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The Chicago Public School system will release a plan tomorrow to create 100 new schools by 2010; the schools will be more progressive and innovative than current establishments. Out of these 100, most won't be brand new buildings—CPS will be dividing up larger schools into smaller programs. The plan calls for 30 new schools on the South Side, 20-30 on the West Side, and the rest in other dense neighborhoods.
The new schools on the West and South Sides, most of which are to be housed in existing buildings, will be opened in connection with the Chicago Housing Authority's plan to transform those neighborhoods.Up to 20 high schools will become 40 to 60 small schools.
Much like Dodge and Williams, two elementary schools that were shut down in 2002 and reopened last year as "Renaissance schools," the strategy intends to bring new life to old schoolhouses by freeing them from traditional methods.
The new schools will be roughly one-third charter schools, one-third contract schools--in which the school district contracts with an outside entity to operate a school--and one-third run by the school district.
The plan is called "Renaissance 2010," and while it seems to have a lot of public support, the president-elect of the Chicago Teachers Union would not tell the Trib what she thought the ramifications of the program would be. Charter schools and privately contracted schools can and often do employ non-union teachers.
The full details of the plan will be announced tomorrow.
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A friend of mine is a CPS 3rd Grade teacher @ Suder (one of the schools being closed this year). She brought test scores up 15%, they have an award winning music program and a piloted a diversity curriculum with the Children's Museum.
And they're closing.
The reality is that the neighborhood is gentrifying. Most of the kids at that school are the remnants of the Horner Homes. Yuppies don't want their kids going to school with kids from the projects.
Voila - "Renaissance 2010". Close the school for a year. Finish tearing down Horner. Re-open with tuition based (for the right 'income') charter schools with non-union teachers. Bingo - new school for rich kids with no operational cost for CPS - just outsource the school.
I'm fortunate enough to have been at a magnet high school on the south side for the past 6 years, but I work with many teachers like the one Amy mentioned. They lost jobs when schools were "reconstituted". It's great to try the small school thing -really- but the idea that the teachers are the reason for a lack of success has got to go. Why can't the board assign those teachers at the closing schools to the new ones? Because new teachers cost a lot less.