catalyst-chicago.org

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Chicago Board of Education will likely approve a number of remodeling, painting and construction projects, with much of the money spent at turnaround schools and for career education programs.

More than $14 million will be spent on “Pathways Program” construction for career programs at Lindblom, Richards, Roosevelt, Schurz, Sullivan, and Simeon high schools, as well as other unspecified schools.

As part of preparing a new $659 school construction and capital spending plan, officials used a new formula to determine school utilization. In the process, they determined that the district has 130,000 empty seats--a quarter of the seats available in schools throughout the city.

That figure, a result of the district’s declining enrollment, shows the extent of building under-utilization throughout CPS. Yet when deciding how to invest their capital improvement dollars, Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley said Thursday that officials steered away from buildings that might be shut down in the next five to 10 years.

At a sparsely attended Thursday night forum at CPS headquarters, three of CPS’ most well-established charter school operators pitched their plans to open up 10 new charters over the next two school years.