing plans.

Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Action Now Institute, said the group is looking at opening up some community centers (members would have to OK the plans). They would like to providing arts and music programming, as well as history lessons about the community.

“All the things that are not done during the school year,” she says.

Other organizations that provide after-school programs are looking at whether they can extend the time into the day. Garrette Horne, who is the director of Freedom Schools in Woodlawn, said finding money to offer a full day of programing might be a tall task at such short notice.

Mary McClelland, spokeswoman from Stand for Children, said her organization doesn’t have the capacity to provide programming. But it is looking at compiling some resources for children and perhaps holding a tele-town hall meeting to get the word out.

The union, of course, would rather see the contingency plan money spent on educational materials or classes.

“That money would go a long way in ensuring there are working computers in every school, textbooks on day one, and certified teachers to give our kids art, music, world languages, civics and physical education courses,” says CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin. “The first item on any ‘contingency plan’ should be to settle this contract.”

CPS officials also pointed out the logistical problems that arise when teachers go on strike. Some of the problems would only arise should the strike go on for weeks. For example, CPS’ press release noted that seniors could be delayed in applying for colleges, yet most applications are not due till October at the earliest. Also, students will miss practice time for the ACT.